/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2658329]

In the past evolution was beneficial; made is stronger, faster, and better adapted to our environment.
Is it possible that now evolution is doing as harm though?
For instance, in the long past if you had a bad allergy you could quite easily die from it, but in the modern day with ambulances and our medical technology it's much more likely that you will survive and live a long and happy life, then pass that allergy on to your children.
Is natural selection dead?

[Anonymous No.2658348]

Spoilers: Natural selection gave us brains, and it is part of natural selection that we use those brains to up our survival rate than rely on physical traits.
I hope you won't deny that we as a race are a lot more prolific.

If you're worrying that as a race we're getting more prone to dying and whatnot as our physical forms get weaker, that's valid- but that's natural selection.
It's impossible for natural selection to stop. Just as humans we define ourselves as not natural, when infact we are a product of nature.

[Anonymous No.2658361]

>In the past evolution was beneficial; made is stronger, faster, and better adapted to our environment.
Only the last part of this statement is true. Often creatures will evolve to become weaker or slower.

[Anonymous No.2658364]

Over the past 10,000 years, their data show, human evolution has occurred a hundred times more quickly than in any other period in our species’ history.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to/article_view?b
_start:int=3&-C=
A mutation that arose about 8,000 years ago in northern Europe, Hawks says, allowed adults to digest lactose

The clearest example of that is malaria,” Hawks says. “The disease is about 35,000 years old, with the most lethal form of it just 5,000 years old.” Yet in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions where it is endemic, “people have already developed 25 new genes that protect against malaria

Because sperm can fertilize an egg up to 24 hours after being ejaculated in the vagina, a woman who copulates with two or more partners in close succession is setting up the very conditions that pit one man’s sperm against another’s. Hawks infers that “sperm today is very different from sperm even 5,000 years ago.”

genes that help us live longer get selected

Some genes that appear to have been recently selected, Moyzis and his collaborators suggest, influence the function and development of the brain. Other fast-changing genes—roughly 100—are associated with neurotransmitters, including serotonin (a mood regulator), glutamate (involved in general arousal), and dopamine (which regulates attention). According to estimates, fully 40 percent of these neurotransmitter genes seem to have been selected in the past 50,000 years, with the majority emerging in just the past 10,000 years.

[Anonymous No.2658377]

Nature dont always select the strongest or fastest but the best adapter to the environment. Infact if you're too strong or too big it usually mean you'd need more energy to support you thus higher risk to go extinct if the environment isnt favorable

[Anonymous No.2658381]

>>2658364
>Because sperm can fertilize an egg up to 24 hours after being ejaculated in the vagina, a woman who copulates with two or more partners in close succession is setting up the very conditions
Sluts are bettering humanity. Who woulda thunkit

[Anonymous No.2658389]

evolution is making all the women religious whores
you cant accept that

[Anonymous No.2658399]

>>2658381
not really, sexual selection generally results in inefficient designs like peacocks

[Anonymous No.2658409]

>>2658389
I can, for I my God is Allah and He shall give me three young virgins for wives.

[Anonymous No.2658444]

>>2658329
Society is an evolved trait.
If you and your offspring can correct the deficit of your asthma genes with modern medicine and social support, it's just the same if you had died and never passed those bad genes along in the first place.

[Anonymous No.2658471]

If there was anything wrong with some human traits it would reach a point where natural selection begins to wipe out those traits.

That's how natural selection works. There is no problem, only your predjudice.

[Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. No.2658501]

We are moving beyond the natural course of evolution now.

[Anonymous No.2658527]

I think IV therapy is kinda messing things up, women are having children at later ages when they'd normally not be able to and are having children with all kinds of disorders.

[Anonymous No.2658573]

I would expect that we are currently evolving rapidly, since our environment has changed and continues to change rapidly.

Evolution does not make us "better." It emphasizes traits that make us more likely to successfully propagate our genes. Whether you consider those traits "good" or "bad" is a value judgment that has no bearing on the reality of the situation.

[Anonymous No.2658584]

>>2658573
Ding ding ding
We have a winrar.