Evolutionary Retardation

[Seeker]

What are you guy's views on evolutionary retardation?

[Ivellious]

By "evolutionary retardation," do you mean the idea that mental retardation in humans is on the rise because of some evolutionary pressure caused by increased technology use?

[Seeker]

Precisely

[Ivellious]

I have a few problems with this concept.

First, mental retardation is not on the rise as much as many people think it is. Within the past several decades, many mental disorders have been dramatically re-defined to include a broader group of people. Autism Spectrum Disorder is probably the best example, since autism diagnoses are much more frequent than in previous generations. However, this can easily be attributed in large part to how "autism" is now defined as a very broad disorder. A child who today is called autistic could very well have simply been written off as "crazy," "slow," or "stupid" 50 years ago and thus would not contribute to statistics on the prevalence of mental disorders.

Another reason why mental disorders like autism appear more frequent today is that they are more visible in today's society than in the past. Today, mentally retarded and autistic children can go to regular schools (albeit often in separate programs) and live with their families throughout their childhood. In the past, mentally retarded kids were often institutionalized instead of living and going to school with "regular" kids. So, once again, we might see them in our everyday lives more often today, but that is likely due to how they are treated by today's society.

Finally, the idea that evolution is spontaneously creating more mental retardation is not really sound by evolution as we know it. Evolution is driven when certain alleles or variants of genes are passed on generation after generation after generation, and that is how those alleles become more common in a population. The case with autism and mental retardation, even if you believe that it is becoming significantly more common, appears to take the exact opposite approach...instead of the autistic and mentally retarded people being highly successful and passing those genes onto their kids (which, by and large, does not happen), we would be seeing the exact same spontaneous mutations in the exact same genes over and over in isolated situations. This would be akin to suddenly having a huge amount of couples with brown or black hair suddenly giving birth to kids with red hair for no apparent reason whatsoever.

While the idea of mental retardation evolving to give humans an advantage in a technology driven world is intriguing, I just don't see it holding up when you look at it more closely. While it might be true that many mental disorders cause people to have increased focus and, occasionally, the ability to store huge amounts of data in their brains quickly, the fact of the matter is these possible benefits also come at the massive cost of being outcasts in human society, frequent physical defects, and the inability to reproduce and pass on their genes (the whole point of evolution).

[Byblos]

I haven't heard the specific term 'evolutionary retardation' before but it fits perfectly something I've been thinking about lately. The evolution of man (i.e. a self-aware, conscious being) has proven detrimental to evolution as described in textbooks. As a species we are no longer directed towards survival by natural selection, adaptation, and random mutation. Evolution has given us the mechanism to, well, not only stop evolution, but to completely reverse and up-end its machinations. We no longer adapt to our environment, we make our environment adapt to us. We no longer let natural selection take its course, we invent medicines and cure previously incurable diseases that otherwise could have made us evolve into entirely different species (many). We no longer succumb to random mutation, we map our entire genome, are capable of generating new organs in labs, and quite soon will be able to manipulate our DNA to ensure the perpetuity or our species, as is, which is something utterly foreign to a 'natural' process such as evolution. The way I see it, evolution was the direct result of its own demise. Obviously there's much more that can be said but this is just a quick summary of what's been on my mind lately (among a few dozen other things ).

Any thoughts?

[Danieltwotwenty]

I haven't heard the specific term 'evolutionary retardation' before but it fits perfectly something I've been thinking about lately. The evolution of man (i.e. a self-aware, conscious being) has proven detrimental to evolution as described in textbooks. As a species we are no longer directed towards survival by natural selection, adaptation, and random mutation. Evolution has given us the mechanism to, well, not only stop evolution, but to completely reverse and up-end its machinations. We no longer adapt to our environment, we make our environment adapt to us. We no longer let natural selection take its course, we invent medicines and cure previously incurable diseases that otherwise could have made us evolve into entirely different species (many). We no longer succumb to random mutation, we map our entire genome, are capable of generating new organs in labs, and quite soon will be able to manipulate our DNA to ensure the perpetuity or our species, as is, which is something utterly foreign to a 'natural' process such as evolution. The way I see it, evolution was the direct result of its own demise. Obviously there's much more that can be said but this is just a quick summary of what's been on my mind lately (among a few dozen other things ).

Any thoughts?

I was thinking the exact same thing and maybe evolution is fighting back with cancer rates, antibiotic resistant disease, swine flue and avian flu etc......................

Have we really adapted our environment to us, it seems as though the environment we have made is killing us........

Have we really outclassed evolution or is it just playing a game of catch up.

[Byblos]

I haven't heard the specific term 'evolutionary retardation' before but it fits perfectly something I've been thinking about lately. The evolution of man (i.e. a self-aware, conscious being) has proven detrimental to evolution as described in textbooks. As a species we are no longer directed towards survival by natural selection, adaptation, and random mutation. Evolution has given us the mechanism to, well, not only stop evolution, but to completely reverse and up-end its machinations. We no longer adapt to our environment, we make our environment adapt to us. We no longer let natural selection take its course, we invent medicines and cure previously incurable diseases that otherwise could have made us evolve into entirely different species (many). We no longer succumb to random mutation, we map our entire genome, are capable of generating new organs in labs, and quite soon will be able to manipulate our DNA to ensure the perpetuity or our species, as is, which is something utterly foreign to a 'natural' process such as evolution. The way I see it, evolution was the direct result of its own demise. Obviously there's much more that can be said but this is just a quick summary of what's been on my mind lately (among a few dozen other things ).

Any thoughts?

I was thinking the exact same thing and maybe evolution is fighting back with cancer rates, antibiotic resistant disease, swine flue and avian flu etc......................

Have we really adapted our environment to us, it seems as though the environment we have made is killing us........

Have we really outclassed evolution or is it just playing a game of catch up.

Lol, yeah, I can picture evolution as an old man, sitting back in some corner with his frowns up, conjuring up counter-attacks.

[B. W.]

I haven't heard the specific term 'evolutionary retardation' before but it fits perfectly something I've been thinking about lately. The evolution of man (i.e. a self-aware, conscious being) has proven detrimental to evolution as described in textbooks. As a species we are no longer directed towards survival by natural selection, adaptation, and random mutation. Evolution has given us the mechanism to, well, not only stop evolution, but to completely reverse and up-end its machinations. We no longer adapt to our environment, we make our environment adapt to us. We no longer let natural selection take its course, we invent medicines and cure previously incurable diseases that otherwise could have made us evolve into entirely different species (many). We no longer succumb to random mutation, we map our entire genome, are capable of generating new organs in labs, and quite soon will be able to manipulate our DNA to ensure the perpetuity or our species, as is, which is something utterly foreign to a 'natural' process such as evolution. The way I see it, evolution was the direct result of its own demise. Obviously there's much more that can be said but this is just a quick summary of what's been on my mind lately (among a few dozen other things ).

Any thoughts?

Entropy - Law of thermodynamics - maybe? or how we humans screw things up?

Look up the latest article:

Scientist claim they can alter Human DNA through DNA surgery

Eating too much cannabis, LSD, mercury, radioactive fallout, alcohol, etc and etc can alter human DNA as well too to future unknown generations...
-
-
-