the cool guy
New member
Natural selection usually changes a species' characteristics over time due to traits that give an advantage over its environment. But has intelligence now caused that function to be completely bypassed? Do genetic characteristics even matter anymore? Consider:
1. It doesn't matter (genetically) if a woman can't naturally have children, because: Most families are smaller these days, she can likely use medical methods to get pregnant anyway, and many parents now adopt.
2. It doesn't matter genetically if a person has poor vision or hearing, because they can use glasses or hearing aids. And deaf and blind people have healthy children too.
3. Chronic illnesses don't matter much, since medicine can often minimize the effects of these, leaving the adult still free to have children.
4. Babies that would have died in the past now thrive due to advances in medicine.
5. The environment doesn't play a huge role, since man increasingly controls his own environment through applied engineering.
6. Inherited sexual characteristics don't even matter anymore. Because if a man or woman doesn't like some bodily feature, they can always just have plastic surgery to "correct" it, and make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex.
7. Intelligence has even altered the course of other animal's evolution, since the only animals guaranteed to thrive long-term are those that have been domesticated by humans.
Intelligence is putting the screws to natural selection. So what drives human evolution these days? And what will the future hold for it? I am interested in what people think about this.
Thanks
1. It doesn't matter (genetically) if a woman can't naturally have children, because: Most families are smaller these days, she can likely use medical methods to get pregnant anyway, and many parents now adopt.
2. It doesn't matter genetically if a person has poor vision or hearing, because they can use glasses or hearing aids. And deaf and blind people have healthy children too.
3. Chronic illnesses don't matter much, since medicine can often minimize the effects of these, leaving the adult still free to have children.
4. Babies that would have died in the past now thrive due to advances in medicine.
5. The environment doesn't play a huge role, since man increasingly controls his own environment through applied engineering.
6. Inherited sexual characteristics don't even matter anymore. Because if a man or woman doesn't like some bodily feature, they can always just have plastic surgery to "correct" it, and make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex.
7. Intelligence has even altered the course of other animal's evolution, since the only animals guaranteed to thrive long-term are those that have been domesticated by humans.
Intelligence is putting the screws to natural selection. So what drives human evolution these days? And what will the future hold for it? I am interested in what people think about this.
Thanks