Is humanity still evolving?

[Bedrockgames]

Well, now you have to be careful.

Can you tell the difference between a "genetic disorder" and a fairly normal genetic composition that simply can't handle the amount of crap we now dump into our environments, or the way we raise some of our kids?

Consider - what have we done more of in the past centuries: changed our genetics, or changed our environment and behavior? Are you really convinced that children from, say, 300 or 500 years ago, moved into our current environments, would not develop similar problems?

Note that the correlation of allergy and autoimmune disease to income level goes a bit against what many would expect. Your chance of having a problem *increases* with your income level - rich kids are more likely to have allergies and autoimmune diseases than poor kids.

I am not disputing any of that. Just pointing out there may also be a genetic component and those who are gentically predisposed may develop these issues while others may not. In short it seems to be an interpla between our genes and the things going on inthe environment.

 

[Janx]

Well, most processed crap is, well, crap.

And there certainly are problems with several of the primitive diet trends. "Raw" diets are, as I noted, not what our bodies are really adapted to anymore. Spinach is a great example. Lots of folks say, "i'll eat a spinach salad! It's healthy, and has lots of nutrients!" Except that those nutrients are locked behind sturdy cell walls that a gorilla can manage, but we cannot. We need to cook spinach briefly to get those nutrients out.

The other side of "primitive" diets is eliminating that which came specifically with civilization - basically grains. That one, my posit doesn't really speak to.

I learned something sad today.

raw baby spinach is like the only green vegetable I can stand eating as it has no apparent taste to me (green beans, brocoli, etc all taste absolutely nasty to me). And now I know it is virtually useless to eat it.

I really am a sad panda.

 

[Janx]

Just out of curiousity, as we can breed dogs together to create basset hounds, has anybody formed a Eugenics Colony to breed an allegedly superior society of humans?

I'm thinking something along the lines of Jim Jones meets Dharma Initiative rather than that racist guy with the funny mustache that nobody likes.

I'm envisioning the want ad posted as:
Seeking like minded members to form a new society
must have IQ over 180 or be a super model
Football jocks need not apply

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Just out of curiousity, as we can breed dogs together to create basset hounds, has anybody formed a Eugenics Colony to breed an allegedly superior society of humans?

I'm thinking something along the lines of Jim Jones meets Dharma Initiative rather than that racist guy with the funny mustache that nobody likes.

I'm envisioning the want ad posted as:
Seeking like minded members to form a new society
must have IQ over 180 or be a super model
Football jocks need not apply

I'm pretty sure it's been sort of attempted. I know for a fact that the dood you don't want to talk about, though, tried it. SS members and Scandanavian gals. Yeah, it happened. But, again, I think it's been tried in a less organized (er, and less compulsory) manner outside of that example.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just out of curiousity, as we can breed dogs together to create basset hounds, has anybody formed a Eugenics Colony to breed an allegedly superior society of humans?

From what I can tell, most of the human eugenics programs- Sweden, the USA, Nazi Germany, Brazil, etc.- have focused on immigration restrictions, marriage restrictions, and forced sterilization of "undesirables".

Still, the Chinese ar supposedly giving it a go: http://explosivereports.com/2013/03...collects-genius-dna-to-breed-enhanced-people/

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2(Post)

 

[Janx]

I'm pretty sure it's been sort of attempted. I know for a fact that the dood you don't want to talk about, though, tried it. SS members and Scandanavian gals. Yeah, it happened. But, again, I think it's been tried in a less organized (er, and less compulsory) manner outside of that example.

yeah, I recall the Hitler Channel talking about that. And Jim Jones is also probably a lousy example

But I think you get my gist. I would think a bunch of academics would put that kind of project together, quite possibly in the hopes of scoring with super models.

I suspect you'd need isolation, so colonists don't go falling for the human from the next town over and contaminate the gene pool.

And you'd need a large enough starting set so there's likely amicable pairings going on so we avoid the ooky "arrangements"

In theory, screening for membership to people with good medical histories, appealing bodies (symmetric faces, no outward deformities) would presumably yield babies of the same. Just avoiding people with history of cancer in their family would probably cut cancer rates down.

Naturally, these kind of restrictions wouldn't be kosher in america. But I can imagine countries where they already regulate who has kids or arrange marriages, this could be implemented.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Naturally, these kind of restrictions wouldn't be kosher in america.

The American eugenics movement is what got the Nazis started town that road.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Doubled.

 

[billd91]

We may be able to make ourselves resistant to some forms of natural selection, but I still haven't seen any convincing arguments that we're not still evolving. In fact, any attempts to immunize ourselves from natural selection or other forms of evolutionary pressure are bound to lead to changes of their own.