Poll: Is Darwin's Law failing us??

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avuFinn

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AccursedTheory said:
I read the whole thing, and only found two paragraphs worth the effort.
AccursedTheory said:
1. While technically everything humanity does is within the boundries of nature, you're missing the point of what one means when they say 'unnatural.' Unnatural refers to things that only a small portion of a sample group that performs in a such a matter. Humans, one species among billions, can modify our surroundings, split atoms, move mountains and even force genetic change. Because nothing else in nature can do this, it is 'unnatural.'
Understandable, if true. The definition seems to be yours from a premise: humans are unnatural. Sounds very postmodernly humanist. We never break any natural laws while we do any of those things.

AccursedTheory said:
2. Solitary islands are not paradises of natural selection. They are merely a paradise for observing it.
True.
 

JohnSmith

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Jan 19, 2009
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Elle-Jai said:
A post by a friend of mine started me wondering, is Darwin's Law currently seriously failing us, or do you have examples of it working nicely?

Personally, I think it's failing, although I do hear the odd story (like idiots in Sydney deciding to pop down storm water drains for a walk just before a storm, then getting drowned) that appear to demonstrate it trying to work.

(For those of you who aren't sure what Darwin's Law is, look at the idiot's guide to Natural Selection [http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25] and Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection].)

EDIT: For the sake of clarity, I am referring more to the popular "idea" of this theory than it's practical scientific applications. The science behind it all is another thread entirely, and is probably too science-y for me to follow. While I like science just fine, I'm an Arts major personally. (Say what you will, Arts is valid too!!)
Natural selection is not a law. It is an excellent theory that I happen to agree with but it is not a scientific law, don't give the creation crazies room to troll you like that. Natural selection never stops working the selection criteria just change, however what is stopping that working out in favour of selective evolution are a couple of fun factors:

1) Marriage, by definition whether it is multiple partners of polygamy limits breeding options thus preventing absolute selection based on match desirability.

2) In Australia at least having no skills but the ability to be a baby factory is being rewarded by the government.

3) Most of the current selection criteria are currently artificial constructions that have little to do with genetics.

So, in short Natural selection is not a law, and its not failing its just that humanity is not currently subject to any significant evolutionary pressures.
 

Gardenia

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Elle-Jai said:
Gardenia said:
Reading the "Idiot's guide to natural selection" probably didn't help
Did you follow the link? It's actually a "collaborative project" of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education, hosted by the University of California. I refer to it as "the idiots guide" because it takes the concept and simplifies it. Maybe I should refer to it as "the simplified guide" instead. /eyeroll
Too early in the morning for jokes, I see.
 

Nocturnal Gentleman

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Mar 12, 2010
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Klumpfot said:
What you need to consider is that evolution (generally) takes a lot longer than two or three thousand years to take noticeable effect. Give it some time, we'll figure out a way to get extinct! Don't you worry!


:(
This has to be my favorite answer yet. Though I must say it probably won't take thousands of years for us to start falling out of the big picture.
As many have said the only thing sustaining many people now is modern technology and medicine. With technology advancing at a crazy rate, and the growing needs to build and create this tech going out of control, I don't think it will take too long for us to hit a rut. We're so dependent on technology that if major connections or production lines ever failed we'd become royally screwed. Question is how many of the future generations will thrive once the crutch of such a highly producing world is kicked out from under them?
 

manaman

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heavymedicombo said:
really? I mean really? it kinda seems like you are talking about something you dont understand. My father has terrible eyes, my grandfather was almost as bad. it is genetic, and it is dangerous.
Now you could have degenerative myopia for all I know, where your eyesight is going to continue to get worse for the rest of your life, or not I have no clue. Chances are since thats not nearly as common that you don't. And that researchers have shown a combination of environmental and genetic causes for this condition. Most of the environmental factors developed in recent history. Meaning it's likely you would have had a predisposition to nearsightedness but the severity, and age of onset wouldn't have been the same.

