Poll: is the evolution of humans stagnating?

[Jedoro]

Yes

Due to an enormous amount of laws, it's too easy for stupid people to survive and reproduce.

 

[nelsonr100]

I can definitely see what you mean by this thread. Rather than the human race evolving through natural selection and the fastest/tallest/strongest/best adapted surviving the most and hence having the best chance to produce offspring and pass on their genes, the human race now has changed the focus of this selection. Today it is less necessary to be strong etc, more of a focus is placed on aspects of yourself such as attractiveness and intelligence. Intelligence I use as a broad term for personality, interests, skill of communiucaiton and cleverness.

So in summary we are still evolving, but the focus of our evolution has changed. You could now argue that the human race is simply going to evolve to be more attractive and intelligent, rather than strong and hardy. Its an interesting topic, but the social aspect and culture of humanity have definitely redefined our own evolution.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. In order for natural selection to occur, organisms with less favorable traits have to die or not have kids, meaning that their genes can't be passed down. Sure, there are more intelligent people around now, but we aren't selecting for them. A dumb person is not going to die because of their lower IQ, so their genes are still going to be spread to the next generation.
I'm not trying to put you down or be mean to you, but you need to have a better understanding of how evolution works.

-snip-

With humans, however, nobody is going to die if they are less intelligent, and nobody isn't going to have kids because they're less intelligent. In fact, the less intelligent people actually have MORE kids, so if anything your point is backwards.

I'm afriad that I'm not wrong, you seem to be the one without the full understanding here. Natural selection can still occur even without organisms dying or not giving birth. All that needs to happen is for one part of a species with a certain trait to give birth more often than the ones without. This then continues and natural selection occurs as the part of the species without the trait gets slowly phased out. It can almost be viewed in terms of probability where a certain trait gives a higher probability of reproduction therefore eventually they will be the only ones still alive after several interations of the species.

I then went on to imply that this happens with humans, certain characteristics give us a better probability of reproduction and hence eventually that higher probability will result in the loss of certain traits. That is how natural selection works. one part of the species does not simply stop reproducing or die, thats ridiculous.

Oh and I used "intelligence" as an umbrella term as I explained in my other post for personality etc. I was talking in terms of attractive traits, I was not saying "people who are more clever will reproduce more" as that is not true. But people with a more attractive way of thinking/talking and acting, will, and I used "intelligence" as an umbrella for that.

 

[ajemas]

I can definitely see what you mean by this thread. Rather than the human race evolving through natural selection and the fastest/tallest/strongest/best adapted surviving the most and hence having the best chance to produce offspring and pass on their genes, the human race now has changed the focus of this selection. Today it is less necessary to be strong etc, more of a focus is placed on aspects of yourself such as attractiveness and intelligence. Intelligence I use as a broad term for personality, interests, skill of communiucaiton and cleverness.

So in summary we are still evolving, but the focus of our evolution has changed. You could now argue that the human race is simply going to evolve to be more attractive and intelligent, rather than strong and hardy. Its an interesting topic, but the social aspect and culture of humanity have definitely redefined our own evolution.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. In order for natural selection to occur, organisms with less favorable traits have to die or not have kids, meaning that their genes can't be passed down. Sure, there are more intelligent people around now, but we aren't selecting for them. A dumb person is not going to die because of their lower IQ, so their genes are still going to be spread to the next generation.
I'm not trying to put you down or be mean to you, but you need to have a better understanding of how evolution works.

-snip-

With humans, however, nobody is going to die if they are less intelligent, and nobody isn't going to have kids because they're less intelligent. In fact, the less intelligent people actually have MORE kids, so if anything your point is backwards.

I'm afriad that I'm not wrong, you seem to be the one without the full understanding here. Natural selection can still occur even without organisms dying or not giving birth. All that needs to happen is for one part of a species with a certain trait to give birth more often than the ones without. This then continues and natural selection occurs as the part of the species without the trait gets slowly phased out. It can almost be viewed in terms of probability where a certain trait gives a higher probability of reproduction therefore eventually they will be the only ones still alive after several interations of the species.

I then went on to imply that this happens with humans, certain characteristics give us a better probability of reproduction and hence eventually that higher probability will result in the loss of certain traits. That is how natural selection works. one part of the species does not simply stop reproducing or die, thats ridiculous.

Oh and I used "intelligence" as an umbrella term as I explained in my other post for personality etc. I was talking in terms of attractive traits, I was not saying "people who are more clever will reproduce more" as that is not true. But people with a more attractive way of thinking/talking and acting, will, and I used "intelligence" as an umbrella for that.

As I stated before, more intelligent people are not having more kids. The crux of your argument is that the more intelligent and attractive people are more likely to produce offspring, and thus spread their genes on to the next generation. Yes, evolution can work like this, but not in this case. First of all, more intelligent people have LESS kids than the lower intelligent people. Take a look at the statistics, you'll see that the higher IQ people are not passing down their genes to the next generation.
Finally, as Popular Science so kindly pointed out, if your parents are attractive, it does not automatically make you attractive. Even if attractive people have more kids, their offspring will not always inherit their sexual fitness.
http://books.google.com/books?id=lnl-kZdVuHIC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=%22popular+science%22+attractive+children+parents+chin&source=bl&ots=Syuvyx49Wn&sig=w80yf8h58xDPgTdQ6XO0NGEm7Ig&hl=en&ei=OfNrTOP9LYS0lQfE8vWLAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false