David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving

Re: Overpopulation

You can get a longer sentence for theft or destruction of property than for murder.

Bollocks.

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

You may be right. My wife is a geneticist and we discuss this all the time. At what point is the altered Human no longer a Human?

Wife believes one of the earlier 'optional' modifications will be to prohibit females from being impregnated by 'inferior' males. Allowing them to "slum it" for fun but assuring that only 'superior' material will be present in any offspring. A lot of animals do this, but they usually just eat the inferior specimens, Humans probably wouldn't do that. It's a pretty relevant thing as genetic modification will likely never be available to the average person. Will the wealthy biologically separate themselves from normal Humans? The gene pool is guaranteed to shrink over time, where will they get new material?

One of the characteristics of Humans is that most any reproductively healthy male/female pair can produce offspring. If that is no longer the case are those with limited breeding options still Human?

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

I don't think it will ever be possible to correct the DNA in a fetus that's already started developing (cells splitting). Once the cells start splitting, you can only compensate for genetic defects (some protein or hormone missing or some such) by supplementing the missing bit in some other way. Correct me if I'm wrong there - and please elaborate on technological details :-) "Make a virus that can cut and paste the DNA in every individual cell at a very specific place in a very specific way" - doesn't sound realistic, the virus would have to be too complicated (carry along too much tooling and data).

It would seem more realistic to me to engineer a "fertilised egg" (the single initial cell with a full set of chromosomes) with a desired genome, and let that start splitting/developing into a fetus. I'd almost suggest to have a few eggs fertilised in vitro in a semi-natural way, and then select one whose genome looks best - but that would imply a non-destructive reading of a genome of that initial single cell, which again doesn't seem technically likely/feasible. Maybe let the egg split once, separate the two cells, destroy one for DNA analysis and let the other one develop into a fetus (thus effectively keeping one twin of two). Even a more problematic method would be to have a few early fetuses develop enough material for DNA analysis, and kill those you don't like. Starts to sound like a horror story...

Well actually we do already screen fetuses pre-natally for known genetic defects, and those diagnosed with serious defects are suggested for abortion. Various countries approach this in different ways, depending on the level of their healthcare system and general public opinion about abortions (yes it has a lot to do with religion). Yet based on what I know, those defects are either life-threatening already in early childhood or often directly prevent future reproduction of the individual - so these generally wouldn't proliferate in the gene pool either, even if not aborted artificially.

Looking at the "removal of natural selection" (or some particular pressures thereof) in a statistical way, the future of our society looks like another horror story. We don't have to speak genetic-based conditions that are directly life threatening. Consider just some fairly harmless genetic traits that may e.g. make you less imune to a particular type of infections. Or may mean a stronger tendency to "auto-immune" / allergic responses (let's now abstract from the fact that some cases blamed vaguely on "auto-immune response" might actually be caused by undiscovered infections). Before modern medicine, even such "harmless" genetic features would statistically decrease your chances of survival. With modern medicine, many of this is treatable and gets passed on to future generations. Even genetic traits that might normally affect your survival *after* your successful reproduction, would traditionally still hamper your ability to rear and support your offspring, hence reducing your offspring's chance for further reproduction... With modern medicine (and social support), this pressure is removed.

Modern medicine is expensive - depending on a particular country's social arrangement, modern healthcare either burdens the whole society by a special healthcare tax (e.g. many countries in Europe), possibly making doctors work a bit like mandatory conscripts for sub-prime wages (post-commie eastern Europe), or it's individually expensive and unavailable to lower-wage classes (many U.S. states and other countries).

Imagine a population of people who mostly wouldn't be able to reproduce in a natural way for one reason or another (infertility, babies growing too big to get born naturally, various lighter/treatable conditions in pregnancy that would mean trouble without modern healthcare) and permanently suffer from various non-lethal but onerous conditions throughout their childhood and especially adult life (it's likely to get worse with age).

A population of permanently suffering people, dependent on modern expensive healthcare. I fear that gradually, even with modern healthcare, the balance of natural selection -based dieoff could be restored. So that a great percentage of individuals born alive will die of disease or other medical conditions before getting "old", despite having the luxury of modern healthcare.

