Poll: Is Darwin's Law failing us??

[cerebus23]

darwins natural selection is based off being healthly and smart enough to survive long enough to breed. in the good old days if you got injured or sick ther was a good chance you would die sooner rather than later, if you were none too bright then your foray to pet a sabertoothed tiger would certianly remove your genes from the breeding pool. many major birth defects would likely be left to die since you could never fend for yourself properly.

modern society has just exempted themselves from the basics of natural selection and survival of the fittest. anyone can breed and maybe get a job slinging burgers or something you do not have to be the smartest or the fittest or be free of genetic or other defects, in past days many of these things would leave you the short end of the stick or dead.

it is not that darwin is wrong at all, all other animal species around us still follow these basic laws, if every other species was not following the laws of ecology and darwinism then he would be wrong.

 

[Rblade]

To be fair, natural selection is a theory. Laws have to be proven by mathematics. There are laws in things like population genetics, but not natural selection. I'd say natural selection is still at work. Our environment has changed a bunch, so selection pressure have changed. Technology itself is a product of our evolution.

A lot of people seem to mistreat "fitness". Fitness is done by reproductive success. I've had a completely futile argument with someone that bad cholesterol and heart diseases wouldn't be selected for, because they only affect people past reproductive age.

My background is stronger in genetics, though.

seconded, not a law

and it doesn't work for humans because we have the common decency of not letting the weaker elements of our society die out

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most responsive to change." -Darwin himself

No, I do believe natural selection is "alive" and well. It probably isn't that obvious right now as it takes forever to really make a difference, especially with humanity so wide spread. It is working right now. And no that doesn't mean that the smartest, most athletic, and best looking of humanity is doing better than other people. It can also mean that some people who we think have less desirable traits but at the same succead more are flourishing.

Plus even if our evolution is stagnating a little bit (which I doubt) we always have that one thing that natural selection didn't count on:
[HEADING=2]SCIENCE![/HEADING]

Extra musings on my part: Yes I understand that in first world countries many people who usually wouldn't be able to survive in centuries past can do so and breed, but that just changes the name of the game from "Who can breed more so that they gene's have a higher chance of moving on to the next generation?" to "Who can spread their gene's around the pool the most?" It still all comes down to who's making the most babies.

 

[JohnSmith]

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:

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.

Yes but it would be properly called something along the lines of "The theory of natural selection", all I was trying to get across was that if you weren't nerd sniping then you were leaving the comment terribly open to creation trolls.

Also that something is accepted vernacular does not make it correct, in fact if something is both in error and common does that not make an even better case for correcting it. Allowing things to be wrong just because they are common is a terrible idea, I would say its "the" terrible idea from which so many others stem. Almost every act of discrimination stems from misconceptions that were not corrected simply because they are common. If you want a delicious example just see what the popular misconception about evolution being random does to peoples arguments even though it is wrong, it is also common.

Social media, and community information sources like wikipedia only cement this problem, if you do not face every inaccuracy with a correction then you personally are dooming the world to a spiralling descent into a pit of vacuous crap, also known as day time television.

Furthermore, a point I meant to address in my first post. Many people I have talked with assume that evolution via natural selection would yield a more intelligent human. This is a drastically inaccurate view of how evolution works, it does not act to create an objectively or even subjectively better organism. It acts through reproduction, most of the selection taking place is not through violent deselection such as death or dismemberment but through lack of mating given this a troubled genius (which is a fairly huge stereotype), might have just as much trouble if not finding a mate and producing offspring as a complete moron. If you want to know the one group that society is currently selecting in favour of its those arseholes who get women pregnant and abandon them after the child is born only to repeat the process with a large number of other women. Those guys are way, way ahead of the bell curve as far as getting their genes out there goes.

 

[Elle-Jai]

Also that something is accepted vernacular does not make correct, in fact if something is both in error and common does that not make an even better case for correcting it.

Touche. I yield, good sir.

Furthermore, a point I meant to address in my first post. Many people I have talked with assume that evolution via natural selection would yield a more intelligent human. This is a drastically inaccurate view of how evolution works, it does not act to create an objectively or even subjectively better organism. It acts through reproduction, most of the selection taking place is not through violent deselection such as death or dismemberment.

This is a great pity sometimes, although I do understand the concept as it relates to the real world. I also don't go with the "creates a smarter human" theory, I just wish there were a few, select, members of the human race disqualified from the breeding program per se. How they are to be deselected I have not the faintest idea, but I still wish they were.

Moving right along, I do tend to correct misconceptions where I find them, I'd just prefer a discussion on stupid people doing stupid things as opposed to an actual intelligent discussion on evolution, given that my day has been at best mediocre, and at worst makes me want to cry. Not from the forums however; I'm not one of those people who take everything everyone who doesn't know them from a bowl of chicken soup says to heart... I'm just having a crappy month.

Never mind, an intelligent discussion is the next best thing