Shoutbox

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
what we create as humans that arent natural to aid our survival as a social tool is a "meme". These memes are limiting the way natural selection actually selects.

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I think what we make is an important factor in evolutionary theory. The ability to use tools and such to improve our abilities shows how far evolution has progressed us as a race and I don't think that this is really preventing our evolution, it is just indicating that our evolution has reached a peak - we're good enough to create what we need with our superior brains

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Originally posted by Volv

quote:

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
what we create as humans that arent natural to aid our survival as a social tool is a "meme". These memes are limiting the way natural selection actually selects.

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I think what we make is an important factor in evolutionary theory. The ability to use tools and such to improve our abilities shows how far evolution has progressed us as a race and I don't think that this is really preventing our evolution, it is just indicating that our evolution has reached a peak - we're good enough to create what we need with our superior brains

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Thats true in a sense, but natural flaw such as infertility are being overcome by our social "memes". Infertile parents are able to conceive using many methods, which is actually going against evolution. Without the memes, these people would not reproduce, and therefore not pass on their alleles (genes) that code for infertility.

quote:

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
Thats true in a sense, but natural flaw such as infertility are being overcome by our social "memes". Infertile parents are able to conceive using many methods, which is actually going against evolution. Without the memes, these people would not reproduce, and therefore not pass on their alleles (genes) that code for infertility.

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That's true, but isnt this simply making fertility something which we no longer require to survive/reproduce (since we have other ways of doing this now) hence it could eventually be 'evolved' out of us? It's not really disadvantaging us or 'unevolving' us as it is becoming something which we may no longer have to (or need to) do in the future - there is no functional disadvantage of not being able to reproduce naturally if we can (in future) do it properly using artificial means.

PS: This reminds me of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' (which we studied in year 12 of school) where in the future females are given heavy contraceptives and instead humans are produced in a production line from the eggs extracted from women - it was a fairly good book showing the grim future which the author foresaw us living in and is a somewhat believable prediction.

Thats the whole concept of a meme. If its not happening naturally, then we are supporting the survival of infertile humans that would have probably been extinct if it weren't for modern technology; a meme.

Think of insulin. Without insulin, people with diabetes would die. The chances of them reproducing to pass the gene for diabetes would decrease. Over millions of years, this would eventually not exist because of natural selection against diabetes.

Darwin*

That's been bugging me for some time.