I get so tired of comments like this:
The Grim Reaper is taking a rest, and inherited differences in the ability to withstand cold, starvation or disease no longer power Darwin's machine. Those who die from such killers do so when they are so old that natural selection has lost interest.
Right. Tell the folk in Darfur that. Tell those in Bangladesh after a cyclone. Tell folks in New Orleans, or Indonesia, or native populations in Nunavit, Australia, New Zealand, the Amazon, South Africa and Tierra del Fuego. Tell those whose access to health care is patchy at best. Even in the UK that is not true.
I don't get Steve Jones. He's notionally very well informed, but then he comes out with stupid comments like this:
And what about natural selection? That, too, is on the way out. I depress my students with the statement that two out of three of them will die for reasons connected to the genes they carry. Then I cheer them up by pointing out that in Shakespeare's time, two out of three of them would be dead already.
And their dying earlier than their conspecifics for genetic reasons won't affect, say, the ongoing welfare of their grandchildren? Is Jones unaware that humans are a social organism that contribute to the fitness of later generations long after reproduction stops? Is he unaware that even slight differences in fitness can have largescale effects over many generations? This is a classic piece of English genetic selectionism.
Moreover, is he unaware that the so-called selection-stopping health care of the "developed world" has been in place for less than two generations and may not survive for many more? Selection is a transgenerational process, and ephemera do not generally add much beyond a bit of statistical noise. Finally, is he unaware that if you allow all to survive to reproduction, rates of population growth will inevitably exceed the resources available to feed them, and selection, delayed but not put off indefinitely, will come thundering back with a crash even for those traits we think are "solved".
Evolution has not stopped, nor even, I warrant, slowed appreciably. Sure, large populations tend to evolve less quickly than smaller ones for good stochastic reasons, but populations are partitioned. It may be in England that one's partner has ancestry from a long way away, but there have been mass migrations in the human past before, in Africa when the cultural technique of animal herding spread southwards 2000 years ago, and before that in the period from around 3000-1500BCE from central Asia to Europe and back. Genes do not stay in one place for very long in evolutionary terms. Jones is mistaking small temporary effects for evolutionarily significant ones.
Actual studies on wild populations show that evolution is not a monotonous gradual process always and everywhere the same, but a process of fits and starts, diffusion and collection, and where one pressure is removed, others take its place immediately. White europeans in Australia are presently undergoing strong selection against pale skin, through large differentials in melanoma rates. In another few thousand years, we might expect even the descendants of whites to be quite dark. It happened in the Indian subcontinent and South American. It is happening here.
Once and for all: evolution has not stopped. Not now nor ever.
Late note: Razib has a more detailed takedown here and here.
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"Finally, is he unaware that if you allow all to survive to reproduction, rates of population growth will inevitably exceed the resources available to feed them, and selection, delayed but not put off indefinitely, will come thundering back with a crash even for those traits we think are "solved"."
Which is why the widespread use of contraception is a blessing and should be further encouraged, amirite???
Perhaps Prof. Jones should take a trip to Afghanistan, where few if any of the locals remain untested for ability to survive on about seven calories per week, while dodging bullets, downwind from Siberia.
On a less localized level, all organisms upon this planet are beginning an evolutionary filtration for coexistence with a remarkable soup of carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic substances distributed unevenly throughout the biosphere.
Seed #18 Sept./Oct 2008
How We Evolve p66
I just love your blog essays, John, and the comment conversations which usually follow them! Very thought-provoking stuff. I'm looking forward to reading your species book.
Answers in Genesis is about to kill evolution again, too, this time using a beautifully illustrated 2009 calendar (yours for only a modest contribution!). Aren't they tired of killing evolution over and over again, only to find that it won't stay dead? It's pathetic and amusing.
Dollars against Darwin
I'll have to disagree here. Although some selection pressures have remained, a lot are either minimal or withering away. The countries with the lowest life expectancy in the world still have a life expectancy higher than 500 years ago by a few decades.
There will certainly be a knock-on effect on future generations but the idea of selection mainly being about plain survival just doesn't hold any more.
I'll have to disagree here. Although some selection pressures have remained, a lot are either minimal or withering away. The countries with the lowest life expectancy in the world still have a life expectancy higher than 500 years ago by a few decades.
There will certainly be a knock-on effect on future generations but the idea of selection mainly being about plain survival just doesn't hold any more.
Population sizes increase when selection pressures are lowered, shrink when they are raised. The recent catastrophic increase in human population size suggests that selection pressures have moderated over the past several generations. If you look carefully at the distribution of population growth among various human groups, it does not correlate well with developed modern society with good health care, abundant foood, etc. Why is an important question.
