How does this plant do this?

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

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what if they will be needed even more ?

.

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Is it actually more efficient than super intelligent with emotions ? I don't think so.

Well i hope you are right, but what i was trying to say is that if nature is blind, then we are the only people that can look out for the things we hold dear in ourselves, because it might be subject to change, and if we are not alert, that change could happen without us knowing or without us forming some kind of defence against that change.

Edit* also knowing what i know now, i think scientists need to start making moral decisions regarding the things they find out, i'd be much happier if there was an international team of scientists monitoring human evolution, reporting back to the world and proposing any possible changes that might improve us, or reporting dangers we need to be defended from, of course sadly that would require great trust from the public, and as we all know due to the many transgressions of goverments trust is in very short supply.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Custard Donut (In Space)

[Tw1]

Imagine we might turn into a super intelligent and completely emotionless people in the future, we might become cruel without knowing it and then we'd be like the bad-guys of space, this has opened up all sorts of worries for me.

If you change the genetic aspect to cybernetics, you end up with the cybermen from Doctor Who. Originally a human like race, from planet Mondas, twin of the Earth, which left the solar system...

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

If you change the genetic aspect to cybernetics, you end up with the cybermen from Doctor Who. Originally a human like race, from planet Mondas, twin of the Earth, which left the solar system...

I remember them, though i didn't have them in mind, they sure look like a warning of what could happen if we or nature changed us for the worse.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Gah, it's a moral minefield! If there was a team of scientists in charge of human evolution, they might get slipped a few bucks by powerful people to put a passive, unquestioning gene in there! i think i need to go lie down lol, we're in great danger aren't we?

[MBobrik]

Well i hope you are right, but what i was trying to say is that if nature is blind, then we are the only people that can look out for the things we hold dear in ourselves, because it might be subject to change, and if we are not alert, that change could happen without us knowing or without us forming some kind of defence against that change.

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First thing. Evolution is SLOW. For example, a gene that causes humans to be able to digest milk even as adults emerged a few thousand years ago, it is clearly advantageous, yet the evolution did not finish spreading it through the entire population yet.

Second thing, we already have means in place that reduce evolutionary fitness of undesirable behaviors. You can't reproduce very efficiently when you get say 30 years in prison.

And if you think about more basic stuff, like, for example compassion, or conscience, this stuff was produced by the evolution itself, so it most probably is advantageous and thus gonna stay on its own anyway.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

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First thing. Evolution is SLOW. For example, a gene that causes humans to be able to digest milk even as adults emerged a few thousand years ago, it is clearly advantageous, yet the evolution did not finish spreading it through the entire population yet.

Second thing, we already have means in place that reduce evolutionary fitness of undesirable behaviors. You can't reproduce very efficiently when you get say 30 years in prison.

And if you think about more basic stuff, like, for example compassion, or conscience, this stuff was produced by the evolution itself, so it most probably is advantageous and thus gonna stay on its own anyway.

We had tails once didn't we? i don't see why empathy or other human character traits would not be subject to change depending on the the factors involved, which admittedly seem to be vast and complicated, i read somewhere empathy is a group survival thing, aren't we becoming ever more individualistic, ever more alone in our technology world? Could that not erode empathy over time, and if you say it's a slow change we may not notice till it's gone?

Maybe we should have scientific guardians that's all i'm saying, people clever enough to at least have a guess as to where we are headed, and the courage to decide if it's the right direction, i never hear scientists talk morals, but i think they should because they understand the world we live in, and people like myself do not.

[MBobrik]

I read somewhere empathy is a group survival thing, aren't we becoming ever more individualistic, ever more alone in our technology world?

.

Actually, this is not the case. Today, technology, the chief example of it, the internet, is mostly used to communicate, and to do all sorts of group activities, and thus is actually drawing us closer together. Hell, I know people who met their future wife playing some MMORPG.

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We had tails once didn't we?

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Empathy and stuff won't go the way of human tail unless we cease to be a social species ( which is impossible, we are already too adapted to social lifestyle to even survive as solitary animals )

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Maybe we should have scientific guardians that's all i'm saying, people clever enough to at least have a guess as to where we are headed, and the courage to decide if it's the right direction, i never hear scientists talk morals, but i think they should because they understand the world we live in, and people like myself do not.

