David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving Britain's most popular naturalist has warned in an interview that humans have become the first species to effectively halt the influence of natural selection. He also says, however, that it's not the end of the world, thanks to modern technology. "I think that we've stopped evolving. Because if natural selection, as proposed …
Spectacular piece of trollery there, old chap.
Hats off to you, indeed.
Not that I wish to encourage such stuff, but some people really should learn to
NOT FEED THE TROLL!
I'd venture there's enough troll food here to sustain your average Ringlefinch for about a year.
Overpopulation is a horrendous threat - not only to the environment but to the overall human condition, as conflicts are inevitable as people fight for a slice of what they feel they deserve. This is one of the greatest problems of financial social inequality: as the few hoard the most, the rest of the population fights even harder for the balance. As the few grow even more materially wealthy the rest of us simply create more wars over what is left. There is historical evidence of this.
If this is true, then socially we are doomed to an eternal struggle of violence as the meritocracy rewards itself then collapses as the masses revolt, in an never-ending cycle of general social unhappiness.
Regardless of the aforementioned issue, the human population on this planet will continue growing as the devout, and their promoters, forward their belief of planetary Manifest Destiny - the idea that mankind is destined to rule over the entire planet. With that belief comes a fundamental construct that mankind, therefore, can do no inherent 'wrong' to the planet - if we are meant to rule, then we can do as we see fit and the planet will simply adapt and persevere.
With birth control going against the beliefs of several major religions, as 'It was meant to be!' is applied to pregnancy and "Life is sacred!" even BEFORE that life is made by the meeting of the egg and sperm, when we join all of those issues, plus more, together it equals...average human stupidity.
Yep.
But I remember reading a Stephen Jay Gould book that pointed out, eloquently, that humans, rather than being at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, are an aberrant side-branch, which might survive for a while, but probably won't.
Dinosaurs dominant: 150 million years.
Cockroaches doing well: 200 million years and counting.
Homo sapiens: 1-2 million years, and struggling (mostly to kill each other or dismantle their habitats).
I've never seen a cockroach smile, but I'd love to be a [whatever]-on-the-wall a few millennia hence...
C1: Remember those human thingies?
C2: Yeah. Wierd things. Prattled about a bit for a while then self-destructed, poor bast***s.
C1: Bet they'd have made good pets, though.
C2: Dunno. Bit stupid, really.
"Dinosaurs dominant: 150 million years."
I've an issue -sort of- with this particular meme. Dinosaurs weren't a single species, but a clade that included many thousands of different species, many of which probably lasted less than one million years. Comparing that to the time a single species -ours- survives is a big fallacy. Ditto about the cockroaches, who are a genre of insects comprising lots and lots of different, genetically incompatible species.
Dinosaurs weren't, in fact, anything like a homogeneous group. As XKCD recently pointed out, there is a bigger time gap (and possibly a bigger genetic gap) between *stegosaurus and *tyrannosaurus, than between *tyrannosaurus and a modern bird.
Homo currently has a short but explosive history, and has managed almost to eliminate all the closest relatives. The question is whether descendants of the hominoids will be around in a million years time, while the descendants of species of bipedal dinosaurs are currently eating the berries of a plant near my window.
"...humans, rather than being at the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, are an aberrant side-branch..."
Those words show that you haven't really grasped what evolution by natural selection is about. There is no tree. There is no pinnacle. There are environments, and there are organisms that survive and multiply better or worse in various environments.
Back in the 19th century, many fairly intelligent and well educated people had the same misconception. They got the idea that evolution was just a clever method of creating us - wonderful, clever, dominant, supreme us - without actually CREATING us (as Genesis was out of fashion). But they still hung on to the wholly wrong idea that we are somehow special because we have - TaDa! - ***intelligence***. Oh, and the ***moral faculty***. No other animals had any trace of those. So clearly all of evolution was simply a way for "the universe to become conscious", or some pretentious mystical twaddle of the sort.
