# What are we evolving TOWARDS? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 27, 2005, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400 "2005-07-27T13:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/41 "2005-07-27T16:48:10Z")
> [@leandroc76](#): > > What MY point about evolution is that evolution is too slow to be plausible. Y’all (both you and **seetha** ) have some serious misconceptions about evolution. The Earth has been around for about 4 billion years. LIfe has been around for about 3.5 billion of those years. Think about that: _4 **billion** years!_. I seriously doubt you can honestly comprehend just how vast that amount of time really is. Even a _million_ years is incomprehensively vast to most people. Such timeframes are bandied about when discussing evolution, and oh it doesn’t sound like much, but even one or two million years is more than our brains can fully grasp. That, coupled with the idea thast speciation and adaptation probably occur within time frames close to a couple hundred thousand years, rather than those millions, and you see that billions, or even millions, of years are more than enough time for humans, whales, birds and manatees to evolve. Why didn’t other apes evolve as we did? Different environments, different selective pressures, different genetic constraints. If a given mutation doesn’t occur, natural selection can’t work with it. If the genes which resulted in our bigger brains don’t occur in the other great apes, then there is nothing for nature to select, so to speak, which could produce similar results. Even at that, there are plenty of “intelligent” creatures out there, many of which may well be hindered by lack of thumbs (another constraint) or complex language. They may not be able to build skyscrapers, but then again, they don’t need to. Sharks don’t need guns or fricken’ laser beams attached to their heads because evolution has already crafted them into perfectly adequate killing & eating machines. There is simply no way to predict how _any_ lineage, much less our own, is going to evolve. That, and large, stable populations, such as with humans, will evolve very slowly. It’s the fringes of life where all the action occurs: areas with highly-variable environments, small populations, etc. But even then, the environment only provides the parameters; the “right” genetic variations still have to occur in order for selection to mold a given poulation in any given direction. In other words, the OP is unanswerable. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/42 "2005-07-27T17:14:28Z")
First of all: We are not more intelligent than apes. We are exactly as smart as apes, since we ourselves are apes, and we are as smart as ourselves. Second, yes, survival of the fittest is a tautology. That’s a reason to accept it, not a reason to reject it. Third, evolution doesn’t give a damn about intelligence. Yes, there is some tendancy for later organisms to be more intelligent than early organisms, but that’s just because you can’t get much dumber than the very first organisms. Intelligence is one of a great many traits which might or might not help an organism to reproduce, in varying circumstances. But there’s not even any reason to believe that it’s the best trait, or even a particularly good one. There are a great many species of bacteria who are a great deal more successful than we are. Fourth, medical advances have not stopped human evolution, nor have they caused it to reverse direction. Medical advances are part of the environment to which we’re adapting ourselves. Hundreds of years ago, a human with genes for hemophilia would be much less likely to have progeny, and so hemophilia genes would have been strongly selected against. Nowadays, in developed countries, we have effective treatments for hemophilia, so a person with hemophilia has nearly the same expectation for progeny as a person without. So nowadays, there’s little or no selection against hemophilia. The availability of clotting factor concentrates is one new aspect of our environment to which we’re evolving. In short, asking “why aren’t other animals more like us” is no better a question to ask than “why aren’t we more like other animals”. Or, to put it in non-anthropocentric terms, why are different animals different? The answer to that is that different organisms have different environments, and different niches they fill in those environments, and they’re all evolved and evolving to fill those niches well. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/43 "2005-07-27T17:19:41Z")