Remeber, selection in its simplest form relates to simple Darwinian fittness; the proportional ability of an individual to produce and raise offspring to sexual maturity. Survival is not the whole story.
Two points: We do cultural adaptation with great rapidity, thus changes in gene frequency are less important as adaptive tactics. Secondly, given the ongoing homoginization of humanity, a speciation event seems unlikely.
Does sexual selection count as natural selection? Or selection on fecundity?
Jim - your argument only holds if selection is density dependent. If density dependent losses are random with respect to genotype, it wouldn't have any effect on selection. Now I'm sure some selection is density dependent (e.g. the effects of inbreeding seem to be stronger when the organism is stressed), but it's certainly not all and may be fairly minor.
One tiny thing:
> It may be in England that one's partner has ancestry from a long way away
To which I say: HA! A typical Englander is likely to marry someone with ancestry from just down the street, going back many generations. This is decreasingly the case, but it's still the case even now.
Saying that people are no longer under the pressures of natural selection because our tools and medicines have made us healthier is like saying that birds are no longer under the pressure of natural selection because they can fly away from danger---complete bulls--t.
Culture, tools, reasoning, science, all are adaptations. If they're making more of us live longer, it doesn't mean we've left the game, it means we're winning.
If evolution evolved, why is there still evolution?!!
John said: "This is a classic piece of English genetic selectionism."
1) What's that supposed to mean?
2) STEVE JONES ISN'T ENGLISH, HE'S WELSH!!
Doesn't matter. There's a particularly English style of doing evolutionary genetics that derives from Haldane and Fisher that Jones is bang in the middle of: adaptationist, tending to overlook population structure, simplifying assumptions that make eugenic conclusions possible. He could be Bombay Welsh for all I care - it's still English genetics.
FYI, evidence for the grandmother hypothesis is at best patchy. Sure, it's possible, but it's also clear that we decay for a reason; we aren't evolved to live past 50.
South Wales has a large population of Indian descent that goes back to the 19th century when Cardiff was the largest port in the world, Indian seamen coming of the cargo boats tended to end up staying there. However most of these people are of Bengali extractions and as even an Aussie Anthropoid should know Mumbai (to give it its correct name) is in Maharashtra on the other side of India.
Bob is right in one sense, when looking and evoltution by natural selection, it is the differential survival of offspring that is important, not the total number. What were the most important selection pressures acting on my ancestors 200 years ago, may not be the same as they are now. While my grandfather may have faced starvation, I am far more likely to de of disease related to obesity. Which, as millions still die of starvation around the world, also illustrates the heterogenity of human populations.
There is still differential survival of offspring but it is important to note that it isnt just failure to survive that conveys fitness or not, it is failure to reproduce. In a sense, we may have a generation of very unfit Austrlians, no matter how long they live.
You're foolish. Natural selection only works in anarchy, in animal nature. Not in an complex society with medications to hack vulnerabilities in human.
You say:
Right. Tell the folk in Darfur that. Tell those in Bangladesh after a cyclone. Tell folks in New Orleans, or Indonesia, or native populations in Nunavit, Australia, New Zealand, the Amazon, South Africa and Tierra del Fuego. Tell those whose access to health care is patchy at best. Even in the UK that is not true.
Seriously dude, If anarchy ruled there after chatastrophy, youv'd be right. But your'e not. There are international help systems which takes care of survivors. And if your point is that "the smartest gets" away from the flood or something you might got some kind of point, but still this creates only strong animalistic survivors not an advanced thinking human race.... seriously.
Lets get serious, do you believe all this hype
Yea i believe it
He's taking a common laypersons view that evolution has direction. Evolution is directionless, fitness is for the current environment, whereas he thinks of fitness as "better in his eyes".
All that obsessive anti-sociobiology must have rotted his brain somewhat perhaps?
Yup, Id say its the end all over again!
Jiff
www.anonymity.at.tc
Just like to say that I'm no scientist but I would say we are more likely to reverse the effects of evolution if we are not carefull.
People living on benifits in housing estates are having a lot more children than any profesional couples these days. I would be surprised if this is not happening already. I know there are a lot of good people living in housing estates but most are bad prople and not good for the gene pool at all.
Robert, this is a silly claim. Medical treatment is a part of the environment for those that have it, and so they will adapt to it so long as it remains in force, adn when it (inevitably) collapses, then the population will adapt to that. Likewise people on benefits. There is not an indefinite amount of benefits available, so there will inevitably be a selective rebound there too.
And anyway, humans have been helping each other survive for hundreds of thousands of years without any appreciable effect on the overall average fitness of the population as a whole. There is no "good for the gene pool", there is only the gene pool. What counts as "good" is whatever tends to outreproduce the other alternatives in the population at that time. If they are doing that now, then by definition they are fitter. But they have to be able to do so during a number of cycles of feast and famine before we can say they were in some environmental sense fitter, so wait and see.
