Physics assumptions
from here
This is a good piece on eugenics and what it might mean for the future of humanity: Darwin Would Punch Sanger In The Mouth
Here’s a piece of it:
By weeding out mutation before birth [via abortion], humans have achieved a level of intercession in evolution. They have stopped the cycle, shut down the system of development that has been occurring from the division of the first cell of life. Charles Darwin’s discoveries were a monumental step for the human-being. We knew so much more now, and could explain so much more; it propelled humans into a category of species of certainly precious few around the universe. Darwin did us a favor, and deserves credit for it, however had he known how it would be used; I can’t help but wonder if he’d have gone to his grave along with his rivals in the arena without letting the world know about it…
I think he has a good point, and it’s worth reading. I’m not sure I agree with all of his conclusions, though I agree with some of them.
If you hang around me long enough, you will eventually hear my theory that human evolution ended thousands of years ago. We no longer have to adapt to survive because we have become adept at altering the world in which we live to overcome any shortcomings we might have. We make tools to overcome our physical weaknesses, and to shape physical objects into something else. We first clothed ourselves in animal skins to keep warm, and now of course we manufacture clothing out of other materials. We no longer have to hunt because we have domesticated our food animals. We no longer have to gather because we grow the food where we are, and we can also ship it quickly elsewhere. The environment cannot put very much pressure on us to evolve because we shape the environment, at least locally.
If anything, humans are devolving. Without the pressures that used to weed out the weak (such as diseases which we have cured, and I count myself among those who would be dead otherwise), there is nothing to remove them from the population pool. So more weak humans get created. That may not matter, I don’t know.
What we really need is more diversity, not less, but what we have in practice is the ascension and decline of various varieties of the human genome expression. The more well-educated societies produce fewer children. I’m not sure what that means for the future, and I’m even less sure that I care.
I thought I had a point when I started this, but it seems it did not appear after all. Just read the linked article. If you want to, of course.
via twitter user kill_truck