Well that's all just me repeating myself. There is even new research that indicates exposure to sunlight during youth affects the development of the eyeball and could have a major effect on the proper growth of the eyeball. Meaning that staying indoors for long periods during youth may be a major cause of myopia.

This subject is not even fully agreed upon by experts in the field, how can I consider myself qualified to state as fact one way or another? The caveat you seem so focused on was there to tell you just that I don't consider myself an expert in this field, so feel free to branch off of it and look up more information if you wish. Being nearsighted myself I have more then a simple passing interest in the subject.
 

Eleima

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Feb 21, 2010
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I was going to say "no", and then I heard this on the radio this morning:
Madrid - A young Italian man was the latest casualty in the Balearic Islands of balconing, where people dive from a balcony into a pool, the Spanish media reported on Sunday.

The 26-year-old tourist died after attempting to dive into a pool from his seventh-floor hotel balcony on the island of Ibiza, online newspaper Diario de Mallorca said.

He was the sixth person to die from "balconing" in the Balearic Islands - Ibiza, Majorca and Menorca - this summer, daily newspaper El Mundo said on its website.

Hotel owners in Majorca and Ibiza plan to secure the balconies of their hotel residences to prevent their young clients from jumping, El Mundo added but did not say how. - Sapa-AFP
Six dead and over thirty injured this summer, from "balconing"... I'd say Darwin's Law is pretty much still in effect. I grieve for their families who suffered the loss, but... I know this is going to make me sound like a terrible person, but you'd have to be really dumb to jump from the eighth floor and think that 5 feet of water is going to brake your fall. =(
 

Amyler

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Nov 17, 2009
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Dags90 said:
To be fair, natural selection is a theory. Laws have to be proven by mathematics.
To be fair, gravity and relativity are theories too. Just like ever scientific law.
 

Elle-Jai

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JohnSmith said:
Natural selection is not a law. It is an excellent theory that I happen to agree with but it is not a scientific law, don't give the creation crazies room to troll you like that.
I see your point, and I raise you my previous:

Elle-Jai said:
Inyssius said:
The term "Darwin's Law" is, at best, meaningless nonsense. At worst it works to directly undermine the understanding of those who use and/or hear it.
I am aware that in all technicality it is "Darwin's Theory", as in, a THEORY of Charles DARWIN. However "Darwin's Law" is in the current vernacular, hence that is the term I used.
 

Elle-Jai

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Korolev said:
Darwin's law doesn't "fail" us or help us - it doesn't concern itself with us at all. Natural selection is just a process by which organisms that fail to adapt, die out. Pure and simple. It never helped us, or hindered us. Natural selection does not concern itself with morality or justice - it's just the physical universe doing what it does.

So how can it "fail" us?
soliddensity said:
"Darwin's law" as you put it, cannot physically "fail", natural selection is an ongoing process (or doesn't even exist depending on what you choose to believe) and it simply 'occurs' and by definition if its occurring then its succeeding (because if natural selection was not succeeding then it would not be occurring).
Altorin said:
Anyone who says "Stupid People shouldn't be able to breed - it's what Darwin would want for the good of humanity" is just stupid themselves. What you're proposing is Eugenics. The act of Breeding People. It's pretty well considered a horrible thing. Humans, all humans, should be free to procreate however they feel.
To all of you, I posit that you visit
Agayek said:
http://www.darwinawards.com/

All you really need as proof that Natural Selection has not quite yet abandoned the homo sapiens sapiens.
Like my OP said, we're referring more here to the commonly-held usage of Darwin's Law, otherwise known as "Why are the stupid still here?" as opposed to "evolution/the strong survive".

Inyssius said:
So please, I beg of you: never ever use the nonsense-phrase "Darwin's Law" ever again.

Seriously. You're not helping.
Welcome to the forums! I see you've settled right in already :) (Just for you, I did edit the OP).

avuFinn said:
I had to register here just because of this thread.
Awww!! Welcome!
 