John it may well be a silly claim, but you have yet to explain to me in terms I can understand why it is not the case.
In the UK hard working people are subsidising a class of people that will never work, perhaps rob from time to time and have lots of kids to maximise there benefits. Most of these kids will follow the same path. What effect will this have in a few generations time, what effect will it have on the UK population, will they be fitter?
Hundreds of human genes have been found to still be under the pressure of natural selection and thus evolving. This "recent" info is actually 2 years old at this point:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Anyone know any Hemophiliacs?
I used to but I think HIV caused their extinction.
Anyone know any Hemophiliacs?
I used to but I think AIDS caused their extinction.
The third world health care can get a man to breeding age, the real nail in the coffin of evolution is monogamy.
I don't really agree. while there is certainly still active selection in sexual partners, in more developed regions like the united states, the more intense selective pressures are not an issue. Evolution obviously hasn't stopped, but given what you mentioned about evolution happening in starts and stops, I believe we can safely say that the majority of people in developed countries are currently in an evolutionary slow-down where they are facing few selective pressures.
The idea that evolution can stop is based on the erroneous (Haeckelian?) idea that evolution is a single, cohesive entity with memory and foresight, and a certain trajectory that might be mappable. In reality it is an epiphenomenon based on zillions of moment-to-moment happenings. Where there are heritable genetic differences and environmental challenge -- wherever these challenges might emanate -- there will be evolution.
I really enjoyed both articles and I agree with both of you it seems to me that evolution is pretty much over (-the effects of pollution) in the developed world, however evolution is still very much alive in the third world.
I really enjoyed both articles and I agree with both of you it seems to me that evolution is pretty much over (-the effects of pollution) in the developed world, however evolution is still very much alive in the third world.
Phelan's SEED article is now online:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/10/how_we_evolve_1.php
The only way for evolution to stop, is for time to stop. But wait... we're not really sure that time passes anyway (at what speed does it pass? one minute per minute?). Block time vs presentism and all that. If block time is correct - as most physicists seem to think - then nothing passes. Time is static, there is no real change, and "now" (a word that we use everyday) has no objective meaning and is an "illusion". Kinda goes against common sense, doesn't it ;)
John Wilkins wrote @#25
I agree that the whole notion of evolution grinding to a halt is silly but I'm curious as to why you're so pessimistic about the future of healthcare provision.
As long as heritable traits make successful reproduction more or less likely, natural selection is going to occur. The advent of technology doesn't change that a bit, though it does change what will turn out to be favorable in the way of a heritable trait. Right now people in developed countries are being exposed to considerable levels of chemicals that act like estrogen and have a deleterious effect on fertility. Some people are going to be more resistant to this effect than others because of genetic factors. They will tend to reproduce at higher rates than those who lack those factors. The result will be an increase in the number of individuals with the resistant traits. Nothing complicated about that.
By the way, for some traits, culture probably increases the rate of biological change. Before the existence of languages, for example, the traits that made people better at speaking were less valuable. Once there is language, natural selection surely favored those who can exploit language. Language makes intelligence, a biologically expensive feature, more valuable or perhaps simply valuable enough to balance off its obvious drawbacks such as the difficulty of giving birth to babies with large heads.
Robert wrote:
Socio-economic status is not genetic. Do you think that all those Wall Street investors who are losing their jobs, their homes and their fitness club memberships have somehow undergone some genetic change?
You're confusing the very goofy and seriously ludicrous notions of Social Darwinism with actual selection. Being poor is a socioeconomic condition, and is not genetically inherited, any more than being middle class, rich, or inheriting large bank account is genetic. That's not to say that certain kinds of risk taking behaviors that one might find among certain types of wealthy people may not have a genetic component, but do you honestly think that's a huge factor.
Lots of poor people having kids is not, despite what a few rather disturbed and confused individuals of the early 20th century thought, is not going to somehow "dumb-down" the species. For most of our history on this planet, we have lived relatively short lives, without the material wealth and education which seems to have been the demarcation line for so many who feared the poor were poisoning the race.
I find it very sad that this sort of thought can still hold such power, but I guess it's probably something of a natural outgrowth of the ancient notions of pure blood. It certainly has precious little to do with evolution. Providing somebody survives long enough to pass on their genes, they're in the race, regardless of whether they're on the dole or a Harvard graduate.
You all seem like highly inteligent people. Yet apart from calling my suggestion silly, poor, ludicrous and disturbed I have yet to see one valid argument against my point. I am not talking about poor people here I am not particularly wealthy. What I am talking about is the situation I see here where the intelligent, sensible and hard working people I know from my area are all having 1 point something kids whereas the deadbeats are having 4 plus kids. Because of healthcare each will usually have the same chance of survival and the deadbeat kids will more than likely grow up with the same attitute of there parents and reproduce more.
