Lack of evolution

I just had some oral surgery as some of you may know. I was
thinking about our modern life. In the past I would have died
from the infection that comes with the crowding of my jaw bone and my
wisdom teeth.

We as humans have evolved to a point where we have no need for these
teeth. As our brain has gotten larger our jaw and mouth have
become smaller. So to eliminate the wisdome teeth from the gene
pool people like me would die out from infection.

But with modern medican we have no need to worry about things like
this. 45 minutes and a few days of mild discomfort and I dont
have these teeth. This had put a hault on evolution. We
aren't removing the bad seads from our species. This isn't a new
though, Nazi Germany had simular thoughs. As did pre war USA.

We as humans can only evolve our thoughts and ideas, not our
bodies. We are making our selfs weaker. The richer the
nation the more we spread these poor genes. Dont get me wrong, I
dont think anyone should remove people based on bad genes.

I just think we will be at a stand still untill we as humans posses the
power to remake and re-design our genes and DNA. Not untill we
can pin point the wisdome tooth and remove it forever will be be able
to evolve.

any other thoughts?

You have a fair point, but it isn't entirely true. The fact is, that there is statistically significant negative correlation between most forms of mortality and IQ. You are probably right about the wisdom teeth. There is no selective pressure in that case, but evolution is indeed active, at least with regard to intelligence. Dumb people have more car accidents, die more often in the hospital (they don't ask questions or know what is going on), and are more likely to mis-dose on prescriptions.

Dumb people also are less likly to us comdoms or other forms of save sex.

Maybe you should take third world countries into consideration.

Some people have mouths that can easily fit wisdom teeth, and others
can't...I don't see how this is necessarily evolution at least in a
positive sense. It's just a different form of person. There is some
bird (don't know the name off hand) that has a ton of variations of the
exact same core bird, there are multiple "families" with different
beaks but they are technically the same bird. I would not correlate
this physical different to any real intelligence, it's more a
locational and environmental evolution rather than anything that would
mean we're getting smarter. Quite the opposite, I think nature is
having trouble killing the stupid ones off now that people don't die
from what we now see as "routine" so I personally think we're on a
decline in societal health.

[edit] I was actually at the dentist today myself, and while it wasn't
FOR wisdom teeth...I'm 19 and mine have no come in, if they ever will.
I have enough room in my mouth to support them if that does so happen.

If evolution were a stream, placing a rock in its path will only change the path - not the persistance of the stream. You are right, in a sense. As we empower ourselves with science and knowledge, we are obviously altering the future path of our species. This in itself is evolution. I mean, come on - isn't it obvious that we are evolving toward a state of pure energy. Who the f**k needs wisdom teeth - or skin, for that matter - if you can blast your mind across the galaxy, on a pulse of dark energy. Sheesh, get with the program :rolleyes:

Evolution is defined by history, not the other way around. In many ways, it fails to define many animal - and certainly most human - relationships.

Here's my thought: technology, thought - any innovation - is our evolution. We, as a species, are a bunch of spindly, two-legged, bare-skinned monkies with no natural weapons. We have only survived and come to dominate the world because our ability to think, to invent, to not merely adapt to the world around us but to force it to adapt to us. The natural selection of apes ceased to apply to us the moment we first arranged stones into a shelter from the wind and rain; since then, we have had a second system of natural selection, one of ideas, pushing always towards creating total shelter from the pains of our impartial reality. Who cares about poor eyesight or wisdom teeth? Were we beasts hunting in the desert, these could very well be issues of grave importance, but we are in a world to which the highest contribution we can give has nothing to do with our physical attributes - just look at Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, etc. Who cares if, in some primitive society, they would have died? To me, it's not even worth considering.

I think we are branching in two directions. I think the evolution
of thoughs are called meams (something like that) and we are also
dealing with our physical evolution.

The two will have to cross paths at one point, and cancle the other
out. Phusical evolution cant finish off the evolution of thought
becuase we have gone too far with our thoughts, but we have not yet
reached a point where our thoughts and ideas can harness our physical
evolution.

The point isn't wisdome teeth, its the fact that we are allowing our
species to continue to reproduce even with defects that evolution is
trying to phase out. We dont have the power to remove these
defects ourself. But we can work around them.

Thrid world countries I think will evolve as humans faster than we in
first world countries will. I'm sure there is a study out there
that shows small tribes in Africa dont have as many defects as people
in the west have.

that would be intresting to find out.

If not for modern medicine I would be dead as well. Thats probably the case for half the people here. I certainly agree that modern medicine is preventing genetic diseases from being weeded out from the population, but who cares as long as we can continue to treat it?

Given that most people are likely to breed under your proposals, then (edit: dominant) mutations are even more likely to spread their way around human beings and we should evolve faster. It's just the negative bits which aren't being got rid of, which we can try to tackle with medicine.

A species evolves as an adaptation to its environment. One
species selectively grows certain mutations in order to better its
survival, while other species develop mutations to counter that
mutation. We are at the top of the food chain, we have no serious
natural threats besides disease and ourselves. Medicine can take
care of most of the common diseases and defects in human anatomy.
So no physical mutation, even if it makes us stronger, will matter for
our survival. So all (or many) of these mutations just get
absorbed into the gene pool and fade to nothingness.