ImprovizoR

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Dec 6, 2009
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Failing? Are you kiddin' me? First of all Darwin didn't invent this law. It was always there. He just explained how things work in the world and gave it a name. And he did a damn good job. Natural selection, survival of the fittest. Oh it's working alright. Especially in western countries.
 

Arawn.Chernobog

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Nov 17, 2009
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Human society preserves flaws and failures because allowed them to "die out" would be "cruel and inhumane".

For Natural Selection to function in human society we'd have to, for instance, give no assistance to those with physical or mental disabilities allowing them to die early and never reproduce; Same for those with any form of genetic disease or simply those who fall into poverty (so their children do not grow into poverty as well).

Since humans feel "pity" (Which is actually a form of guilt) and society in general seeks to appease it's own guilt, we protect those with defects, the incompetents, the moronic, the poor, the weak... prohibiting the species to maintain only the superior individuals for breeding.
 

Miumaru

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Youtube and AOTS suggest it is still in effect..sorta. Though for every idiot that dies in for the sake of stupidity, 2 more take their place.
 

Halceon

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Elle-Jai said:
A post by a friend of mine started me wondering, is Darwin's Law currently seriously failing us, or do you have examples of it working nicely?

Personally, I think it's failing, although I do hear the odd story (like idiots in Sydney deciding to pop down storm water drains for a walk just before a storm, then getting drowned) that appear to demonstrate it trying to work.

(For those of you who aren't sure what Darwin's Law is, look at the idiot's guide to Natural Selection [http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25] and Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection].)

EDIT: For the sake of clarity, I am referring more to the popular "idea" of this theory than it's practical scientific applications. The science behind it all is another thread entirely, and is probably too science-y for me to follow. While I like science just fine, I'm an Arts major personally. (Say what you will, Arts is valid too!!)
Partially. The most important 2 elements in natural selection are reproduction and death. We are actively working to take the latter out of the equation, regardless of the individual's evolutionary fitness. The weak, stupid and demented don't get naturally culled, but we're not yet willing (also, not really able) to genefix our unborn children to remove those traits.
 

kintaris

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Apr 5, 2010
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Natural selection is simply becoming harder to determine by Darwin's context, particularly for human beings. The effects are more subtle, and social memes can have as devastating an effect on the course of the natural order as an earthquake.

We evolve socially and intellectually every day. Sure, in some respects its only a simulation of Darwin's theories of evolution, but then Darwin's theories of evolution have never been much more than a simulation in the first place. And if you observe our everyday global community on a grand scale you will see social and intellectual adaptation happening everywhere. Except, of course, when a virulent social meme comes and wipes the slate clean like an asteroid impact, but even then we adapt and survive.

As for other species, perhaps the most obvious species to us seem to be 'failing' Darwin's theory. But more truthfully, what's happening is that, should a species be doomed to extinction because of our progress or the progress of another species (i.e., should they NOT be naturally selected), we, as a highly evolved species with a conscience, will intervene, and either basically keep a species alive in one sense, but evolutionarily dead (pretty much like pandas, who are never gonna 'get' the 21st century), or manage to successfully train a species to adapt and survive. So Darwin's theory is still at work, we're just manufacturing the change. Call it human selection, if you like, but surely its a part of the evolutionary process that we've evolved to make those kinds of decisions.

And amongst all of our horrific failings as a species, that idea that we can take Darwin's natural theory and implement it ourselves, to ensure a future that remains diverse and dynamic, that's something quite beautiful.
 

HK_01

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Jun 1, 2009
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InfernoJesus said:
Nope, people with talent succeed. People that succeed are able to have more sex and support more children. Although this is considerably more evident in less developed countries, it's still in effect everywhere.
Unfortunately, it isn't in the Western World. Poor families tend to have way more children, while successful and wealthy people have maybe one or two, if any.

So yes, I think we're fucking up our own evolution by favoring the sets of genes of less successful people.