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Actually, I don't think that our capability to understand truly long-term consequences has evolved to the point where someone could do that. Not even the brightest minds in the world together are capable to understand what effects will a certain trait have say 100 000 years down the road.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Well that's mostly good news

[colmo]

Nice to see someone learning about evolution with lots of detailed examples.

One thing that folks struggle with is the concept of what makes a trait advantageous. The answer is it depends on the environment. Sickle cell anaemia is a classic example - it's considered a disease in Europe, but is advantageous in areas of Africa with endemic malaria.

[DeltaV_]

It seems that the original question has been settled on for you, so I'll address the worry that people are going to lose all their emotions and become really strong idiots or something.

Anyways, humans are very social creatures; we evolved that way, and we live that way. It's why you feel embarrassment when you mess up in front of people and why you feel proud when you do something well in front of people. More directly speaking, a human who cuts off all ties to society and becomes a hyper-intelligent, emotionless hermit is going to have little or no potential mates, and thus whatever traits they had that caused this will likely not live on. Meanwhile, an average-intelligence extrovert is going to have a lot of potential mates, since there are a lot of average-intelligence extroverts out there, and generally that means more of the next generation will be average-intelligence extroverts.

Remember, everything in evolution, whether our own or that of other species, is driven by three things: Food, reproduction and not dying (Sometimes not even the last one, so long as they reproduce before they die). Most everything that a majority or all of people have (Say, empathy or sentience or not having a tail) has likely already been proven advantageous and thus will probably not be dying off any time soon, by natural means at least.

Edited July 28, 2013 by DeltaV_

[Kerbface]

Humanity is a funny case in evolution, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like things we value now, such as caring for the weak (even the permanently weak) and being somewhat less discerning than most animals in terms of having the strongest or most talented reproductive partner, seem like it sort of goes against natural selection. Obviously other animals do have a certain amount of altruism, but I don't know if any have it to the level of humans. Although in our social environment perhaps it's helpful even (I certainly enjoy the kindness of humanity), but it is not survival of the fittest. Like I read a while back that instances of colour blindness are increasing continually, because we build an environment for ourselves where someone can get by with being colourblind and when they have problems with it, we assist them, and it's usually barely a factor at all in choosing a mate. On the other hand, apparently a cure for colourblindness that has been tested on monkeys is on the way (Causes you to grow the missing cones).

Anyone want to comment on the accuracy or innacuracy of the idea of humanity not really following the traditional model of natural selection?

[Yourself]

Humanity is a funny case in evolution, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like things we value now, such as caring for the weak (even the permanently weak) and being somewhat less discerning than most animals in terms of having the strongest or most talented reproductive partner, seem like it sort of goes against natural selection. Obviously other animals do have a certain amount of altruism, but I don't know if any have it to the level of humans. Although in our social environment perhaps it's helpful even (I certainly enjoy the kindness of humanity), but it is not survival of the fittest. Like I read a while back that instances of colour blindness are increasing continually, because we build an environment for ourselves where someone can get by with being colourblind and when they have problems with it, we assist them, and it's usually barely a factor at all in choosing a mate. On the other hand, apparently a cure for colourblindness that has been tested on monkeys is on the way (Causes you to grow the missing cones).

Anyone want to comment on the accuracy or innacuracy of the idea of humanity not really following the traditional model of natural selection?

I think this is a common misunderstanding of what "survival of the fittest" actually is. It's not about who produces the most reproductively fit individuals. If a group of humans can out-perform another group by helping one another, then that is more fit, even if, individually, each human in that first group is less reproductively fit.

Like, one example I always like to go to are eusocial animals like ants. In a given ant colony almost none of the ants are capable of reproduction. Yet ants are a wildly successful species (just ask anyone who's ever tried to get rid of them). Similar things happen with all social animals. Our reproductive fitness comes from the fact that we are not loners. We share the burden of living among one another, which allows members of the group to specialize at certain tasks making them more effective, which makes the group as a whole more effective.

