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because i think that is where humanity is going.
think about it. more women go to university and build careers. many successful people find that their job comes before any ideas of having a family.
those that do procreate and have many children are helping keeping the birth rate up. but, to make a generalisation and prob upset many of the knee jerk crowd, those that do stay at home and have lots of kids are often not the sort of people who are passing on prime genes. look at the bbc article re. large families. the parents, to me at least, don't seem to be the sort of people that are going to be passing on clever genes.
and with medicine. we are living longer and drugs are developing enabling us to do so. we are now experiencing problems that 100 year ago were almost unheard of.
wot'dyafink?
i'm going to bed.
devolution
What we experience now in terms of illness, we weren't around long enough to realise we'd die from it or it was just called old age.
the Premier League?
The Scottish Parliament?
gordon brown
Religion?
DNA just " wants" to make more of itself. Therefore "clever" people who don't want kids or only have 1 are not of any use to DNA. For want of a better, of term, scrounging thickos who have 6 kids to maximize benefits are doing exactly what DNA needs. Therefore they are evolving. It's us sad singles/career types who are the evolutionary dead end.
Evolution is simply having traits that let you breed as often as possible. I feel you are confusing it with a system that would produce super clever, super moral people. I feel thar is simply a human conceipt.
You're right about medicine though. Unless we learn how to succesfully carry out gene therapy that eliminates inheritted illnesses western society is breeding in a time bomb. This is fine as long as technology and resources are available to keep genetically "I'll" people alive and "healthy". But when those resources become thin on the ground our race will pay the price.
This endeth the lesson.
Sorry
your missing the point of evolution.
Evolution isnt the surival of the fittest or whatever you describe as being "BEST".
Evolution is the survial of the species most responsive to change.
Therefore you could argue the people have massive amounts of kids while conditions are good are responding to the conditions better.
You use the words "PRIME" genes. This the mistake people made near the turn of the certury there is no such thing.
Im sure evolution could of developed a series of super beings as clever as a humans, as fast as a cheatah, as agile as a cat, could grow back limbs, live for 100's of years and would never get ill. Unfortunately such a species would require huge amounts of food and rest and therefore would die off as soon as a drought came along to be replaced by a humble dung bettle or something.
Devolution. Its very popular in Scotland and Wales apparently.
tyne and wear.
Is it when somone is bright enough to read and write, use a computer, join an internet forum and offer opinions without any shred of understanding or sympathy for the plight of their fellow humans whilst belittling them for not sharing the "clever genes" the OP has?
yes, or no. not sure... 🙂
Devolution isnt that popular in wales-
pay 2nd rate politicians to rewrite and translate english laws wasting millions of taxpayers money- great!
Singlespeeding........
Derailleurs and suspension for those unable to adapt to changing terrain?
It's probably best for us childless (so far, eh?)through choice green tinged liberal progressive types to continue to make fools of and emasculate the feeble mindedconservative hivemind males. Their spawn will hate them in ways I cannot begin to articulate, as their spawn will live in the world their parents created with the wagging reckless piss dribbling cock of selfishness. Eh?
tyne and wear.
PML 😀
Hora.
Oy Herbivore, Shut it!
Actually on second thoughts, you're right!
AS a tyne & wear'r meself I had to laff (and half heartedly agree!)
Evolution is the survial of the species most responsive to change.
Nope what your talking about just like survival of the fittest is a potential driving force behind evolution, things like natural selection, founder effect or good old luck.
Evolution is simply a change in a species over time, or change a species DNA over time. The first poster makes the mistake of thinking that evolution is directional and results in ever "better" or more complex species, this is not the case.
Revolution. Because we [i]e[/i]vlove, but we don't... [i]re[/i]volve.
Untermenschen! Untermenschen everywhere!
🙄
noitulove
BigDummy, you're sailing pretty close to invoking Godwins. But I think you have a point.
in other news, the source of devolution is medicne and health&safety in equal amounts.
suvival of the fittest/smartest only works when the thickos are allowed to die horrible gory deaths at the controls of circular saws without protective guards, and buildings without handrails.
and those to lazy to fend for and feed themselves, die because they dont get hand outs from the government.
any population will self regulate, through natural balance,
nature is doing its best, to keep us in check, but we keep beating it by curing it or just sidestepping it (aids for example of a relativly succesful avoidance)
its only a matter of time before something big takes us back down to a smaller population, something catastrophic will reduce us to a population more sustaibale by the planet, the longer the wait, the bigger the "disaster"
its not a case of hearsay, any biologist should see some sense, no population can grow unchecked forever:
example: Yeast in beer, grows and grows, with plentiful supplys of what it needs, until its stopped by the very alchohol its producing, killing it off.
hence why you need distilation to get over around 10%v/v
my moneys on a zombie apocalypse ala 28days later.
can't wait 😀
WTD: Franchi Spas 12/street sweeper or similar semi auto shotgun.
preferably only used lightly in zombie control, no criminal history.
will collect
We've created a society where "survival of the fittest" no longer occurs. In nature, any injured or disabled animal will quickly be killed off by a predator. Even if it does survive a while, it won't pass on it's genes because it won't be able to compete against the able-bodied animals for a mate.