> [@seetha](#): > > like these “samurai crabs” stories for real? > > anyways, like u said, i have problems with the time-table too… > > i have a tough time imagining species-jumping mutations. to think of it, i guess there are no such things. If every step is smoothly overlappin and continuos, when do we call it a new species? how much change from a “original” constitutes a “new” species? all very confusing ☹ > > maybe there are bursts of species-changing mutations in an otherwise smooth and slow pace of the genetic changes? You’re trying to impose more order on the world than actualy exists. A “species” is a human invention-- an attempt to classify things. But nature doesn’t care (to be anthropomorphic for a moment) what we call things. Nature just is. There isn’t one point when mom was a _H. erectus_ but her baby was a _H. spaiens_. A good way to think of it is to imagine how languages change. If you went back in time to England 1000 years ago, you wouldn’t be able to communicate with the people there. And yet there hasn’t been a time since then that one generation couldn’t communicate with the next. When did Old English become Middle English and then Modern English? There is no exact answer. That’s because languages are in a constant state of flux. We put labels on speech patterns to delineate langauges, but that’s just a human invention, not what acutally happens in the real world. Look at a rainbow. When does one color end and another one begin? Impossible to say because it’s a continuum. The idea of discrete colors is a human invention, a close apporximation of reality, but not what actually exists in reality. ---
**Author:** ![seetha](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seetha/32/18835_2.png) [@seetha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seetha)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/44 "2005-07-27T17:30:53Z")
yes, exactly. This is what has been giving me the tough time. I am not imposing more order on nature here…our scientific approach does. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/45 "2005-07-27T17:41:06Z")
> [@elfbabe](#): > > …having skin that’s just a LITTLE bit thicker is going to be absolutely no help whatsoever to a whale… Not necessarily true. > [@](#): > > …it’s not going to stop the harpoon unless it’s a LOT thicker. It’s not going to stop a well-thrown-from-close-enough harpoon, but it could make the difference between whether a weakly-thrown harpoon results in a kill or not. Given enough millennia, that advantage could result in thicker-skinned whales. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/46 "2005-07-27T17:55:33Z")
> [@seetha](#): > > yes, exactly. This is what has been giving me the tough time. > > I am not imposing more order on nature here…our scientific approach does. No, the problem is that you don’t really understand what science says about the whole matter. You have a concept of evolution, and of what a “species” means, that is very superficial. Single mutuations essentially _never_ generate new species. New species are created by selection happening over long periods of time. There is every possible intergradation between species at present: from different forms of the same species that are completely interfertile (such as human “races”); to clearly different species that almost never interbreed in nature but remain fully interfertile (e.g. many species of duck); to species that can hybridize but produce only sterile hybrids (horses and donkeys, lions and tigers); to species which can’t produce any viable offspring at all. Where one draws the dividing line between “species,” “subspecies,” and “populations” is a human construct. In reality, there is no clear dividing line; all these categories blend into one another smoothly. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/47 "2005-07-27T17:56:53Z")
Oh for cripes sake **leandroc76**! Just come out and tell us you are an intelligent design believer or creationist or whatever you people are calling yourselves nowadays. Quit beating around the bush. It’s obvious you’re not here to _learn_ anything. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/48 "2005-07-27T17:57:04Z")
> [@Darwin's Finch](#): > > The Earth has been around for about 4 billion years. LIfe has been around for about 3.5 billion of those years. Think about that: _4 **billion** years!_. I seriously doubt you can honestly comprehend just how vast that amount of time really is. Even a _million_ years is incomprehensively vast to most people. Such timeframes are bandied about when discussing evolution, and oh it doesn’t sound like much, but even one or two million years is more than our brains can fully grasp. That, coupled with the idea thast speciation and adaptation probably occur within time frames close to a couple hundred thousand years, rather than those millions, and you see that billions, or even millions, of years are more than enough time for humans, whales, birds and manatees to evolve. This paragraph obviously is the result of not reading my opinions. I/we believe the earths time table is NOT as long as YOU think. You can’t fathom 4 billion years, but it’s so easy for you to say it, because it’s the easiest answer science will give you. The problem is that you try to quantify evolution, by giving it the most unrealistic value. Again… Evolution has problem with time. There is way too much time, for nothing to happen up til 3000 years ago. Can you fathom that? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/49 "2005-07-27T18:02:16Z")