Strange. My wisdom teeth are growing quite nicely and aren't causing any trouble. Does that mean that i'm not a homo sapiens sapiens? :smile:

Andrei is the Ubermensch.

toothrot is evolution

A lot of people don't have problems with their wisdom teeth; mine are fine and rarely cause pain, though they are slightly pushing my molars forward a bit.

A lot of people don't have problems with their wisdom teeth;
mine are fine and rarely cause pain, though they are slightly pushing
my molars forward a bit.

... and popped out a couple of your front teeth :wink:

DrGlass- this is what i've been trying to TELL everyone!!! But it's not only modern medicine that's causing it. It's a whole array of different things that are found in our society.

• We have the modern medicine curing those that would have normally died.
• we have the poor eyesight that would normally prevent us from seeing predators and throwing spears correctly that is being corrected with surgery and lenses.
• We have the general additude that we need to accept people the way they are.
• genetically inferior people continue to breed.
• genetically inferior ppl often surive against the odds because of technology.
• People have WAY lower standards on who they shag because of mind-altering substances
• Gen. Inf. ppl are less likely to be informed of proper safe sex techniques

We will also notice on what may be a more humorous note (but it's not meant to be), that you rarely ever hear of a drunk driver being killed. all i ever hear about is that the drunk driver survived and teh person he hit did not. It seems that getting drunk and driving is very stupid and quite possibly the effect of inferior genes.

We have the modern medicine curing those that would have normally died.

Stephen Hawking

we have the poor eyesight that would normally prevent us from seeing

predators and throwing spears correctly

Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles

We have the general additude that we need to accept people the way they are

Martin Luther King Jr

genetically inferior people continue to breed.

Define genetically inferior.

genetically inferior ppl often surive against the odds because of technology.

Define genetically inferior.

People have WAY lower standards on who they shag because of mind-altering substances

How is this relevant? (How is it bad in any way? :wink: )

Gen. Inf. ppl are less likely to be informed of proper safe sex techniques

Makes no sense whatsoever. Random Conjecture.

genetically inferior means that they are inferior in some way... genetically... like predisposition to cancer or poor eyesight.

sure ray charles was great, but he prolly would not have mated back in the day.

MLK jr didn't have anything to do with this

and yes stephen hawking is f**kin amazing, but thinking about black holes really doesnt help me any, nor does it help anyone else eveolve or survive until we gotta use black holes somehow to run away ffrom planetary annihilation.

and about the low standards, the ugly and stupid tards that would normally not get any are getting laid because some chick is on ecstasy.

It doesn't really matter. Evolution only works towards the local
maxima, not towards some glorious perfect creature in the future.
Technology has shifted what it means to be "fit" for humans. Now that
means we're poorly adapted for life after some hypothetical catastrophy
than means we have to go back to hunting animals and chucking spears to
survive; but evolution can't predict that, and it may never happen
anyway.

Plus, there's still plenty of people around who could survive by
hunting animals etc. (and that sort of lifestyle couldn't sustain a
large population anyway, so large chunk of people would die-off
whatever their ability).

Evolution happens. Nothing can stop it. Modern technology simply changes the selection forces that act upon our genetic variations.

True, human beings have become physically weaker compared to our ancesters (primitive humans are much stronger than us, and so are the modern great apes). I just recently read that a chimpanzee (our closest modern relative) typically has five times the upper body strength than an adult human. But our intellect has evolved to a level that far surpasses even the most intelligent animal.

We just have different forces (I guess you can call it "artificial" selection instead of natural selection) that mold the way we evolve. Instead of having infectious diseases that kill us, we have heart disease, obesity, and cancer. Evolution happens constantly simply we still die and some of us die before we reproduce.

It'll be difficult to foresee what the product of this different sort of natural selection will be, but I guess none of us really have to worry about that. We won't be around to see the result.

What a dumb attitude. Tell me where "genetically superior" people came from in the first place, and why "genetically inferior" people are so bad. The point in treating everyone the same is that, genetically, it doesn't really matter and people can achieve different things through training and being given the chance- so what if you can't cope with tensors and matricies and other mathematical concepts, but you might be a better plumber or motorbike rider than I'll ever be.

Er, and we'll ignore that retarded last post. "thinking about black holes really doesnt help me any, nor does it help anyone else eveolve or survive until we gotta use black holes somehow to run away ffrom planetary annihilation" Do you think a caveman understood that he could use his new-fangled fire to extract metals from ores, or that a wheel could be used in cogs?

And I'll repeat what I said earlier. 'Evolution' will still happen, but through simple genetic mutation introducting good/bad features, rather than survival of the fittest.