For how long have we had modern healthcare? Since 1900? Maybe more like since WW2, if you count antibiotics. That's just a few generations. In some respects, we're already less healthy than our ancestors. Take respiratory diseases, take fertility for instance. Some of this used to be explained by industrial pollution, but here where I live, many of the population health problems persist, even though industrial pollution has been greatly reduced over the last two decades or so. How long will it take, till the public health will degrade catastrophically, due to minor genetic-based imperfections getting accumulated due to the removal of "natural selection pressure"? A couple more human generations?

I recall a study on a particular species of butterflies, showing how a dark variant (mutation) has become prevalent in an area affected by some industry, in just a couple of years, just because the original lighter colour became better visible to its predators... and how the ratio turned back in a couple years, after the polluting industry was removed. That was also just a few insect generations.

I've noticed someone in this forum mention that people are getting gradually more intelligent. Never heard this opinion before. Educated, maybe. On the contrary, there's a popular opinion (too lazy to google for sources) that the most intelligent humans evolved during the ages of "natural selection pressure" - such as during the last ice age. And that indeed, since then, there's an evolutionary plateau in that respect - that pressure got removed, and the average IQ of the population is getting diluted (as much as I otherwise hate the IQ variable and having it individually measured and compared). It does make perfect sense. Life has still been a struggle for those 8000 years since the last ice age, but I guess it's become a lot less of a struggle in the last century or two - with industrialization, modern healthcare, modern agriculture.

I'm struggling not to get started about the growing concentration of production resources in the hands of global enterprises. About the abundance of and lack of use for human labour, college graduates etc. Heheh - and about how fragile such a society is.

What happens to modern agriculture and food supplies, when the oil runs out? How much more expensive will freight and horsepower become?

What happens if the modern society collapses for some other reason (perhaps just social events such as popular unrest, a series of revolutions) and the modern healthcare gets withdrawn, a couple generations down the road?

My answer: a more natural selection pressure will apply once again...

It's plenty of material for a couple more dystopian science fiction movies, with a socialist or radically capitalist background :-)

Re: Evolution? Devolution!

"It's like getting the brakes fixed and getting a turbocharger installed at the same time...."

So all our offspring will be supermen and superwomen. Whoopee! Luckily, nothing could go wrong with a project like that. After all, everyone agrees on what characteristics are good and which are bad.

Re: Of course we are evolving

I think you might be oversimplifying there a touch. Your bias is showing :) Religion is not the disease, it is a symptom.

A lower 'IQ' is shown to have a negative impact on potential for financial success: Dumb people are more likely to be poor. Poor people fuck a lot because they've got nothing else to do and make more kids. Dumb people and their dumb kids are less likely to be exposed to education and critical thinking because they are poor.

But they're still Human. They have an innate need, a requirement, to find comfort, togetherness with other members of their species, a perception of safety and most importantly hope. The church offers all those things and eases the existential angst that all Humans have (to some degree). Religion is custom tailored for dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans. Which makes a lot of sense as it was designed by dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans for dumb, poor, scared and horny Humans.

If you take away the Church, people are still just as dumb, poor, scared and horny; they just don't have hope. How much that hope benefits the religious, I don't know. But I do know that if you educate people, they tend to make more money and engage in lifestyles that don't allow for 10 kids so they have fewer children who are themselves better educated and will tend to gravitate away from dogmatic ritual and develop more tolerant attitudes which results in better society overall.

"Treat the symptoms, not the disease" came about as a result of treating dehydration in cholera patients. Properly hydrated, the symptoms naturally went away and as a result symptomatic treatments have been misused to terrible effect ever since. It is usually not the best way to fix things. It may obfuscate things, but generally doesn't cure anything.

The cure for all the things that cause religion is education. Education is going untreated and the symptoms have a very negative impact on society. Elevate people to the point where they can think for themselves and they'll do better financially and societally and if they choose can pursue a deity driven philosophy; but they'll be doing it on their own terms.

Re: Of course we are evolving

I think you are mixing up cause and effect. i think you will find that people with lower IQ's are more likely to have religion

Re: Of course we are evolving

@Thorne; Your comment shows that at best you are extremely ignorant - not least because if you were to actually study the list of the very greatest scientists and engineers of the past few hundred years you would find that many or most of the very best of them are/were very religious, even to the point of religion being their main inspiration.

This, despite religion having been generally held in disdain amongst the majority in the "educated" circles during the same period.