Sir David Attenborough has said that he is not optimistic about the future and that people should be persuaded against having large families.
The broadcaster and naturalist, who earlier this year described humans as "a plague on Earth", also said he believed humans have stopped evolving physically and genetically because of birth control and abortion, but that cultural evolution is proceeding "with extraordinary swiftness".
"We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 90-95% of our babies that are born. We are the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were," he tells this week's Radio Times.
"Stopping natural selection is not as important, or depressing, as it might sound – because our evolution is now cultural … We can inherit a knowledge of computers or television, electronics, aeroplanes and so on."
Attenborough said he was not optimistic about the future and "things are going to get worse".
"I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful – and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.
"We may reduce in numbers; that would actually be a help, though the chances of it happening within the next century is very small. I should think it's impossible, in fact."
The broadcaster, who is a patron of the charity Population Matters, which promotes family planning and campaigns for sustainable consumption, also appeared to express qualified support for the one-child policy in China.
He said: "It's the degree to which it has been enforced which is terrible, and there's no question it's produced all kinds of personal tragedies. There's no question about that. On the other hand, the Chinese themselves recognise that had they not done so there would be several million more mouths in the world today than there are now."
He added: "If you were able to persuade people that it is irresponsible to have large families in this day and age, and if material wealth and material conditions are such that people value their materialistic life and don't suffer as a consequence, then that's all to the good. But I'm not particularly optimistic about the future. I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse."
Attenborough's next screen venture, a two-programme study of the rise of animals, begins on BBC2 on 20 September. The BBC has already announced future projects involving the much-loved face and voice of natural history. "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop," said Attenborough, who had a pacemaker fitted to regulate his heart in June.
"But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
He also told the magazine: "I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born. I have all kinds of pleasures and luxuries that I appreciate and I'm very, very fortunate. I think that applies to the majority of people – in this country, at any rate.
"But I think that in another 100 years people will look back at a world that was less crowded, full of natural wonders, and healthier."
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But if we're not subject to natural selection, then does that mean non-fatal disadvantaeous mutations will proliferate, and we will effectively evolve to be weaker?
Sorry to sound like a nazi, BTW. Just curious.
If obesity does have a genetic component that would be very worrying as diabetes and heart disease etc will rocket in the nations where death by starvation at an early age is not the norm; obesity and being overweight is more common in the borough I live in than people who are a healthy size - I find this very concerning for the future physical evolution of humanity and I am sorry if this opinion offends anyone.
However growing up in a family where fatty calorific foods are mainly what is consumed and where leisure activities involve very little exercise would have the same effect on offspring. The Stone Age diet was actually healthier than modern western patterns of food consumption. No doubt Stone Age people got plenty of exercise moving about to find fruit and nuts etc to pick to eat.
Technological solutions evolve far faster than our innate abilities do, which makes the question moot. For example, creating a vaccine for smallpox was a far more effective means of gaining immunity from the disease than the hundreds or thousands of generations of natural selection that would otherwise been required to gain a significantly better immune response.
First the concept of 'weaker' or 'stronger' in evolutionary terms is simply misleading. For example, a trait that allows favors survival in desert conditions may be highly disadvantageous in polar conditions, or the reverse. The environmental context is absolutely important.
Second, as modern medical technology and knowledge spreads, it becomes possible for parents to screen their own genomes and so understand whether or not their children are likely to inherit unfavorable genetic blueprints - thus, if you find that you and your partner have a 50% chance of producing a deleterious gene combination in your children, you can choose to adopt or not have children, considering the risks - which, thanks to the ever-more-widespread availability of genetic sequencing, should be more common in the future.
Also, understand that much of the scientific theories about genetic determinism that were so popular and prevalent in the early 20th century have been proven to be absolute nonsense - but people still cling to them, for quasi-religious reasons (such as the desire to think of themselves as racially superior beings, etc.).
" believed humans have stopped evolving physically and genetically because of birth control and abortion"
I love him but this is just nonsense.
Well, in the article he is quoted as saying that "We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 90-95% of our babies that are born." I don't see the birth control argument in the article. His point is, rather, that the reduction of child mortality has inhibited the process of evolution.
