How did evolution happen then when the life expectancy was well below 50 years?
Evolution? What evolution? ;)
I guess his message is we can’t screw around any more.....
BTW Devo is throwing a concert for Obama. Couldn't be more fitting.
Well this news would explain why Congress is so stupid.
I was a noncombatant during the Sexual Revolution, but this sounds like a great cause to save the people.
I wonder if Al Gore will come up with sexual ration coupons to give preference to old guys with small carbon footprints?
Let’s assume evolution, then we’ll say that it’s stopped.
Can’t look at any other possibilities, like, we humans were originally created perfect, “fell”, then degenerated (LOST genetic information, not GAINED) over the generations to what we are today - genetically crippled and unable to adapt,
like poodles or dachshunds compared to their wolf ancestors.
I mean look at dems they are in the process of reverse evolution because they are turning in slim and primordial muck as we speak.
But undesirable mutations haves little or no chance of becoming the norm.
Well, duh ... I’M here! There’s no prospect of further improvement in the species.
I often look at my fellow humans and wonder if it ever started.
Jones’ thinking is pretty bad here. In the article (or a similar one I saw yesterday) they admit to a figure of hundreds of mutations in each individual (they cite 300, which is a reasonable guess from what I’ve read).
People, an average mutation level of 1 (ONE!) gives you inevitable error catastrophe leading to the extinction of the genome. Natural selection can only function, even in principle, when some indviduals are more healthy then the previous generation, and when the proportion of more-healthy and as-healthy individuals is large enough to pass along a healthy set of genes to future generations.
If too large a proportion of individuals have a less-healthy genome due to deleterious mutations, then there are only two possibilities: genomic entropy (the population becomes less fit), or extinction. With 300 mutations in every individual, more or less, and the vast majority of mutations being damaging, more or less, then what you have is a tidal wave of entropy that natural selection is pretty powerless to resist. It’s like trying to push back the tide with a shovel.
The old cop-out was that most mutations are neutral, because most genes are ‘junk’. That idea (’junk DNA’) has been discarded for some years, so the robust conclusion we face is that we are not evolving, but in danger of rapid devolution. Simulations I’ve seen (look up the software Mendel’s Accountant, free on the web), suggest a survival time in the thousands of generations for something like the human genome, at best.
My reaction to this article: Lol...
He’s gonna be long since dead and dust when future historians will look back at his statement and say “File this guy under ‘Dimwits’.”
Then again there might be advances in californication which will extend evolutionary tracks!
With all due respect to this gentleman’s credentials he is incorrect. Humans are changing (the factors causing the change are unclear). H. Sapiens is becoming more gracile. This trend has been going on for more that 10,000 years. In addition, our brains are becoming smaller. We do not know if they are becoming more folded. If not, we are becoming less smart that we were in the past. H. Sapiens had the largest brains about 25,000 years ago. Recall that our brain requires a lot of resources to function.