Today, of course, we all know that many animals are intelligent; some are more intelligent than the stupidest humans. We also understand that many animals have a sense of fairness, and that human ideas of morality most likely arise from the primate instincts that allowed our ancestors to prosper in tribal groups. So there is nothing unique about us. True, we are (as far as we know) the most intelligent species. But no one has demonstrated that our particular form of intelligence is even a survival trait. It has been for a vanishingly short period of geological time. In a century or two, or a millennium or two? Who knows.
"...the human population on this planet will continue growing as the devout, and their promoters, forward their belief of planetary Manifest Destiny..."
I'm afraid it's much worse than that. And you can't blame it exclusively on the religious, either. Virtually all nations are led either by a small bunch of ruthless thugs who don't care about anything except their prosperity (and that of the family and clique); or by "democratic" governments that would never think of doing anything calculated to upset most of the voters. Or both, come to think of it.
So there is nothing to stand in the way of the near-universal human urge to procreate. If only we could hold the average family down to 2.0, all might be well. But we can't. Anyone who wishes to have 17 children is free to do so, and no one can stop them. It would be an infringement of their human rights, to start with!
In the short, medium, and long term (if there is a long term) those who have the decency to limit their families will simply be making sure their genes disappear from the gene pool, vastly outbred by those who don't.
Revd. Malthus, we owe you an apology.
I agree. For those people that don't agree, how many is too many?
We are at 7 billion right now, and left unchecked will be at 10 sooner than later. I would ask what magic number they think is too many, and what they think we should do about it once we hit "their" magic number?
Overpopulation is a real problem, either right now or soon, but we all need to recognize it while we still can, while we still have time to slow it down, or level off. I find the fact that we are just ignoring our impending doom frightening.
"I would ask what magic number they think is too many, and what they think we should do about it once we hit "their" magic number?"
I should think the answer to that is: any number that doesn't come along until later, when it'll be someone else's decision. And their problem figuring out a way of doing anything about it.
As I've said before, we are in a curiously helpless position. I'm somehow reminded of the feeling of losing all traction in a car while cornering. As the car drifts sideways towards a drop-off into a field 30 feet below, one marvels at the fact that death can turn up so unexpectedly, and that one can be so powerless to do anything about it.
You and I know what the danger is, and we can even offer some suggestions as to the only possible ways of escape. But can we persuade the people who control the world, and the people who control the size of the next generation, to take action? Not bleeding likely.
Er, actually most animals are on a plateau with regard to evolution driven by natural selection. It is not a process which is happening all the time. Evolution tends to occur in fits and starts when there is great population pressure or competition for scarce resources. We, Homo Sapiens, have been on an evolutionary plateau for over 8,000 years. This report makes it sound like David Attenbrorough is suggesting we have recently stopped evolving and this is something only just realised realised, which is not the case (and I'm sure he is aware). Though in relative terms, measured against when life first emerged, I guess you could say 8,000 years is recent.
>evolution driven by natural selection... is not a process which is happening all the time.
Actually, it isn't a process at all. It's a retrospective abstraction.
The process (which happens much of the time) is random genetic damage, aka mutation.
Later, we look back and call the long-term change 'evolution'.
(Maths people and 'hard' scientists get this. 'Soft' scientists / general 'ologists' often get confused at the basic linguistic conceptual stage).
An evolutionary plateau is reached, when the creature is well-adapted to its current environment. Historically, the earth environment changed quite slowly, with a few notable exceptions that were followed by mass-extinction. Right now, we humans modify the environment quite drastically (look up the anthropocene), so most creatures are far from their plateau. I, for one, am badly adapted to sitting in front of this computer and my typing abilities could use some evolution as well.
"David Attenbrorough is suggesting we have recently stopped evolving and this is something only just realised realised, which is not the case"
Average life expectancy in this country has more than doubled in the last 100 years. The mechanism of natural selection and the evolution that follows has substantially changed very recently.
Evolution has not stopped, it might be speeding up. What we are evolving into has certainly changed.
"Average life expectancy in this country has more than doubled in the last 100 years."
