Current human evolution: natural or artificial?
Offline The question: is current human evolution natural or artificial?
Or, as my illustrious colleague The Doomed Soul said:
Every time Humans do something that influences their own evolution, its artifical evolution, this does not mean gene-manipulation. When we discovered fire, that was our very first time, that we began to influence.
Environment + Time + Need = Change or Die = Evolution does it not?
Our species never NEEDED fire... but we acquired it any way, thus changing our environment
And since we still have fire and its modern kin, i can assume its stood the test of time, and has influenced our development, can i not? Ever wonder what we would look like today if we had never discovered fire? (physically not technologically) granted we'll never know, but i predict thick fur and more body fat >.> (like every other damn mammal)
There are several possible discussions: the nature of evolution, the evolutionary effect of humanity's ability to affect (I hesitate to say "control"
our environment, the linguistic distinction between "artificial" and "natural," whether or not man is somehow outside of nature, and perhaps even how wonderful a grilling steak smells.
Mmm. Steak.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
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Offline Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Chimps do the exact same thing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yrPb41hzYdw&feature=related
Honestly, is that the solution you'd come up with? How long would it have taken you?
I'll gladly dig out the journal articles on that experiment if you'd like.
OK, I'll concede that maybe chimps have some of the same capability. But something is preventing them from using it to make greater strides in keeping themselves alive. The forces acting on wild chimp evolution are exactly the same ones as acted on it a million years ago.
Define greater strides. The only real predator chimps have is us. Being that they branched off from us millions of years ago and followed a different, and equally (until now) successful path of survival and adaptation, I fail to see what point you're trying to make.
Yes, human is cognitively superior to other primate, and they are superior to us in other regards. We share many of the same traits and aspects as we should expect.
And no, the forces acting on the chimpanzee line of evolution were NOT the same as those that acted upon the line that led to humans.
In the grand scheme of thing, by your deduction, ALL species have been subject to the same conditions and therefore should be equal on all accounts.
This makes no sense, because no evolutionary line was subject to the same selective pressures. This is precisely why we have different species.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Quote:Nothing I have ever read or seen suggests that chimps are capable of such complex mental tasks. My guess is that one chimp found out about the trick by accident and the trick was learned by the others then passed down culturally.Also, if I am not mistaken, it is only one population of chimps that has been observed to do this in the wild. If chimps were capable of reasoning this problem out, we would expect most or all of them to have arrived at the same solution in the similar way that separate human populations all over the world arrived at the idea of writing.
Why, exactly, should we expect that. Please explain.
There is a limited set of solutions to any problem, and usually only one or two solutions that make the best use of resources. Given time, ordered processes tend to converge on these solutions. Just look at convergent evolution.
I think you misunderstand the concept of convergent evolution and over-generalize. In convergent evolution we find that many species find similar ways of tackling the same problems - i.e. wings in birds and insects which serve the same purpose but evolved in drastically different ways.
In the case of humans and other primates, we do have convergent evolution - for example tool use. However, the degree of such is drastically different, yet serve the same functionality. Using twigs and rocks has worked for other primates, and ourselves for millions of years. It is only in the last few thousand years that we've diverged in scope, and only in the last 100 or so years that this has posed a threat to chimps.
I'm not sure how you understand evolution, but 100 years or a few generations is no enough time to develop a defense against a species you've not really interacted with for thousands of generations.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:The fact of the matter is SOME chimp populations exhibit this behavior, because it is in part a CULTURAL phenomena - IOW a library of knowledge being passed between generations and occasionally populations. Sound familiar?
I've already mentioned that chimps pass the knowledge on culturally. That fact supports the idea that chimps are not reasoning but rather just aping an individual that found the problem by accident.
And by that logic, so are we.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Yes, chimps clearly do learn behaviors very well, but as the experiment I just showed you suggests, they are certainly also capable of solving problems and abstract thinking to some degree.
Yes, I admit that your experiment seems to show that. But I'm leery of getting too excited about the unnatural capabilities of a captive chimp. Remember Koko the gorilla?
