Re: New Earth Humans

On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:53:40 GMT, Pete Morris <nospam.ple@se> wrote:

"L. Ross Raszewski" <lraszewski@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:F1gVh.9139$uF1.7779@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:07:35 -0400, Monsieur Tabernac

I don't think that a modern technological civilzation "arrests"
changes in species -- though a lot of people do get that impression.
They just have different standards of what makes a change successful.

Technology may reverse the driving force of evolution: "survival of the
fittest." With technology, the less fit survive to pass on their genes to
the
next generation. The human race will devolve as bad characteristics become
more and more common. In the end our descendents will be blobs that
depend on very complex medicine and machines to keep them alive.

do you disagree? I'll meet you here in 5 billion years and we'll see who's
right.



You're missing the point: "fittest" means "best able to survive".
Those who survive *are* the fittest. This can not be changed.
Technology does not change the driving force of evolution, it just
changes what constitutes "fittest". Calling a characteristic "good"
or "bad" is reasonable, can even be objective. But it's just *not
what the words mean in an evolutionary sense. These hypothetical
blobs into which we will evolve are NO LESS FIT to survive. You adapt
to your environment. We can't breathe underwater, but our evolution
into land animals didn't make us less fit, because *we don't live
underwater*. Your hypothetical blobs may be dependant oon technology,
but that doesn't make them less fit *because they live in a
technological environment*. The fittest survive. Those who are not
fit do not survive. They may seem less fit by our standards, but a
fish would consider our form less fit because we can't breathe
underwater.

That's what people don't get about evolution. "fittest" means "more
able to survive in the context of their environment" and *that's all*.
It doesn't mean that they would be more fit to some other environment,
or by our standards. We do not enable the less fit to survive by
technology. We just change what "fit" means. "Survival of the
fittest" is a *tautology*. It can't fail to be true, because *that's
what "fittest" means*.

So yes, we'll evolve into blobs with "bad" traits. Because those will
be what's most fit to survive in the technological environment.
.

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