Except inasmuch as that reflects more people reaching the age at which they have children, that has nothing to do with evolution. Once your children are born, you are out of the game. (Nowadays, very few children are allowed to die of neglect even if their parents abandon them at birth or soon after).
Once your children are born, you have a lot of influence on how they develop and, indirectly, on how many offspring they have. There is an argument that the human race really got going when there were enough grandparents around for the efficient transmission of culture (before writing).
My father last weekend was telling his great grandson about the reality of WW2 versus the nonsense that is Star Wars. He may have an influence on the child that will have an effect on his eventual reproductive decisions.
"Once your children are born, you have a lot of influence on how they develop and, indirectly, on how many offspring they have."
Indeed, but I suspect in the opposite direction to the one we would wish. It seems to me that those parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) who take most care of their offspring's education and upbringing are likely to have fewer grandchildren than average.
That means they will, sooner rather than later, breed their genes right out of the gene pool.
Given how wide an audience he has, its unfortunate that he doesn't make a clear distinction between natural selection and evolution.
I would agree that natural selection is no longer the driver of evolution.
At no time in human history have we had such diverse breeding, extensive crossing of genetic lines that have been separate for thousands of years. More and more people are free to choose (often know as falling in love with) a mate.
I saw a story on the news about a guy who was born with only one leg (gestation issues, not genetic). In other times, he would not have survived. He is an intelligent and charming person, married with 2 kids. His genes are not lost, and every additional gene line is another possibility.
There is a downside to all this choice; some of us choose not to breed.
"I guess he meant only in the overfed Western world and not the undernourished country's"
Oh bollocks with the Western guilt self flagellation.
In the last 50 years the 3rd world survival rate has rocketed, as has the 3rd world's access to food. Both thanks to western input. Even throwing AIDS in the pot, Sub-Saharan Africa has longevity twice what it was just 40 years ago.
Sure there are still some pockets of malnutrition and disease, but these are caused by local corruption and wars - not the Demon White Man. They are a small fraction of what they were just a few years back.
Right now, obesity is far more of a problem world wide than famine.
"Right now, obesity is far more of a problem world wide than famine."
The two are not opposites, as you might assume. Many chronically undernourished people become obese, even in prosperous countries, if they get too many calories from refined carbohydrates. See, for example, http://www.dietdoctor.com/chinese-people-heading-towards-diabetes?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chinese-people-heading-towards-diabetes
Or read Gary Taubes' book "The Diet Delusion" (published in the USA as "Good Calories, Bad Calories") if you want to see the full scientific background. For a quick preview, see http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-the-campaign-to-stop-america-s-obesity-crisis-keeps-failing.html
I'm not sure about all this. Evolution does not have to constantly take place, there is no 'ultimate version'. Animals evolve as the situation dictates, if no evolution is required for survival/perpetuation of the species, no evolution occurs.
Things like this are all fine to pronounce; it's kind of like saying you know how many stars are in the sky. Other than sounding a bit loony, you can't be proven wrong. You'd have to alter the environment in a radical, permanent way, then observe if successive generations adap.....,,,,,,!!!!
Holy Condoleezza! Do you think David Attenborough might be a terrorist planning on destroying vast swaths of humanity in order to test his hypothesis? Has the plot gotten that far? He must be questioned. Spare the rod, spoil the species I always say. There is no such thing as a safe risk, none can be exempted.
I agree with DA, but not for his stated reason.
I personally believe that human evolution stopped (for all intents and purposes) the day we became good enough a moulding the environment to fit us rather than the other way around?
In other words - now that we can effectively do away with most "problems", why would we need to evolve? If the environment is stable, so are those within it.
"In other words - now that we can effectively do away with most "problems", why would we need to evolve?"
Yes, human ingenuity has certainly abolished all "problems". Or, to put it more exactly, human ingenuity has made us just half-smart enough to solve a bunch of fairly obvious, immediate problems (some of which weren't really problems at all) at the expense of piling up some really huge, intractable, real problems.
Have you heard of Sevareid's Law? "The chief cause of problems is solutions". Probably the best indictment of human intelligence ever written down. You should meditate on it for a few weeks.
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