I fail to see why the distinction matters all that much. Chimps are well suited to survive in the wild, their only predators are for the most part humans. In this regard, they are an amazing successful species, a species that happens to share several traits with us. That the full potential of what a chimp can do is usually only brought out and observed in a lab does not diminish that capability, that similarity, or the implications it has.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:No, I'm sure the chimps would mine that termite hole to oblivion, just as we do our own natural resources. Why shouldn't they, they are quite nearly the same creature.
Studies on captive primates also support this. They will eat and drink as much as they can to their own detriment.
Raising the question, why haven't they invented better ways to exploit their environment given that they obviously want to?
Wow, WANT is SO the wrong term.
You are anthropomorping a wild animal.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:I'm sorry if you think that's the way it sounds, I think I was as clear as I could possibly be.
Clearly, I am not wrong, from a scientific and biological POV. That is what I care about. I've already said, we should track the impact humans have, but to call human influence unnatural is to confuse things.
Of course you have your science and biology right. But I guess we disagree on what is confusing. I think that taking a phenomenon that is different from all other phenomena and calling it the same thing is more confusing. It is doubly useful to call artificial evolutionary forces what they are, because those are the forces that we might have some ability to control for our own benefit.
I've not confused things, you have.
I've been very clear on what the simlarities and differences between other primates and humans are and what the implications are.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:So you'd call fission or fusion artificial or unnatural? Have you heard of a thing called a star?
When they occur in a nuclear bomb, of course they are artificial. Yellow, you can try to pretend all you like that our culture and language does not draw a distinction between things made by men and things that are not, but it is not going to go away. We have a word called artificial and it has a definition.
I'm well aware most of us, like you, anthropomorphize the universe. And that is really the root of your disconnect.
In the end though, if it is natural for a chimp to fashion a stick as a weapon, it is natural for a human to do so as well. That humans can also fashion atoms into weapons is a difference of degree only.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Well, that is a piss poor word for it. Man-made is much better. For nothing man makes is not natural.
Now we have veered into pure semantics. Man-made is a synonym for artificial...why do you prefer one over the other so vehemently?
Because one is techinically correct and one is not - especially when looking at the entire evolutionary history of the planet.
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Are you sure about that? I'm not so sure we're the only species that thinks. Cetaceans and many primates and even pigs and dogs can easily match up with human children in many instances, and in many instances, primates and cetaceans have been shown to have real problem solving skills. It may well be a different kind of thinking or intelligence, but it is certainly there.
You are putting the speculative cart waaaaaaaaay ahead of the evidentiary horse.
How so?
Yellow_Number_Five wrote:Right, because there are certainly no trips to the herbalist for things to make a male child, there are certainly never any female children cast away, there are certianly never any children hidden from the state, there are certainly never any people who leave the country for reproductive freedom.
This is a horrible example, because it is a edict that is largely agiainst natural instinct and political will. You may as well have said that India's caste system is a logical and possible way to create two distinct races.
Now you are assigning a moral judgment that I did not make or imply. Where did I say that I thought China's one child policy was a good thing? All I did was point out that it exists and that it affects evolution.
My bad then, I do apologize for jumping the gun on that one.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Define greater strides. The only real predator chimps have is us. Being that they branched off from us millions of years ago and followed a different, and equally (until now) successful path of survival and adaptation, I fail to see what point you're trying to make.
--Actutally chimps did NOT branch off from us millions years ago...i know this because humans didnt even EXIST millions of years ago. Besides the time frame error, chimps and humans diverged from a common ancestor, it is incorrect to think that one "branched off" from the other.
The fact of the matter is SOME chimp populations exhibit this behavior, because it is in part a CULTURAL phenomena - IOW a library of knowledge being passed between generations and occasionally populations. Sound familiar?
I've already mentioned that chimps pass the knowledge on culturally. That fact supports the idea that chimps are not reasoning but rather just aping an individual that found the problem by accident.
And by that logic, so are we.
---While the statemtent he is making is false, I am thinking his logic behind it has merit. There are many examples of isloated humans finding unique solutions to a common problem...anything from storing food, writing, farming, weapon making..the list goes on. I think he is looking for examples in the animal kingdom where isolated groups within a species also solved common problems independantly. I would argue there are many examples of this...I have no background in animal behavior but I know groups fo birds of the same species open nuts different ways depending on the enviroment (I saw video of the city bird carrying the nuts to a busy highway and letting the passing cars do the "work" for them. So I think Tib was just looking for examples of independant problem solving within a species. Many animals use tools to solve problems this isnt something unique to humans or even primates or mammals for that matter.
quote]
Raising the question, why haven't they invented better ways to exploit their environment given that they obviously want to?