Human society cares for those individuals too stupid/disabled/old/lazy to work and earn a living.
Beaten to it by Olly!
Of course, human society is fundamentally so similar to yeast in beer that any of the minor differences at the fringes can be ignored. 😉
its only a matter of time before something big takes us back down to a smaller population
Thats population dynamics and not necessarily related to evolution.
We've created a society where "survival of the fittest" no longer occurs
Thats just plain bollocks, your still making the assumption that evoltion is positive or directional. Survival of the fittest is anyway only one of many processes that lead to evolution.
Yep we're definitely going backwards: people seem to have forgotten what capital letters are for.
Mmm....beeer....
[i]Evolution is the survial of the species most responsive to change.[/i]
That statement would have been fine with the addition of "when circumstances force it to change"
As AA has pointed out, evolution = change over time, nothing more. Crazy legs, weak animals being culled is not evolution, that's just the predator/pray cycle.
The phrase "survival of the fittest" is at the same time one of the more simple and elegant ways to describe a theory, and yet the one most misunderstood.
Q. Are we not men?
A. We are Devo!
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo ]You might like this band.[/url]
Cha****ng, showing your age there... 😉
Great album though
anagallis_arvensis
The first poster makes the mistake of thinking that evolution is directional and results in ever "better" or more complex species, this is not the case.
can you give me an example of something evolving into something simpler please[ i am betting there is soemthing but you get the point surely] Are we still single celled organisms? Why do we have skeltons? Why are we warm blooded? etc etc . Evolution clearly results in more complex (it still has the DNA of all its ancestors) organisms. Those earlier less complex organism are still viable (reptiles clearly) but they are clearly less complex than later mammals for example.
I agree with you re better meaningless a wide variety of DNA and also within a species (geneitc bio diversity)is better as this is most likely to allow a species or DNA to survive adverse conditions including some cataclismic event such as meteor strike, ice age, global warming etc.
Would a giraffe be more, less or equally "complex" with a shorter neck?
Darwin noted, simply.
chaffinches, with beaks most suited to crackin nuts, were able to crack nuts better than those that couldnt.
those that couldnt were better at opening seeds with smaller pointier beaks
interbreeding of two birds that were well built for cracking nuts produced offspring that were better still.
and the same for the seed eaters.
interbreeding one seed eater and one nut eater, produced offspring who were frankly rubbish and an embarrassment to all parties involved
natural selection produced two very different lines of heriatge.
survival of the fittest is the elimination of the old, weak, or naturally smaller animals.
when being chased by a predator, the one that gets caught out of a heard, is the one at the back.
old or weak maybe, but if there are no old or weak (hypothetically) then the slowest is taken down, removing an element of the "slow" gene from the pool.
which is where the blurring of the two theories comes about
im rambling and going way OT, can you tell im avoiding some work?
nickc AIUI "survival of the fittest" refers to organisims which are "best fitted" to their environment rather than those that can run faster, jump further etc.
Re chavs popping lots of kids as a sound strategy for succesfully continuing their gene line...this is a strategy which relies on the sacrifice of other individuals in the same species, and occurs in some circumstances in other species too and is called "altruism". The altruistic individuals in the same species will tend to behave in an altruistic form towards the chavistic individuals as there is a net benefit to their own progeny in doing so...or something.
I don't quite see the relationship between my kids doing better and me giving up 40% of my income so people in Merthyr can have sky telly and lots of fags...however.
BigDummy - Member
Would a giraffe be more, less or equally "complex" with a shorter neck?
Neither but it is more complex than its predecessor which if you go back far enough was a single celled organism in primordial soup etc
I don't quite see the relationship between my kids doing better and me giving up 40% of my income so people in Merthyr can have sky telly and lots of fags...however
They do not go on the rampage around the country raping and pillaging as they are appeased by benefits and Jeremy Kyle thereby making it more likely your progeny will survive?
That does not mean that evolution is directional, just that trends are observable over the period you are looking at. We might as well ask why are there [i]still[/i] single-celled organisms, given how much cooler it is to be a giraffe than an amoeba.
But I am't a biologist. 😉
More complex is not the same thing as "better", for life forms or for man-made mechanisms.
As for [i]"can you give me an example of something evolving into something simpler please"[/i]
If (for instance) you regard having legs as being more complex than not, then the change of primitive dogs to sea-lions, elephants to dugongs and whatever-it-was to whales provide some examples. Or lizards losing legs and becoming slow-worms.
If weak and slow animals are predated on more than faster ones, then a species will probably evolve to be stronger or faster.
Humans will change, but we won't know the direction of the change. Taller and cleverer ain't necessarily better. (Tall miners die more often. They get stuck and can't work as well in tight spaces.Over a couple of hundred years of primitive mining, average height of miners dropped in mining areas)
Virus' have evolved to become simpler
The miners thing is interesting. Did tall miners "die out" though, or did they leave the mining areas, stop being miners and get jobs as estate agents? And what sort of girl breeds with a miner when estate agent sperm is available? 😉
also there are more species of beetle in the world than pretty much any other apecies of animal, so are they the "pinicle" of evolution (if such a thing could exist).