In your case of people being color blind, so what if they're color blind? If they can get by with limited color vision then it's obviously not that much of a detriment, is it? And there's still lots of things color blind people can do that help our group fitness.

So part of the problem with your idea of natural selection here is that your imposing your own values on it. Natural selection doesn't have values. It doesn't care what you think would be better. If color blindness doesn't significantly affect reproductive success, then natural selection won't select against it. Trying to imagine that it would "normally" select against it is misleading. There actually are situations where it would be advantageous to be color blind.

For example, consider some animal that has a pattern on its skin that helps it blend in with its surroundings. The pattern of color splotches normally makes it difficult for someone with color vision to see, because their eyes can distinguish between the different colors of the pattern. Someone who's color blind may not be able to distinguish those colors very well and so the animal might actually be more visible to them because they see what looks like a solid color in the shape of a dangerous animal.

This can also go the other way too, there are sometimes colors that color blind people can distinguish that people with normal color vision cannot.

[PakledHostage]

Maybe we should have scientific guardians that's all i'm saying, people clever enough to at least have a guess as to where we are headed, and the courage to decide if it's the right direction, i never hear scientists talk morals, but i think they should because they understand the world we live in, and people like myself do not.

That sounds worryingly like eugenics... That is a very dangerous road to go down. Many Nazi atrocities were committed in the interest of eugenics.

[falofonos]

This can also go the other way too, there are sometimes colors that color blind people can distinguish that people with normal color vision cannot.

An old friend of mine is colorblind to green, i believe, and because of this he was not permitted to join the armed forces. Funny really because his colorblindness let him pick out people wearing certain color camouflage from natural background very very easily. He had great fun playing airsoft with a sniper rifle.

[Lanfranc]

Maybe we should have scientific guardians that's all i'm saying, people clever enough to at least have a guess as to where we are headed, and the courage to decide if it's the right direction, i never hear scientists talk morals, but i think they should because they understand the world we live in, and people like myself do not.

They already exist in many nations – they're typically called ethics committees or ethical review boards or similar names, and exist to advise on and/or approve which types or research should be conducted and under which rules. Although they're typically not made up (entirely or even with a majority) of scientists. Ethics and morals are concepts that are formed on the level of the community, so you need to have as large a variety of viewpoints and expertises available to adjucate such matters. An institution made up entirely of scientists would be far too narrow in its approach.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

That sounds worryingly like eugenics... That is a very dangerous road to go down. Many Nazi atrocities were committed in the interest of eugenics.

Well that's not what i had in mind, i was thinking along the lines of human alarm bells, someone letting the world know if we are slowly losing good parts of ourselves we might want to keep like kindness and empathy, but as someone up above pointed out, empathy is a very succesful thing so hopefully it's not going anywhere.

I would like to thank the people that posted in this thread because it's the first time i have come close to understanding selection and evolution, i've tried before and failed but this time it clicked, you guys are good teachers.

[PakledHostage]

Sorry, I guess I misread your two comments related to this matter. I thought you were advocating active intervention in human evolution, including deciding which traits are desirable and should be selected for (or protected).

Shouldn't there be some sort of crack-squad of scientists trying to identify the best bits of ourselves, the bits we value the most, and try defend them from nature's blind hands or enhance them in some way? Imagine we might turn into a super intelligent and completely emotionless people in the future, we might become cruel without knowing it and then we'd be like the bad-guys of space, this has opened up all sorts of worries for me.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Sorry, I guess I misread your two comments related to this matter. I thought you were advocating active intervention in human evolution, including deciding which traits are desirable and should be selected for (or protected).

Well on re-reading i guess you're right i was, but in my defence physical characteristics did not cross my mind, i was thinking of things like empathy without which i feel we would be much lessened but i understand what you mean, if someone was making decisions they might be making choices for the wrong reasons and that as you say could be very dangerous, i didn't mean to offend and i apologise to you if i did cause offence.

I would however still be in favour of a group of scientists alerting the general populace if positive aspects of ourselves that we all share like empathy or the ability to appreciate music, or create art were on their way out and might possibly become lost to us, either through the blind mechanism that nature seems to be or through the effects of the prolonged use of our own technologies.

