for me, if you take any assistance away, I might just migrate to my own kind so we can look after each other. I may feel disabled in among hearing people because they use sounds for everything-telephone, car horn, etc. but with each other, we know what we need to survive… been done in marthas vineyard.
Please provide a cite that the number of people with the gene for blue eyes is declining. (And in any case this is not a correct definition of “regressive” with respect to genes.)
The proportion of people with dark eyes in the global population is probably increasing, because populations are growing fastest in Asia, Africa, and other areas where dark eyes are predominant. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with selection for or against blue eyes. In any case, the actual number of people with blue eyes is probably stable or increasing.
mla1, this is just nonsense. We’re interested in facts here, not your opinions. You’re not really contributing to the discussion here by just making stuff up.
[Moderating]
justanotherdeaf, your opinions on this matter are not really relevant to the discussion of evolution in this thread. If you want to talk about this further, please open another thread in IMHO or Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The OP question was about how humans are evolving. The point (“so what?”) is that we are eliminating factors that selected for healthy (as in not needing technical support to live) and the average human is genetically less able to survive when that support system goes away.
Similarly, if smart people are having less children than dumb people (and on average, well paid technical professionals have more smarts than welfare queens) then the average intelligence of the human race is going down, again thanks to support from society as a whole to its “less fit” members. (I subscribe to the theory that intelligence is a mix of heredity and environment - but that’s debate territory).
So what? Let’s cite - the economic collapse of the USSR, Katrina, the great ice storm of Quebec (where power was off for days or weeks), wars throughout the last century and this one, tsunamis and earthquakes - anything that interrupts the ability of society to supply those technical supports; some people will die without their insulin, some will not be able to get to higher ground in a flood, some will die of sickness or heart failure trying to escape the problem, some will die of bee stings because you cannot find the medicine at the time, their dialysis machine has no electricity, they die of pneumonia when there is no heat for their home …
So as long as the technical society last - no problem. The more difficult it is for you to survive in times of troubles before you’ve finished reproducing and raising your children, it can be argued you are less “fit”. If that “unfitness” has a genetic component, then the answer is relevant to the OP. If there is a massive golbal upheaval (cue Gore) then the more “fit” will on average survive and the problems with the genetic mix will be reset back to “fit”.
As noted, this is nothing new. We’ve been making tools for 2.5M years, and without those tools, our ancestors wouldn’t survive.
That’s politics, not science. Poverty isn’t genetic.
Yes, but I can probably make a rudimentary bow and arrow or spear. I can probably even start a fire with primitive items at hand if I really try. I can’t make insulin or a penecillin or new glasses or an electric wheelchair. This isn’t a question of “survive” yes or no, it’s a question of “what degree of deprivation or disruption could you survive”? The more disruptive the environment you can survive without genetic issues killing you, the more “fit” you are by that definition.
But to some extent, intelligence probably is. (cue the debate) So variations in the reproduction rates based on intelligence level DOES skew the resulting genetic mix over time.
Poverty as in “third world” vs “first world” has no bearing on intelligence; it’s the circumstances the group is born into. Poverty as in “incapable of performing tasks necessary to hold down a decent paying job like the rest of our society” may or may not have a genetic component.
Fitness is defined wrt the environment a species lives in, not some hypothetical environment that the species does not live in.
We don’t know what intelligence is and we don’t know how it is inherited. Making predictions about something we don’t understand either in its essence or how it is propagated is leaving the realm of facts and entering the realm of fantasy.
But don’t we only need the whole thing to hang together a little bit longer? Once we’ve really got the knack for genetic modification down cold, and can get custom-made designer babies on the cheap, we can opt for smart folks who don’t need elaborate support systems, right?
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=355
I rest my case about the blue eyes now. If you would like another web page for proof feel free to ask. To summarise the article for someone to have blue eyes both parents need blue eys.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1987568,00.html
You have a poor general knowledge and accuse me of having a wild imagination. ‘mla1, this is just nonsense. We’re interested in facts here, not your opinions. You’re not really contributing to the discussion here by just making stuff up.’
I read up discover and this is what i get. How about Colibri you do some research before you accuse me next time of making things up. It took me less than a minute to find those sources.
Incorrect. The requirement is that both parents have at least one gene for blue eyes. If both parents are brown-eyed but both are also carrying a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene then they can certainly have blue eyed children.
Please brush up on your basic genetics.
yes but the chance of that happening is only 25% hardly something to write home about don’t you think?
oh broomstick both parents need the blue eye gene
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. Please also brush up on your reading comprehension as well.
And, frankly, who cares if only 25% of the children of a given couple of brown-eyed people are blue-eyed? The point is, the gene isn’t disappearing in any way, and so long as it exists there will be a certain portion of the population with blue eyes. You might as well lament that blond or red hair isn’t dominant either.
But don’t you see you just posted something factually incorrect:
And what you originally posted was also factually incorrect:
Wrong. Someone had to come along a correct you. That is what **Colibri **is telling you.
Also, your cite is a simplification of the genetics since eye color is determined by more than one gene. Link. Warning: PDF.
No your wrong its like saying if the sun sets it won’t get dark in 100 to 200 years some scientists believe it will have disappeared.
http://www.helium.com/items/667696-assessing-the-decline-in-genetic-diversity
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=355
now look at these two aritcles and then tell me how will blue eyes continue to exist if people all over the world contnue to mix together?
I’m not wrong i’ve posted links read them they may be gone in 200 years. the world is more global so dominant genes survive and recessive genes don’t that is a FACT.
Yes I discovered that today but despite that blue eyes are disappearing. FACT
Your first cite makes the completely unsupported claim that:
No cite, just this claim. And then he goes on to say:
Your second cite says:
Please, stop posting factually incorrect information in this thread and making us correct you.
first cite:
It’s on the article if you bothered to read them
Second cite
in the article
Please stop acting as if you are five and read the articles i have posted on the subject of blue eyes.
I think you are old enough to read an article that long. the fact that I say things that are CORRECT and am cited brings this thread into disrepute.
I don’t think you understand what it means for a gene to be dominant or recessive.
The second article contradicts your assertion. The first was written by someone as confused as you are.
You’re mixing up the frequency of an allele with the frequency of the *expression *of that allele. Greater mixing between people of Northern European ancestry and people from the rest of the world will mean that alleles that code for blue eyes will be less likely to pair up. But their share of the total gene pool will remain constant.