Of course, you are right. Evolution will never stop so long as we are made of flesh and there are environmental challenges to which adaption can give an advantage. But there is a case to be made that the pace evolution has slowed down, or that we are weakening the gene pool by reducing child mortality such that we are evolving to be a weaker species kept alive by advances in medicine and medical technology.
I'm not sure whether this argument supports Attenborough's pessimistic thesis. If technology, rather than evolution, can keep people healthy, what matter if it's natural or not?
Yes indeed - and human populations are indeed evolving over time (which just means changing over time) largely due to the ease of global travel - men and women from all over the world are meeting and having offspring, which would have been impossible 1000 years ago. What you have is a lot of mixing of gene pools, rather than what used to be more common, isolation of populations followed by divergent evolution.
If he believes that evolution represents some kind of 'progress' towards 'higher beings' - well, that's a load of nonsense, anyway, especially on what is, in evolutionary terms, the eye-blink period of human civiliations - the human line diverged from the chimpanzee line something like several million years ago, and human civilization as we know it only spans on the order of 10,000 years - a fraction of a second in geological terms.
I suspect that this is a case of misrepresentation or misunderstanding by a journalist and is not a direct quote.
I have to ask, because while I have studied a bit of natural science it's not enough to say that David Attenborough is talking out of his bottom.
Is the development of birth control and abortion not part of evolution?
The very idea that human evolution has stopped just sounds like gibberish to me.
It's misleading to say "evolution as stopped". Evolution is the gradual adaptation of a species to its environment, so in that sense it has (at the very least) stalled for Western humans - we control our environment and are able to sustain almost all life within it, so the only selection pressures the environment places on us are those we are responsible for.
Any negative effects that our environment might have on us, that would cause people to die prematurely (young, before bearing offspring) and thus allow more resistant genomes to proliferate, are likely to be spotted and combated well before changes can occur species-wide at a genetic level.
That's not to say that "evolution stopping" is necessarily a bad thing. Evolution isn't improvement, it's adaptation - if we can change the world around ourselves to this extent, evolution becomes unnecessary.
We control our environment?
Which planet are you living on?
A lot of the planet is flooding, droughting, freezing and just not doing what it is told.
In my own local in 2010 we had a freeze so bad that I couldn't leave the house for a week.
Sounds like nothing? Then try it.
We control nothing.
You clearly don't know what environment means in this context. We live without fear of infectious diseases, lack of nutrition or any need to fight for our existence in any tangible way. This has little or nothing to do with pollution or the climate.
When will this Planet wake up and do something about controling the number of people being born every moment of every day, why do you think Africa is in such turmoil, the writing was on the wall well over 30 years ago.
100 year ago their were 10 million Egypions now there are 70 million by the middle of the century there will be 110 million. The Nile is there sole water souce!
These populions are increasing at alaming rate, 6 children being bone on average per woman in parts of Afrie and Asia, times that by 70 million and by the end of the century you will have over 800 million starving people in just one corner of the Planet.
I fear for my children and granchildren.
I did recommend your comment but may not have done so when it looks as if you are blaming the population of third world countries for the entire overpopulation and environmental mess.
Problem is though Western first world countries tend to have fewer children, there is a much higher pattern of consumption per head - in geography I was taught that for eg, a child growing up in the US would on average consume five times of the world resources than a child born in say, Africa.
How many Egyptian offspring get to run and own a car when they reach adulthood for instance? - whereas most people in the UK do run a car and it is not unusual to see a number of cars kept on the drive by just one household. That is a lot of petrol consumption and pollution; wealthier people also tend to be wasteful with utilities such as heating and electricity (the poorest people in Britain by not running a car or having the heating on and turned up all the time are actually environmentally friendlier). We also have to consider the amount of water that is used in manufacturing many things that we take for granted - even a bar of chocolate!
You're not thinking quite broadly enough. The turmoil IS the control.
The notion that population can keep expanding linearly forever is physically and logically impossible. Absolute nonsense. Never happens, can't happen.
