Future evolution according to the BBC

[photopat]

@Stranger On A Train

Unlikely; see Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex:

“Superman would literally crush LL’s body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.”

Stranger

I’m familiar with that great work (a guy in my dorm had the whole thing printed out and covering the door to his room) and only have two words in response: Super Tantra.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@photopat

I saw an article here about the future of human evolution.

Now personally, I don’t buy it. The main reason being that evolution isn’t a directional process. It’s an adaptive response to environmental changes. (Environmental being used in the broadest sense - the world in which we live in all it’s facets)

As a result it’s simply not possible to speculate on what will happen to the human species. Our descendants could conceivably evolve in many different directions, some more successful than others, just as our ancestors were part of a large spectrum of hominids. (Apologies if my terminology isn’t accurate)

There may not be much of a debate here, but I thought I’d drop this and see who might like to kick it around.

Thoughts?

Things evolve to their environment. We now have the ability to shape our environment so now the environment evolves to us.

[tashabot]

While I think this guy’s argument is BS, I do kind of see where he’s going with it. Okay, so for the most part, the “beautiful” people with the “best” genes will mate with each other exclusively, with a few exceptions for the “non-shallow” amongst us (I’m making a generalization here), and the “ugly” people will be forced to make only with each other, so the uglier will get uglier and the pretty prettier. Obviously, there are flaws in that argument - sometimes, beautiful parents have ugly ass children, and sometimes ugly parents have beautiful children. But I see where he’s going with it; I just don’t think he thought it through.

I’d like to know where he got the idea that bigger penises would evolve out of this, though.

~Tasha

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@tashabot

Okay, so for the most part, the “beautiful” people with the “best” genes will mate with each other exclusively, with a few exceptions for the “non-shallow” amongst us (I’m making a generalization here), and the “ugly” people will be forced to make only with each other, so the uglier will get uglier and the pretty prettier. Obviously, there are flaws in that argument

Like Billy Joel, Lyle Lovett, and Humphrey Bogart?

Stranger

[Voyager]

@tashabot

While I think this guy’s argument is BS, I do kind of see where he’s going with it. Okay, so for the most part, the “beautiful” people with the “best” genes will mate with each other exclusively, with a few exceptions for the “non-shallow” amongst us (I’m making a generalization here), and the “ugly” people will be forced to make only with each other, so the uglier will get uglier and the pretty prettier. Obviously, there are flaws in that argument - sometimes, beautiful parents have ugly ass children, and sometimes ugly parents have beautiful children. But I see where he’s going with it; I just don’t think he thought it through.
~Tasha

Standards of beauty change with time - otherwise, why wouldn’t this have happened already? In any case, there will always be enough rich, ugly, men to insert ugly genes into the beautiful gene pool.

[tomndebb]

@Voyager

In any case, there will always be enough rich, ugly, men to insert ugly genes into the beautiful gene pool.

For that matter, there will always be poor, pretty men who pursue rich, ugly women to accomplish the same goal.

[Lemur866]

And then there’s Anna Nicole Smith, who was simulaneously a poor pretty woman who married a rich ugly man, and a rich ugly woman pursued by poor pretty men.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Lemur866

And then there’s Anna Nicole Smith, who was simulaneously a poor pretty woman who married a rich ugly man, and a rich ugly woman pursued by poor pretty men.

It’s funny how the wheel of life turns, in’it?

Stranger

[Loopydude]

@Voyager

Standards of beauty change with time…

Interesting thoughts on this notion, linked from the Beeb for your amusement.

[Miller]

@Lemur866

And then there’s Anna Nicole Smith, who was simulaneously a poor pretty woman who married a rich ugly man, and a rich ugly woman pursued by poor pretty men.

I think you mean sequentially. Or else Anna Nicole is our first quantum celebrity.

[Lemur866]

@wikipedia

Smith married her second husband, oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall, on June 27, 1994. She was 26; he was 89. According to an E! profile, Smith had other relationships and was generally indifferent to Marshall, with whom she never lived. Her alleged romantic interests included bodybuilder Clay Spires, Scott Baio, John Travolta’s nephew Rikki, and real estate mogul Jonathan McManus. J. Howard’s nurse told E! that Smith never visited him as his condition became terminal, and was not with him when he died. In contrast to E!'s reports, Smith has steadfastly maintained—on her reality TV show, in court appearances, in interviews, and so on—that she loved Marshall greatly, and was devastated by his death.

I really do mean simultaneously. Anna Nicole Smith is both pretty and physically repulsive at the same time.

[griffin1977]

There is extensive critism of this work in the “Bad Science” column in The Guardian. There are numerous critisims in the peice but the hightlights for me were:

• This was not based on any research or scietific papers, it was an essay paid for by a “men’s TV channel”.
• It was not by a biologist or similarly qualified scientst , but a political theorist.

The full article is here:
http://www.badscience.net/?p=316#more-316

[FRDE]

To be honest, I reckon that the meejah got the jist of what he was saying wrong.

The Bravo Evolution Report was researched and prepared by Dr Oliver Curry, of the Darwin@LSE research centre at the London School of Economics.

The media picked up on The Time Machine, and conveniently ommitted the fact that the rather disgusting Morlocks were vastly superior in intelligence and strength to their child- like cattle.

Possibly this is perversity, possibly the media are just plain thick, and cannot recognize the meaning of Bravo in the title of the report.

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

For anyone who does not twig the reference, the book was about genetic manipulation in ‘baby factories’ to produce variations of the species from Alpha to Gamma.
Alpha were … well alpha, and Gamma were rather thick midgets.
In Huxley’s opus this was accomplished by dosing the Gamma foetuses with alcohol.

Curry’s first assertion that races will merge looks pretty likely. Brazil might have had a variety of co-existing but separate races for hundreds of years, but the UK has only had a significant black/asian population for 50 years - and from day to day observation the intermingling (I’ll avoid miscegenation) has been pretty rapid.

If Curry is based at the LSE (London School of Economics) and has the opportunity to walk round London, then his initial postulation that the population will merge into tall, permanently tanned individuals with smaller jaws, simply indicates that he has reasonble vision, an idea of the effect of nutrition and has talked to a dentist about wisdom teeth.

If Curry has an IQ above that of a tadpole, he will be familiar with the concept of ‘designer babies’, and that they will reflect the wealth of the parents.

In effect, he was simply saying ‘poor people have bad teeth and rich people have good teeth’

Personally I think he has his time scales wrong. I would reckon that the whole procedure could take under 200 years.

Actually, if Curry is around my age and had done a minor inspection of people born in about 1920, then he would have observed distinct physical differences between people of different classes - and that was long before ‘designer babies’ and GM on the hoof.

By ‘GM on the hoof’ I mean the genetic equivalent of plastic surgery.

[Loopydude]

@griffin1977

• This was not based on any research or scietific papers, it was an essay paid for by a “men’s TV channel”.
• It was not by a biologist or similarly qualified scientst , but a political theorist.

While the former is obviously troubling, there’s nothing that says a political theorist can’t contribute because he’s a political theorist.

I say this knowing full well I make the same kinds of ad hominem attacks all the time, and I truly need to stop it myself. It’s the argument that matters, not who is making it. Let’s all try to remember that, whilst not being hypocritical about calling others on it in our future critiques. I’m working on it. Swat me when I screw up.