Walking on the train tracks

[catbirdseat]

Busy tracks + night + fog + boom box = not good

[underworld]

unless it's caught on video

[Chaps]

Busy tracks + night + fog + boom box = not good

 

Are you speaking from experience?

[catbirdseat]

No, I was referring to a recent local (Seattle) event in which two young men were struck by a train they apparently couldn't hear because of the loud music they were listening to.

[selkirk]

it's sad but it's evolution in action.

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing? Everyone and anyone can now procreate to their hearts content, and in 1st world countries pretty much all of the offspring are guaranteed live to an age where they can have their own kids, regardless of how well suited they are to society and/or the environment, and pass on their genes/behaviors. I just wonder if one of these days it's going to come back bite us in the ass?

[kix]

parents of many here may already know the answer......

[bigwalling]

what is even dumber... jumping on a fairly fast moving train. I thought I was gonna die!

[knelson]

it's sad but it's evolution in action.

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing? Everyone and anyone can now procreate to their hearts content, and in 1st world countries pretty much all of the offspring are guaranteed live to an age where they can have their own kids, regardless of how well suited they are to society and/or the environment, and pass on their genes/behaviors. I just wonder if one of these days it's going to come back bite us in the ass?

 

You're here, aren't you?

 

And just who do you propose be the judge of "how well suited they are to society and/or the environment".

[archenemy]

this is a stupid thread

A little ephedra might punch things up a bit.

[Squid]

it's sad but it's evolution in action.

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing? Everyone and anyone can now procreate to their hearts content, and in 1st world countries pretty much all of the offspring are guaranteed live to an age where they can have their own kids, regardless of how well suited they are to society and/or the environment, and pass on their genes/behaviors. I just wonder if one of these days it's going to come back bite us in the ass?

 

You're here, aren't you?

 

And just who do you propose be the judge of "how well suited they are to society and/or the environment".

 

I've always been in favor of a 'coming-of-age' cagefight.

Throw an entire graduating class of kids in a big cage, only let half of them come out.

 

I'd skew the odds, and arm the cute ones.

[EWolfe]

Train tracks +tying off = shotcrete

[selkirk]

it's sad but it's evolution in action.

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing? Everyone and anyone can now procreate to their hearts content, and in 1st world countries pretty much all of the offspring are guaranteed live to an age where they can have their own kids, regardless of how well suited they are to society and/or the environment, and pass on their genes/behaviors. I just wonder if one of these days it's going to come back bite us in the ass?

 

You're here, aren't you?

 

And just who do you propose be the judge of "how well suited they are to society and/or the environment".

 

I haven't had kids so i'm not out of the evolutionary game yet. I can still do something stupid, kill myself off, and not pass on my inherently inferior traits. After all, I do climb for fun, I can't be that well evolved. Of course I was a relatively tough kid, I got dropped on my head at least 3 or 4 times , and some days I can still keep up on here

[robert]

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing?

 

I actually wonder if in some ways we are regressing. If you compare the family size between people with positive genetic traits and those with less postive traits it is possible that some who shouldn't be passing on their genes are doing it with more frequency than those who should.

[catbirdseat]

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing?

 

I actually wonder if in some ways we are regressing. If you compare the family size between people with positive genetic traits and those with less postive traits it is possible that some who shouldn't be passing on their genes are doing it with more frequency than those who should.

Come on! Who's to say what traits are postive and negative. Rich and poor are not traits.

[lI1|1!]

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing?

 

evolution is not a guided process, selective pressure is the result of uncontrolled, seemingly random events. there were selective pressures acting on the human species in the past and the are different ones acting currently.

 

it is a huge mistake to anthropomorphise evolution or confuse it with [gasp] intelligent design.

 

eugenics sucks.

[catbirdseat]

Humans have been subject to a wide array of selective pressures throughout evolution. Our ability to adapt to a variety of environments or to shape our environment is a reflection of this.

[ashw_justin]

So what are the top selective pressures today? It certainly has nothing to do with education level, income, or physical fitness.

 

Acting ability? Ability to lie convincingly enough to let you have unprotected sex with your high school sweetie and/or the drunk chick in da club? Can you spit game well enough to get in the sack? Do you have sufficient plumage?

 

Sadly, the most successful mating group is dumb enough to get randomly knocked up, but just quite smart enough to stay alive and spell their name approximately right on a welfare application. It would seem that the current paradigm selects against intelligence. After all, contraception and self-control are the foes of proliferation. But look on the bright side, these children are our future.

 

Look, I can even bestow linkage to highly-regarded news media:

 

link

[lI1|1!]

It would seem that the current paradigm selects against intelligence.