Personally i would not want to live in a world without empathy and that is why i fear it's loss, and from what i can see of nature it is entirely without pity, it gave us the ability to identify with and feel another person's suffering because it was a good group survival mechanism, not because nature cared about us, it is a happy, accidental gift that we might lose, i value empathy more than any other human virtue because without it all other of our great virtues become worthless, strength without pity, intelligence without pity, what are they worth? Nothing in my opinion.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Custard Donut (In Space)

[Nibb31]

There is no reason for traits like empathy and artistic sensibility to disappear as long as people with those traits reproduce more easily than insensitive sociopaths or psychopaths.

As a species we generally choose the individuals with which we want to reproduce among those with genetic traits that we find desirable. A large part of our evolution is induced by that selection of sexual partners.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Nibb31

[Seret]

Personally i would not want to live in a world without empathy and that is why i fear it's loss, and from what i can see of nature it is entirely without pity, it gave us this wonderful ability to feel another person's suffering because it was a good group survival mechanism and not because nature cared about us, it is a happy, accident gift that we might lose, i value empathy more than any other human virtue because without it all other of our great virtues become worthless, strength without pity, intelligence without pity, what are they worth? Nothing in my opinion.

Empathy seems to be a property of intelligence. Highly intelligent species are able to form what's called the Theory of Mind. Basically this is the ability to see things through somebody else's eyes, to understand that their perceptions and motivations are different from your own, and to be able to adapt your behaviour to this knowledge. This is fundamentally linked to empathy.

It's a pretty sophisticated mental trick, and we're not born with it, it only emerges as our brains mature and grow over the first few years. It's fascinating watching this in young children. It's why they're so attrociously bad at lying to start out, they simply aren't able to come up with a story that another person would find plausible because they lack the ability to assess what information that person has access to. Very few animals have anything close to a Theory of Mind, I think chimps might be close, they certainly have a greater level of self-awareness (eg: they understand the image in a mirror is not another chimp).

So empathy isn't likely to disappear unless we lose most of our intelligence and go back to being no smarter than the other animals. AFAIK there's no precedent for that happening, and it's hard to imagine a situation that would select for that. Our brain is pretty much what our species has specialised in, if it were no longer advantageous to be smart I think we'd be toast.

[Kerbface]

I don't know whether you'd consider it "theory of mind" but quite a lot of animals seem to be able to display a certain amount of empathy. Dogs, for example, often seem to really care about their owners, and I believe elephants have been known to grieve for quite a while over lost herd members.

[magnemoe]

I don't know whether you'd consider it "theory of mind" but quite a lot of animals seem to be able to display a certain amount of empathy. Dogs, for example, often seem to really care about their owners, and I believe elephants have been known to grieve for quite a while over lost herd members.

True, both animals live in tight knitted groups and are pretty smart.

Quite possible that we become as intelligent to deal with each other, it was the most complex situation for early humanoids.

[Kerbface]

Not sure whether it's theory of mind though, since they are not able to do things like recognise themselves in a mirror (dogs, not sure about elephants). But it's probably not that clean cut.

Vsauce had something about theory of mind, a test they give to children to see if they have it, one girl leaves the cookie in the basket, then leaves, then the other girl takes it out and puts it in a box. They ask the child where the girl who left would look for the cookie when she got back and apparently if they say the basket, it means they don't understand that other people don't always know the same things as them, thus no theory of mind. And that apparently, most kids don't develop it until 4 or 5. But that doesn't sound right to me, because kids younger than 4 or 5 always ask questions that adults might know the answer to but they don't. So they must be able to recognise knowledge that is seperate from themselves. To me it just sounds like in this theoretical situation they just simply don't think about it too carefully and have a failure of logic. Just forgetting to take that into account in a sort of abstract situation they're probably not all too used to.

[Monkeh]

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is one of the simplest yet confusing and brilliant theories ever constructed. The reason it seems so impossible is because we have difficulties in imaging the time scales involved. We can no easier imagine a million years than a million miles, it's just far too difficult for our 'African Planes' evolved minds to comprehend.

It's great you've grasped the concepts. The world will seem a much more magical and special place from now on.