Wow, WANT is SO the wrong term.
You are anthropomorping a wild animal.
----Want is 100% the wrong choice of word here. Tib I would argue after the basic need to feed theirselves is met there really isnt an intense pressure for greater exploitation of the enviroment.
I think that taking a phenomenon that is different from all other phenomena and calling it the same thing is more confusing. It is doubly useful to call artificial evolutionary forces what they are, because those are the forces that we might have some ability to control for our own benefit.
---The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs...whould you consider that a cause for artifical evolution....that is obv a phenomenon that is different from all other phenomena that was influencing evolution at the time but i would dare say it is still within the realm of natural evolution. I think you are confusing some terms concerning evolution, natural selection and SOF. We are evolving naturally...I cant really think of an example that holds water to say we are unnaturally evovling or evolving artificially. We are still pressured by natural selection...it is just different pressures that we, as a species had 10, 100, 1000 and 10000 years ago...but the same could be said for any species really. Concerning SOF, # of offspring, passing genes and such I would again argue they are way less influenced by conscience effort than by natural enviromental entities. 1st remember most the the worlds population is still playing by what you would consider the "natrual" rules of passing genes, and even in nations like the US we are not really cherry-picking which genes get passed on.
In the end though, if it is natural for a chimp to fashion a stick as a weapon, it is natural for a human to do so as well. That humans can also fashion atoms into weapons is a difference of degree only.
---I think there is a differnece betwen these things Yellow. Animals use naturally occuring tools. Humans makes tools, to make tools, to make tools ect...difference of degree like you say...but I think the difference in degree IS the huge difference. I think you are downplaying the difference if you say it is just a difference of degree. Is it natural? As opposed to supernatural? All I will say is it is not in the same boat.
BTW...sorry I am an idiot with the quoting system here I am not really a big poster usually. In the future I will try harder to figure it out, it was just tough since there were so many quotes, within quotes, within quotes...but some might argue that is only a difference of degree
"When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible, They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the Land and we had the Bible." - Jomo Kenyatta
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When ever some one says that something is natural because elements of it come from nature... THIS is the arguement you are making... and i would find it deeply comical if you people didnt ACTUALLY believe it to be so... >.>
*Shrug*
Maybe my theories are ahead of their time ;-p
What Would Kharn Do?
But we are talking about science aren't we? You can have any opinion you like about any scientific issue and be "fearless about language" or whatever phrase you were using, but that doesn't make your hypothesis a sound one. Until you can get your ideas past some significant peer group, then who gives a shit what you write in your blog or a forum post? Those are just electrons, however stylishly organized. I'm going to take a wild swinging guess and assume that you've never done science or been around scientists. We're careful about language for reasons that you don't have. Have fun on the internet.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Tell me how. In detail. Regarding how you plan on getting the cash for the first thing. Then work the science out.
Nope. Diseases and climatic conditions still push us around like pawns on a chessboard. If you were right, I'd be living in the former Sahara desert right now eating raw bacon.
What if I have a genetic disease that results in my death before sexual maturation or infertility? That would be pretty significant on an individual level.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
You are overly careful because you don't have a nuanced understanding of language and writing. Just like I don't have a nuanced understanding of a lot of scientific matters. So I accept correction from scientists when I make a factual error about something scientific and I hope that they will accept correction from me when I talk about the meanings of words.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
OK. My name is Vladmir Putin and I reinstate the Soviet Union. Now I have all the resources I need and no particular need to pay for anything. Next question?
You are joking, right? No one ever dies from disease before sexual maturity any more, at least not in numbers that are significant on the species level. And people can live anywhere on the planet that they want to and have colonized all kinds of environments that our physiology is totally unsuited to.
Yes it would. How common are those? Now compare those numbers to the numbers of people who do not reproduce due to personal choice. Which is the more significant force for selection?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
oooh... I'd probably be a little more careful throwing around such cavalier statements towards people you don't know. I happen to know DamnDirtyApe, and well... you're wrong.