> [@leandroc76](#): > > This paragraph obviously is the result of not reading my opinions. I/we believe the earths time table is NOT as long as YOU think. You can’t fathom 4 billion years, but it’s so easy for you to say it, because it’s the easiest answer science will give you. The problem is that you try to quantify evolution, by giving it the most unrealistic value. This is General Questions at the Straight Dope. Opinions are irrelevant here; we work here on the basis of facts. If you want to air unsupported opinions, the forum for that is IMHO - but I don’t think you will get much traction there either. > [@](#): > > Again… Evolution has problem with time. There is way too much time, for nothing to happen up til 3000 years ago. > > Can you fathom that? Not really, because what you just said makes no sense whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/50 "2005-07-27T18:03:18Z")
> [@Little Bird](#): > > Oh for cripes sake **leandroc76**! Just come out and tell us you are an intelligent design believer or creationist or whatever you people are calling yourselves nowadays. Quit beating around the bush. It’s obvious you’re not here to _learn_ anything. Calm down… As long as someone can anwer the time table problem(which no one can) then I will believe in evolution. There _IS_ enough proof of evolution for me believe. It’s the time table. I am not creationist or a intellegent design believer. I am someone who believes we are the product of a “pit-stop”. This is gonna get weird: (until the law forces me to otherwise believe) Yes, humans, our own kind and image, have sort of planted us here, from (now hold-on) Other planetary sytems! :rolleyes: Ladies and gentlemen, He is crazy!!! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/51 "2005-07-27T18:06:05Z")
So what exactly is this “Time table problem.” Please spell it out for us to help you figure out. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/52 "2005-07-27T18:07:44Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Not really, because what you just said makes no sense whatsoever. then answer this fact: Why did it take so long for mankind to do what mankind did in the last 3000 years when he had 3.5 billion years to do it. If you can’t get that question then I don’t know how else to put it. \*\*\*I didn’t actually realize this was a GQ, my bad ---
**Author:** ![Catalyst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@Catalyst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catalyst)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/53 "2005-07-27T18:32:41Z")
> [@leandroc76](#): > > then answer this fact: Why did it take so long for mankind to do what mankind did in the last 3000 years when he had 3.5 billion years to do it. If you can’t get that question then I don’t know how else to put it. I’ll assume that by “what mankind did in the past 3000 years,” you mean the rise of civilization and the invention of Tang. Two problems with your question come immediately to mind: Problem one: mankind hasn’t been around for 3.5 billion years. Problem two: the things you are describing (the invention of guns and Sony Playstations) are not the result of biological evolution and are only relevant in a discussion of biological evolution when describing their effect on the conditions in which natural selection is occurring for humans. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/54 "2005-07-27T18:38:17Z")
I’m sorry 20 million years ago. So your saying it could have been possible that man a few million years ago could have had Sony Playstions? The question never said anything about guns and playstions. It all has to do with time. I like to call it an evolutionary oversight. ---
**Author:** ![Catalyst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@Catalyst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catalyst)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/55 "2005-07-27T18:53:15Z")
> [@leandroc76](#): > > I’m sorry 20 million years ago. More like 200,000 years for Homo sapiens sapiens. > [@](#): > > So your saying it could have been possible that man a few million years ago could have had Sony Playstions? Since modern humans didn’t exist at that time, no. If you were to ask whether modern humans from, say, 10,000 years ago could build a Playstation, I’d say yes, if they had access to the resources we now possess. > [@](#): > > The question never said anything about guns and playstions. So what were you referring to when you were talking about “what mankind did in the past 3000 years”? > [@](#): > > It all has to do with time. I like to call it an evolutionary oversight. Would you care to clarify what this means? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/56 "2005-07-27T18:58:49Z")