A great analogy I heard once was about burger stands at festivals and football matches. Why do we have so many? How did they know the people there would like burgers?

Imagine there were 500 fast food vans in the country and they went to all of the festivals. Some of them sold poo and chips, some sold burgers and chips and some sold jelly and chips. The first vans to go out of business would be the poo and chips. Who'd buy that? Then the jelly and chips would be next. All we have left is the burger and chips. Suddenly, ALL of the vans sell burger and chips. No one decided it, no one knew what would be best. It just happened, through selective pressure, that the sane guys got more business.

It's the same with evolution of animals over long enough periods of time. If one bird has a beak that makes it really easy to get nuts on an island, it's going to have an easier time getting nuts than the other bird. This means it's going to get more calories...him and his offspring. The other birds don't get as much, more of them starve or die in infanthood. The next generation of both birds suddenly have an extra chick due to an unusually warm winter, (...or something), and the best beaked birds will be able to feed all of their offspring where the other guys cannot. Beaky and his kind grow in numbers, the other guys dwindle away. Result: Beaky birds have more individuals...multiply that out over a few thousand generations and we have only one type of bird with only one type of beak on that particular island.

There is practically no part of the human body, mind or psychology that can't be explained away through evolution. Finger nails? Pressure pads so you know how hard you're gripping something. Blushing? A way for a close knit hunter gather community to avoid the problems of telling lies or being false. Monogamy? Much easier to raise a child with BOTH parents doing some work, especially when birthing us and our big heads is so damn difficult, at least compared to other animals. Helpless at birth? Most mammals are standing and running barely a few hours after birth, we don't, why is that? Big brains left for any longer in the womb would rip the females to death on exiting, we drop early and look after the little git until it can look after itself so we can have massive brains.

The relationship between animals and plants that rely on each other can be fascinating as well. it may seem as though a plant has changed itself on purpose but all that's happened is the ones who happened to have a trait that proves to be beneficial, a flower that looks a little like a wasp, a smell that is like a source of food for ants or insects, a more attractive horn etc, it will pass on more individuals first, to reproductive age and second, to actually survive, than a creature without those adaptations. Time will make it more and more dominant until the pathetic old style creature dies off from too much competition for food, real estate or mates. Plants look very different under a UV light because pollinating insects can see much further into the UV parts of the spectrum than we can. See this image here:

Now you've had your eyes opened have a good look round the animal kingdom and try to work out why certain animals do or have what they do or have. Good, mind expanding stuff. This world of ours is an amazing place and evolution just keeps on happening.

Learning about all this is school, (many, many years ago!), my biology teacher told us a story about a butterfly, evolution in progress. there was a small town in the Yorkshire Dales where a butterfly lived. It had 2 variations, one with white wings and one with very dark wings. the white ones were by far the most prevalent, outnumbering the black ones by a factor of 100:1. The reason was that they lived in a wood that had a lot of silver birch trees in, with that papery white covering on the bark. A very nice place for a white butterfly to sit and not be seen. Not so nice for the black ones, they would be seen and eaten. When a factory was build near this town it started to pump out lots of smoke. The silver birch trees absorbed the soot and smoke and slowly, over the course of a few years, turned a much darker shade. Guess what happened to the butterflys. That's right, the white one's became almost extinct but and the black ones became the dominant variation.

If you see something and think how does it know to do or have that? Stop and think again, what has happened to make that animal get an advantage for that behaviour or anatomy.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Not sure whether it's theory of mind though, since they are not able to do things like recognise themselves in a mirror (dogs, not sure about elephants). But it's probably not that clean cut.

From the 'Mirror Test' wiki:

'Animals that have been observed to pass the mirror test include:

All great apes:

Humans – Humans tend to fail the mirror test until they are about 18 months old, or in what psychoanalysts call the "mirror stage".

Bonobos

Chimpanzees

Orangutans

Gorillas – it was initially thought that gorillas were unable to pass the test, but there are now several well-documented reports of gorillas (such as Koko) passing the test.

Bottlenose dolphins

Orcas

Elephants

European Magpies – the only non-mammal to pass the test.'