(Not to mention that this doesn't even address his point that science is careful about language because it IS dependent on nuanced and precise use of language to convey exact points.)
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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The "you" is directed at scientists generally, not DDA in particular. And I disagree with his point on the grounds that, if this were so, they would call a thing "unique" when it is unique, rather than having a general disposition toward avoiding the word.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, but this statement pretty much proves you don't understand the science well enough to understand why scientists don't use the word "unique."
I've mentioned several times already some of the ways in which human intelligence is not unique, as well as the problem of what, exactly "uniquely unique" means. Beyond this, though, is the basic principle that every single organism on the planet is unique, and every species has unique qualities. The word is virtually meaningless in a scientific sense when you consider that even the concept of individual species has precious little merit in an in-depth discussion of natural selection.
To be honest, the only reason I've even bothered with this discussion is that the issue is more than a disagreement over semantics. It involves a base level misunderstanding of the dynamics of natural selection, which has been throwing monkey wrenches into good science for the last hundred years. If you don't believe me, read the first chapter of The Mating Mind for a historical survey of the obstacles faced by the scientific community, both from within and without, that have prevented them from understanding and pursuing sexual selection scientifically.
The separation of humans from the continuum of life is both a philosophical and a scientific mistake. Beyond the fact that it is unjustifiable from any scientific perspective, it is simply a hindrance to objective observation of humans and their behaviors.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
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However, the fact remains that humans are separated from the continuum of life in important ways. We are the only animals on the planet that have the ability to be concerned about something other than our immediate survival needs for long periods. We engage in pursuits that have no direct impact on our wellbeing. We suffer from religion! We can and do (as you are fond of pointing out) choose NOT to reproduce. We have invented technology that places us beyond the reach of every selection pressure than our bodies were evolved in response to. Our behaviour has its roots in natural-selection-based evolution, but is now decoupled from the forces that shaped it.
I understand that scientists, especially ones in an environmental or conservation field, feel a great need to educate everyone about our identity as animals. I understand that this paradigm represents an important intellectual shift away from the long-held, religiously-enforced view that we are somehow special, chosen creatures in God's image that have the divine right to do whatever we want to the planet and its inhabitants. I understand that this understanding is an important part of a proper foundation in human biology. I get it. We are animals. In terms of what we are made of, the differences between us and an amoeba are only details and it is wrong of us to try to place ourselves above this heritage.
BUT
Humans are still different in important ways and different in ways that no other animal is different. This fact should not be swept under the rug out of a zeal to educate and a fear of confusion in an ignorant audience. Worse, I think this fact is often distorted or ignored out of a political motivation to convince us to support conservation and environmental efforts. It has become a kind of orthodoxy that is meant to support the point that humans are part of the ecosystem and that if it dies, we die.
Bullshit. We could turn the surface of the earth into the Moon and keep some percentage of the population alive in domes, if we had to. To paraphrase The Architect, there are levels of existence that we could be prepared to accept. We conserve species out of sentimentalism, not that there's anything wrong with that. What other creature can say that?
IMO, scientists would be more politically savvy to call a spade a spade, singling us out as the only creatures in the history of the planet with the power to do what we want with the planet. Tell me I'm an animal, and you imply that I am just a helpless cog in this big wheel called evolution. Why worry, why try, everything is proceeding along a genetically determined path. Tell me I'm a human and you place the onus to save or damn the world squarely on my shoulders, where it should be.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
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Humans are still different in important ways and different in ways that no other animal is different. This fact should not be swept under the rug out of a zeal to educate and a fear of confusion in an ignorant audience. Worse, I think this fact is often distorted or ignored out of a political motivation to convince us to support conservation and environmental efforts. It has become a kind of orthodoxy that is meant to support the point that humans are part of the ecosystem and that if it dies, we die.
You win.
I cant even believe this is even up for debate. Common sense is all that is needed to understand that humans are in a UNIQUE situation in regards to evolution.
That doesnt mean it is magical or supernatural or artificial but different. We are still evolving, but we are subject to vastly different enviromental pressures in regards to reproduction.
"When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible, They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the Land and we had the Bible." - Jomo Kenyatta