OK, if humans came here from other solar systems, then where did we come from in those other solar systems? You haven’t solved the problem, you’ve just moved it. In fact, you’ve made the problem harder, because now humans had to develop interstellar travel (not exactly easy), and they had less time to do it in. For Playstations to be devoloped, meanwhile, two things had to happen. First, a species had to evolve which was intelligent enough. Given that intelligence is **not** the goal of evolution (since evolution has no goal whatsoever), it was entirely random when this would happen. On a different world, it might happen quicker or slower, or multiple times, or not at all. Second, once you have that intelligent species, you need enough time for technological development. A Cro-Magnon was every bit as smart as a modern man, and if a Cro-Magnon child were raised in modern society, he’d fit right in (possibly even growing up to make Playstations). But the Cro-Magnons could not build Playstations, because before you can build a Playstation, there’s a host of other technologies you need to develop, and that takes time, too. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/57 "2005-07-27T19:09:17Z")
> [@seetha](#): > > yes, exactly. This is what has been giving me the tough time. > > I am not imposing more order on nature here…our scientific approach does. Well, yes and no. If you take the concept of “species” at its most superficial level, you have a point. If you look the word up in a dictionary and go by that definition, you are correct. You have to give the word some definition, after all, otherwise it measn nothing. Scientists, however, don’t use the term quite so rigidly. They all recognize that an whole slew of gradations exist between “distinct species” and “member of the same species”. Don’t get hung up on the nomenclature-- focus on the concepts. \*\*Populations change over time, split off from each other, and eventually become unable to interbreed. \*\* When each phase happens precisely is arbitrary, but we can look at the end product and see that it has happened. Just as it does with languages. English and Dutch are two distinct languages. Go back far enough in time, and they aren’t. When did they become mutually unintelligible? It’s impossible to say exactly. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/58 "2005-07-27T19:30:39Z")
> [@leandroc76](#): > > I’m sorry 20 million years ago. > > So your saying it could have been possible that man a few million years ago could have had Sony Playstions? The question never said anything about guns and playstions. It all has to do with time. I like to call it an evolutionary oversight. You probably should open a thread in GD if you want to debate human technological progress. But let me ask you this question. Humans did indeed go from mud huts to sony playstations in about 10,000 years, but what of those humans who still live in mud huts today. Are they any less “smart” than you are? If you had been raised in their village, would you have invented sony playstations? The changes you are describing are cultural, not biological. Cultural evolution happens faster than biological evolutions (for humans at least). It’s really not a mystery. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/59 "2005-07-27T19:47:21Z")
> [@Catalyst](#): > > Would you care to clarify what this means? I understood that [man arrived as early as 2.2 million years ago.](http://www.onelife.com/evolve/manev.html) 2.2 million years to create the Hoover Dam, 2.2 million years to learn to fly, 2.2 million years to build an automobile. That’s an awfully long time. It should be an insult to all of US humans. Something had to have happened in all that time. Something we can’t define. There are stories of Atlantis, flying planes and societies not too different of our own. If that is myth, it is more believable than monkey’s directing traffic in 2005. That’s what evolution say’s. That monkeys evolved into humans. (I say monkey as in ape, chimp or whatever) does this make any sense to you? Evolutionist OVER estimate the time because they cannot define what happen in between. ---
**Author:** ![leandroc76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bb73d2/32.png) [@leandroc76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leandroc76)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2005, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400/60 "2005-07-27T19:52:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > OK, if humans came here from other solar systems, then where did we come from in those other solar systems? You haven’t solved the problem, you’ve just moved it. In fact, you’ve made the problem harder, because now humans had to develop interstellar travel (not exactly easy), and they had less time to do it in. Your question is the same as mine… in a way of course. Evolution does the same thing in way, it doesn’t solve the problem of time. How do you know interstellar travel is not as easy. We just went up to space yesterday. (OT: poor astro’s, they may be stuck up there for while I hear) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-we-evolving-towards/314400.md?page=4)