I suggest yo go and read the Blindwatch Maker byt whats his face, I've not read it but its about random selection and evolution.
The human species is not the peak of evolution everything else isnt in place just to lead up to us.
in response to the original question the opposite of evolution is either evolution, or not possible because evolution does not have a direction.
complexity/simplicity is not comparable.
"Best suited to the conditions" are all that matters.
if a lizard can move through grass more effectivly (be that quicker, quieter, with less energy) without legs, then perhaps it has simplified as a slow worm, but its better at what it does.
estate agents are less welcome in Wales, more welcome in london, so move away, meaning the gene pool in wales comprises predominantly short arses?
or perhaps its fashion, ide go for a rugged miner over some poncy estate agent douchebag anyday 😉
the pinnical of evolution, if you ask me, is the cockroach.
not thought to have changed for millions of years, and thought to be the only animal capable of surviving a nuclear blast (or at least, best suited to the task)
the great white is considered to have been unchanged for millions of years too, the ultimate predator, but not sure how it would fair against modern technology.
if humans saw fit to wipe them out it could be done,
trying to make cockroaches extinct? not a chance.
I am attempting to make cockroach society weak and vulnerable by giving them so many resources to squander that they become socialist and develop a weaker gene-pool infested with scrounging ne'er-do-wells.
That's what I tell my wife about the state of the kitchen anyhoo.
😉
Read "the marching morons" a SF short story by Cyril Kornbluth if you want to be really depressed.
[url] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons [/url]
you've all assumed evolution to refer to a physical change of genus resulting in a new species. And since evolution of mankind is unlikely to result in a new species - the OP is referring to social evolution.
the way i interpret evolution in this context is to mean "change". and since nothing in life is constant except for "change". it is impossible for an opposite of evolution to exist.
We've created a society where "survival of the fittest" no longer occurs
if you look at the wealth divide across the world, the exploitation of third world countries, accessibility to medicines, health care, education and natural resources - you can see natural selection and survival of the fittest in social and economic terms.
back onto the OPs comments, w/r to the kinds of family you are talking about these offspring will have less opportunity in life and less chance to succeed over a smaller family where attention and opportunity (due to better investment per child) is better. and so begins a vicious cycle.
to any tyne and wear residents i may (or may not) have upset; i managed to get out of there after 30 years (at the 2nd attempt, i might add!)...
What's that film called about the man who regresses (isn't that sort of the opposite of evolve) to his primal self using some machine? I think it was Jeff or Beau Bridges....
To add a small point. Evolution is an adaption to an environment. This can happen biologically as has been discussed, or sociologically also. We are all members of an organic social structure and people will respond to it according to their place within it. It's quite dispiriting to note so many people claiming we're in trouble because they think the 'lower orders' are breeding too much. If you admit they are 'lower order' this is only in a sociological sense and not necessarily biologically correlated.
I think a lot of people here are talking about attitudes outlook and education rather than any biological potential.
Anyway, it's the moneyed elite which are screwing us all over, everyone knows that.
[i]survival of the fittest is the elimination of the old, weak, or naturally smaller animals.[/i]
No it isn't.
Naturally smaller for instance, may be an advantage. It certainly was for our ancestors that lived amongst the dinosaurs. Old and weak...In biological terms once your done breeding, you are useless to the gene pool your effectiveness has already been used, ergo you can die. You can't, however evolve away from age and weakness (in the form of infirmity). Humans live unnaturally long lives, not because we've evolved that ability, but because we're clever enough to develop medicines to help us. But (as any Doctor will tell you) the human body has not evolved further to make intervention easier.
Altered States - that's the film 🙂
considering how pink, soft, squishy, tasty with ketchup the human form is, our ability to use our brains and our opposable thumbs is the only thing thats keeping us alive.
humans dont "do" stronger faster bigger i dont think
the opposite of evolution is singlespeeding youre bike
we evolve socially as well as genetically
There's plenty of examples of things getting 'simpler' in response to a new environment- losing eyes in permanently dark environments for example.
The Victorian view of evolution a march towards "better" (where humans are better than cockroaches) persists though.
As I see it:
Survival of the fittest just means individuals in a population best suited to their particular niche/environment will tend to reproduce at the expense of less well-suited individuals, and so the attributes that make them better suited will tend to spread through the population (e.g. Giraffe neck length, no eyes so less energy used, or whatever). What's best [i]in that context[/i] can be anything at all. If this goes on long enough speciation might occur (depending on a few other factors).
The population thing is important, and it's why things like older/weaker/crippled animals not lasting as long isn't really what Darwin was getting at. The less well-suited animals (e.g. a giraffe with a shorter neck) might be perfectly healthy, but they're still not as 'fit for purpose' as the ones with longer necks.
The key thing is that 'best' when talking about evolution is whatever gets a result in a given environment, and that's it- not how it stacks up in some moral code or in comparison to other things/animals in different contexts.
[i]It certainly was for our ancestors that lived amongst the dinosaurs[/i]
It certainly wasn't. Humans never lived with dinosaurs. About 60 million years of evolution separates them.
Righty-ho...