Now I know that this may not have anything to do with genetics but can anyone in simple terms explain to me why this is so ludicrous.
Robert wrote:
Because if it doesn't have anything to do with genetics, how precisely is it a *biological* issue? Your position is rather standard Social Darwinist fodder, but I'll tell you right now, you seem to be wandering very close to Lamarckian thought; that somehow socioeconomic status causes some sort of a change in the makeup of an individual.
Being wealthy or middle class is a social construct, rather like being a Brahman or an Untouchable is a social construct in traditional Hindu society. Even if health care keeps four poor kids alive as opposed to two middle class kids, what exactly does that mean to you? Do you think "rich" and "poor" are evolutionary processes?
You're saying we're not explaining our position well, but I think it's the reverse. What precisely are *you* trying to say? Do you think that poor people weaken the gene pool? If you're not, then it seems to me that you're argument is purely economic in nature, and has little to do with biology. Saving a poor kid from cancer may cost money, but that has nothing to do with biology, genetics or heritable traits. If there's no "rich" gene, you have no point.
Paul Collinvoux in "Fates of Nations" argues that people tend to have the number of kids they can affort. He argues that well to do people's kids are enormously expensive, so well to do's have few of them. On the other hand, poor people's kids are relatively cheap to raise, so they have more of them. Note that the majority of humans are poor, and that the major growth in human population is among poor people. So, in fact, poor people have higher fitness that richer people. It would seem that the poor will inherit the earth.
Buried for this:
"And their dying earlier than their conspecifics for genetic reasons won't affect,"
Seriously, is it so hard to type out 'they're'?
It tends to be harder to type "they're" when it's not the word you want. The phrase "their dying earlier" is the subject of "won't affect"; the clause "they're dying earlier" would produce a sequence of words that doesn't actually parse in any credible way.
(I invoke credibility because, as the late lamented Joseph Weizenbaum pointed out, literate and clever people are very good at wringing some kind of meaning out of unlikely strings of words.)
Thanks Porlock. I was unable to answer earlier so you beat me to it. But they're often wrong who think their preferences are right, so there.
Evolution doesn't stop. Think punctuated equilibrium. This current 'equilibrium' (and apparently stated slowing of human evolution)will end.
I think some of you are being intentionally obtuse. What Robert is asking is, if stupid lazy people have more kids and come to dominate the population due to whatever genetic component of those traits is selected for (think Idiocracy), how can we call this "evolution".
The answer is not to deny the scenario. The answer Robert is that any change in a population's genetic makeup can be considered evolution, certainly if it consists of traits selected for by the environment. It matters not if much of that environment would qualify as artificial to you, nor that the resultant group seems inferior to you. Evolution cares not a whit about your views.
That doesn't seem to have been Robert's point at all. He clearly linking people of a lower socioeconomic status with somehow being inferior. He was just restating (ineptly) certain tenets of Social Darwinism; that poor people are among a group that are inferior, and that they're breeding in large numbers essentially diminishes the speocies as a whole. The real problem with this view is that basic notions of "stupid", "lazy" and "poor" being genetic traits. If they're not genetic, then his claims are absurd.
Exactly. It has long been a European conceit that the poor are what they are out of inferiority (and the Irish doubly so!) and when genetics came into play, this was immediately carried over. The poor are retarded, lazy, and unfit. Ignore the unpleasant fact that under population genetics anyone or any organism that for whatever reason outbreeds others of its kind is by definition fitter. Treat social success as somehow a marker of underlying biological nature. Overlook the use of such ideas for ideological and religious reasons to exclude or better to murder, either deliberately or by marginalising their economic opportunities, those "unfit" types.
Look, social Darwinism is a myth. It is neither a coherent movement nor scientifically viable. In the end all evolution tells you is what happened to outbreed competitors. There's no moral valuation, just a straight report. If welfare recipients succeed biologically for whatever reason, they are fitter than you.
You misunderstand. Equilibrium does not end on its own, it is ended by the environment -- by changes in the environment that change natural selection from stabilizing to directional till a new optimum is reached. Equilibrium does not maintain itself either, it is maintained by the environment -- as long as the environment doesn't change and you are well adapted to it, you better don't change either; that's called stabilizing selection.
There are no forces in evolution other than mutation, selection, and drift. Punk eek is the description of a pattern that commonly results from these forces, not a force of its own.
Darwin talked about more than one means of selection in "Origin", natural selection and sexual selection can have equal significance. So no, evolution has not stopped. With todays diversity and current mixing of evolved traits it should actually accelerate.