Evolution is broken

Evolution requires that the strongest of the species reproduce more than the weakest, which is not the case for the human race where nearly everyone survives to reproduce.  Statistically, wealth and #of children have a loose negative correlation which probably is resulting in genetic regression.

I can see four possibilities:
A)War or lack of resources causes survival rate to drop sufficiently for evolution to work
B)Genetic Engineering progresses far enough that we can improve the human genome manually
C)New social reproduction norms such as polygamy or government controlled breeding restrict reproduction to people with superior genomes
D)Sudden extinction causes human race to go extinct before evolving (ie global thermonuclear war, supernova)

Which scenario do you prefer and which do think is most likely.  I would prefer B but A is probably more likely.  If you can think of other like scenarios, post them.

I saw an intense computer simulation of this exact thing, what happens when evolutionary pressures are removed. In short, the species is expected to grow incredibly fast in population (as we see) until it gets close to some population limit, based on food or space. The species will remain there for several dozen hundred generations until the genome is so filled with crap, useless genes, that a giant extinction event will occur where almost every (in the simulations, it WAS every) individual of the species goes extint.

Basically, once every member of the species is a fat, unhealthy blob, once they start to die off because they can't even artificially remain alive any more, then the population density decreases and it makes it harder for everyone else to reproduce, and in short time they all die out.

Luckily, since there IS a positive coorilation between # of children and coolness-factor/slut-factor, we'll still be evolving, just towards a species of really cool guys and really slutty girls (although both will be fairly dumb).

Could be worse.

Humans are done evolving and will probably never start again, we don’t need it, evolution is a tool used to ensure species survival which we have reached the peak of. What we have now is "knowledge evolution" where human’s knowledge moves the species "along" instead of genetic mutations.

>>3
obviously knows nothing about how evolution works

>>3, the genome doesn't just lock into place once people no longer need to improve to survive.  Most genetic mutations are unfavorable, so without natural selection the gene pool will become polluted with junk DNA  as seen in >>2's simulation.  The current system isn't sustainable, so somethings going to need to change.

>>4
Well, >>3 has it right imo that "knowledge evolution" is going to be the main type of change in humans. Our knowledge is expanding at a rate many times faster than our bodies are changing.. not to mention our knowledge in genetic engineering.

Of course, you're completely correct in saying that we'll still continue to evolve. Just saying that >>3's main point is still valid.

>>1
I think the free market and law enforcement through democracy will handle all of this. Coorporations who need workers will pay women to have children with certain genetic qualities. The law will ensure that they are given the best genes since they will be sentient. Couples of course will want their kids to have the best genes and will screen embryos for diseased dna before growing it into a sentient being in the woman's womb.

We just have to bitch slap stupid people until they stop being scared of ensuring their kids don't get diabetes or cystic fibrosis and grow up the be intelligent, healthy and happy.

>>3 here;


>>5
Don’t be afraid of junk DNA, if its truly junk DNA (aka non readable codons) then it can do no harm. In fact (this is debatable in biology) many biologists consider 99% of the human genome to be junk DNA called introns.

if by junk dna you really mean dna with unfavorable sequences that are readable thus producing damaging proteins, then, you must face up to what I meant by "knowledge evolution". We have the ability to adjust our environment that no other animals have. We don’t need to sit and die to better our species, we can use our minds instead. We can cure genetic diseases, we don’t need chance mutations anymore, we have graduated

Our tools will evolve faster then us and rid of our flaws... Seeing as how the tech around is is rising in ^ instead of *

There are approximately two billion children ( persons under 18 ) in the
world.

However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or
Buddhist religions (except maybe in Japan) , this reduces the workload for
Christmas night to about 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the
Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children
per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at
least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa
has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the
chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the
tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney,
jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around
the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the
purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops
or breaks.

This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times
the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made
vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second,
and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the
sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On
land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount,
the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--Santa would need
360,000 of them.

This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another
54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the
ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second
creates enormous air resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the
same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead
pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second
each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in
their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26
thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth
house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from
a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015
pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him
to a quivering blob of pink goo and a few white hairs....

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Technically, evolution is stil accuring. It is an inescapable natural law. In a society such as our own (I'm assumiong you're American, but correct me if I'm wrong...Actually, the same applies to nearly any large-scale population of humans), evolution won't present itself obviously. But, none the less, it is still there. It always has been. A nice example of this could be the height of people. Take  loot back in history and note that, by today's standards, most people were short. Today, however, most anybody would be taller than those peoples who lived with our forfathers. So, for all intensive purposes, evolution is not broken, though I'm sure you didn't intent for your title to be so striking.

As for the possibilities, here's my take, incase anyone want to know:

A. I believe that the former of these circumstances will cause evolution to be more obvious. Unforyunatly, our world is comming to an end. Tyranistic indiviuals own the world, and in less time than some may think, the human race will be confined and forced to live like cages animals (figuratively, not literally).

B and C. Both of these are examples of a practice called "Eugenics". Look it up on Wikipedia. There's a fascinating artical found there-in. I have also writen a paper on the topic inwhich I argue that the practice of eugenics would prove to be the end of the humanity due to a lack of genetic variation and also due to a totalitarian control, much like part "A".

D. I don't think a nuclear winter would be enough to kill off *all* humans. I there's anything which our history has shown us, it's that the human race is miraculously resourceful. If such a thing would happen, and the population would be cut down drastically, evolution would surely arrise again, producing some humans which are more intelligent/resourceful and  some that are more tolerent to radiation and other stimuli.

Of all your choises, I believe that choise "A" is the most likely, inwhich case, I hope that the human race will prove to be as resourcefull and brilliant as I think we are.

Assuming modern civilisation lasts, we have a good 100 generations or so before "devolution" sets in. Let's see where genetic engineering takes us before we start to go nazi on anyone's ass.

>>9

Soon our tools will have no use for us.

>>13
wow like deep man, im sure your already educated on the limits of digital cognition because that post was like so deep

The american race is a mistake in mankind's evolution. Their filthy kind is the ruin of humanity

>>15
I would'nt say that any "american race" is a "mistake in evolution", even if evolution can have mistakes in it.  Sure, they have problems, but as far as the "ruin of humanity"  goes, America is certainly doing a better job than certain parts of Africa, or, say, North Korea are at the moment.
>>1
I'm thinking A) is the most likely, and to a certain extent, also the most preferable one (at least for the survivors).  In this case, overpopulation is also dealt with.

E) We finally manage to create strong AI. The robots take over from there, explore the universe, etc, etc. It doesn't really matter what happens to us at that point; genetic engineering could become important, or bionic implants. Or the robots get rid of us (here's hoping).

>>10
That's some delicious pasta

>>10
Seriously though, I've heard some physics law formula regarding to the position of the Earth almost gets to divide by zero in the winter solstice, making Christmas the divide by zero day. No kidding.