 

actually in classic evolutionary theory any biological trait is assumed to be normally distributed with with selective pressure acting against both sides of the distribution. a great blue herons legs for instance are assumed to be about their current length because for a herons ecolgical niche they represent the balence between the ease with which the heron flies and it's ability to wade in the depth of water were it mostly feeds (for example). if the heron's environment or niche changes genetic drift may occur such that now longer or shorter legs are selected for. many species show within species variation for traits that may be more advantageous in different parts of the species' geographic range, or over time with climatic fluctuation.

 

human IQ is typically represented as a normally distributed variable with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15:

 

 

presumably human evolution is currently selecting for an IQ of about 100, which is BTW not that all that smart in the brainy scheme of things. individuals who fall too far below that average are less likely to pass their genes along because they are mentally retarded or just not that capable. individuals too far above the norm may be less likely to have kids because they are absorbed with intellectual or material pursuits and less social or less likely to see a large family as a source of happiness. it's important to keep in mind that IQ is a score on an IQ test and does not necessarily represent social skills or life skills, and certainly doesn't represent reprocuctive fitness, unless of course that bell curve is currently moving, which would in evolutionary terms would be hard to detect since evolution is typically described as taking place over more geologic time periods.

 

i wouldn't worry about it. the world will go on with or without your thomas pynchon reading, trad gear placing, weissbeer sipping, c++ programming genes, eh?

[catbirdseat]

So what are the top selective pressures today? It certainly has nothing to do with education level, income, or physical fitness.

 

 

Accidents and homicide have the greatest effect on reprodution, not disease. But death before reproductive age has a small effect compare to differences in fecundity.

[robert]

Come on! Who's to say what traits are postive and negative. Rich and poor are not traits.

 

I am not saying which are positive and which are negative. You won't hear me endorsing the paid sterilization of welfare receipients. I do think that intelligence is not always selected for, but that could just be a geek talking. The reason for my comment is that I don't see as many negative traits being selected against in a society in which very few people have to fend for themselves the way that non-domesticated animals do. Justin had a good quote in the ephedra thread.

 

Do you think people have always had 3+ meals a day, and could just go down to Safeway and purchase 50,000 calories for the equivalent of a couple hours of work?

I think that somethings are so easy now that we don't have to work or prove ourselves to pass on our genes.

[knelson]

Accidents and homicide have the greatest effect on reprodution, not disease. ...

 

While that may be true in developed nations, I'm pretty sure that's not true on a world population basis.

 

But then I guess we're talking about our own "stupid" people, and not others', eh?

[tivoli_mike]

it's sad but it's evolution in action.

 

Does anyone else think we've kind of short-circuited the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing? Everyone and anyone can now procreate to their hearts content, and in 1st world countries pretty much all of the offspring are guaranteed live to an age where they can have their own kids, regardless of how well suited they are to society and/or the environment, and pass on their genes/behaviors. I just wonder if one of these days it's going to come back bite us in the ass?

 

You're here, aren't you?

 

And just who do you propose be the judge of "how well suited they are to society and/or the environment".

 

I've always been in favor of a 'coming-of-age' cagefight.

Throw an entire graduating class of kids in a big cage, only let half of them come out.

 

I'd skew the odds, and arm the cute ones.

 

Go and rent the Japanese movie "Battle Royale"

 

IMDB review of battle royale

[EWolfe]

environment!! Genetics!!

[forrest_m]

it's important to remember that traits like "intelligence" are not being "pursued" in and of themselves by the process of selection. in fact, from the standpoint of evolution, the people who are "just smart enough" to survive and reproduce are well adapted to their environment. wasting effort on continually upping IQ beyond that required to thrive is just that - wasted, i.e. there is little evolutionary pressure that would cause this to happen. this is neither good nor bad, it simply is.

 

lest you be too worried that our species is going down the tubes, remember too that there can be more than one stable reproductive strategy within the same species. Just because one strategy leads to more offspring doesn't mean that the other is in any danger of dying out, but rather the ecosystem is stable with a certain percentage of individuals pursuing their various strategies with varying rates of fecundity.

 

So, you could argue that western technological humans are developing into multiple strategies where for certain people, it makes more sense to concentrate their resources among fewer offspring (leading to a stable and self-perpetuating concentration of wealth & influence and the consequent control of resources) while others spread their resources thin to maximize their number of offspring. these divergent strategies can be stable while also being interdependant: it takes millions of wal-mart shoppers to support every sam walton, but the social and economic sytems that allow poor people to purchase 50,000 calories at will are generally controlled by the concentrated wealth folks.

[tomtom]

The Duggars are the winners in the evolution game.