The human mind cannot grasp the time frames it takes for "normal" evolution to take place, hence the concept that we came from apes is still not completely accepted.

large numbers like that throw normal people off, its like the old saying i heard in school. if you asked an ant how long the tree was there "i dunno, has always been, since before my parents and my parents parents,etc,etc"

i also think that "dumb" is a sort of evolutionary thing. people may be smarter in a sense, but dumber than our forbearer's in vital areas, such as basic survival.

anywho's none of us could possible live long enough to witness even one confirmed "evolutionary" event so.. even looking back in recored history ( a very small time period, but some would think its long) there has not been one confirmed event.

"Superior" and "inferior" are both relative terms. One person's "superior" trait may be another's fault. Having wisdom teeth at one point may have been a fine idea, but not anymore.

It's dangerous to assign these attributes to people's genes. Genes are merely different. One type of variation is not better than any other. In fact, this type of thinking may end up being human's eventual downfall.

Fortunately, some of us still see the light. :smile:

While mutation is possibly the biggest factor in evolution, our technological evolution can benefit us in the same way. For example, our advances in stem cell research can possibly remedy most genetic-level problems. (Mutations.) Another example is our ever-extending lifespan due to medicine.

Though.. survival of the fittest and death to the weak is also a factor. The constant procreation of HIV-positive people is an exmaple of how evolution has failed. If we didn't treat this condition, many would die.. along with the virus, eventually. (Maybe?)

technical advances are not evolution, but a natural form of life. things that survive an event learn from the event so to speak.

evolution is alterations in the body, that may lead to a better product sometime.

i agree that science is increasing our bodies ability to stem off diseases, but its not evolutionary based.

think of it this way, if we could go back in time, taking our science with us, we could not alter the extinction of the Neanderthals.

I dont think "Superior" and "inferior" have anything to do with
evolution, when it comes to humans. It seems to me that our
bodies are just cleaning house. We no longer need wisdome teeth,
but we do need a bigger brain. Our larger brain is pushing our
jaw down and taking up the space our teeth would of had. As this
happens people with wisdome teeth would, with out any medical support,
faded out of existance.

Now we are keeping these un-needed genes around and mixing them into
our gene pool. So we now stand at a point in evolution where we
can treat our problems but not fix them. I think most of us will
see the end of our evolution, we have mapped the genome. Humans
are ready to destroy any and all genetic malfunction we have, but where
will that put us?

If we are able to take out the wisdome tooth gene and the other usless
body functions, as well as any genetic deseise... we will stop
evolving. Is that really a good thing?

Until we figure out a way to be immortal, evolution does not stop. And people still die from accidents and such, so evolution will always operate in one way or another.

A dumbass drunk driver runs down and kills 3 people that are both mentally and physically above average. Is this survival of the fittest?

The evolution that applied to almost every other organism in the past does not apply to us. Ours is an entirely new kind - that which relies on the contribution of every human being.. not just the select few that might have developed webbed feet or hooked beaks. Eventually, we will completely detroy ourselves with our own science.. THEN darwin's evolution will have shown its face again.

A rock falling on a penguin isn't evolution.

the phasing out of poor genes is.

We arn't removing these genes we are breading these deeping into our specise.

What i meant is that we dont have the nature factor killing us off. We have our own species doing that. ..and BTW,

CREATIONISM CREATIONISM CREATIONISM!! (come on, someone had to say it)

Bewbies, you must be a Bush-loving Republican!

Cuz no self-respecting Democrat will type CR****** in capital letters (notice I am a self-respecting Democrat).

We have evolved past the level where physical traits need be our primary concern. Stop trying to deny it. Whether we would survive in a primal society or whether "evolution" is continuing in its most base form should hardly be our concern. Like I say, we no longer need to wait millions of years to become immune to diseases when we can simply invent cures for them - that is human evolution.

<belief> i personally believe that once man has reached a terminal point in
evolution it will kill itself off. *whether through evolution of
technology or evolution in mind or man*. The further we go the more
ammoral we become , because with more brains we tend to deny our
wisdoms . My brother is the smartest man i know , but is a complete
idiot in common sense. When we dont have any common sense we often
don't second think things causing rash desicions. Or maybe it'll be
from willing for pleasures, obesity and whatnot. Each time we create
a new technology it makes our life easier , giving up a physical
activity usually and eventually making us all slugs. Either way man
will die one day when it has reached its terminal evolution. Millions
of years it may be but it still i believe will happen. </belief>

We have evolved past the level where physical traits need be our primary concern.
Stop trying to deny it. Whether we would survive in a primal society or
whether "evolution" is continuing in its most base form should hardly
be our concern. Like I say, we no longer need to wait millions of years
to become immune to diseases when we can simply invent cures for them -
that is human evolution.

We may not need to evolve, but we still are. modern medicin is
just a blink to evolution. We are just now seeing traits that
helped us when we were cave men dissapearing. Back to the wisdom
teeth, we havn't needed a large back row of teeth for hundreds of
thousands of years.

evolution dosn't make us immune to diseases. It makes us better
suited to fit in our enviroment. The only way it can do this is
to remove those who are not fit to live. But now we are all fit
to live (to a point). What if we are putting a stop on evolution
when evolution could be trying to unlock powers we never new we had
(ESP, etc.).