Populations ALWAYS expand fast for a brief period until they run into limits, then ALWAYS asymptote onto a plateau and stabilize. (Unless something drastic happens, which could happen anyway regardless of pop size.)
Humans are no different. We're simply watching the process of reaching the plateau in Africa, India, etc. Other parts of the world reached the plateau 50 years ago and are declining.
It isn't. A lot of it is doing rather well, at the mo'.
Although I suspect his view, of natural selection having stopped, will need to be reconsidered when the limited spectrum of antibiotics that we have available lose their efficacy. That particular Horseman is riding towards us rather quickly.
The biotic era we are entering should bring human populations down to acceptable levels I would have thought.
That's more a case of us having artificially accelerated natural selection in other species, rather than stopping our own evolution.
As it is, we're not going to be able to evolve our way out of this problem. That would take far too long. Technological and societal solutions are the only answer that can help us here.
But we might already have done so, or at least will do very soon. The exponential growth in computing power will likely give rise to an AI sooner rather than later; that is the next stage of our evolution. Electronic children rather than fleshy ones, and perhaps far better able to deal with harsh environments on this planet and others.
There is no way that vaccinations can have impeded the gaining of a better defense against something like smallpox through evolution, not in such a small amount of time. The times scale on which natural selection works are orders of magnitude greater than that.
As for AI children -- maybe, but I would prefer the transfer of my own consciousness into an artificial substrate, if it were ever possible, and I suspect that should it indeed become possible, the human species would continue to replicate biologically, and leave the choice of whether or not to transition their mind to an artificial brain to the individual.
Not to worry. I've been informed that an AGW apocalypse is coming that will put an end to this civilization of planet-infecting macro-pathogens and our unfairly low mortality rates. This should get us right back into the natural selection game.
Sorry to post again, especially when my knowledge is so scanty but with overpopulation and evolution coming to a halt he is talking about two totally different subjects isn't he?
Evolution only comes to a halt when there are no individuals left to evolve, or they put in an Aliens style cryochamber.
This has got me all of a quiver.
Maybe I should evolve my way to bed.
I think it's been a confusion of terms. Evolution hasn't stopped; there are still random mutations within the population that may confer advantages or disadvantages. Natural selection, on the other hand, (where these random advantages or disadvantages lead to the success of an organism) might indeed have slowed in humans. We have the technological capacity to overcome things that in the past might have killed us and prevented us from passing on our genes. In the past, a disease may have killed you in childhood but now we can overcome that with medicine. In the past, a harsh winter might have killed you, but we now have insulation and central heating and it doesn't matter if you have a random gene that makes you a bit more susceptible to the cold.
And yes, evolution in humans would strictly only come to a halt when there are no humans left (even over the course of your lifetime, you are gaining random mutations and evolving on a small scale). Unless we manage to come up with a way to fix our DNA in one configuration, but honestly I'm not sure that would ever work.
Overpopulation is sort of a hangover from evolutionary pressure. Big families are useful in an environment where child mortality is high because it increases your chances of a child surviving long enough to pass on their genes. People are living longer than they used to. Our technology has surpassed our environmental pressures, but our behaviour hasn't caught up yet.
On the other hand, the technology that prevents most 'natural' mortality is by definition tackling things for which we had not evolved defences (so we're not losing ground on those things, for the most part). Equally important as a factor to consider is that it is very likely that we simply could not and would not actually out-evolve our pathogens: yes, we'd select for immunity - but the pathogens would simultaneously evolve to keep attacking us. Our population exceeds what it would, but we wouldn't be evolving to conquer disease. We've not 'stopped natural selection' or 'stopped evolving', and certainly we've not somehow sacrificed evolutionary benefits; we've just jumped ahead a square or two in our race with the red queen. (And pretty momentarily, too, as others have pointed out - a very short timeframe, and already we're heading towards a failure of antibiotics.)
Of course humans are still evolving, in the pedantic sense - random mutations, mostly not expressed at the phenotypic level, will go on, and as another piece in today's paper suggests may even be more likely with the development of the older father, in the West at any rate.
But I'm sure Sir David is correct in the sense that most of us think of evolution: being progressively more suited to exploit and survive in our environment. Myopia is more widespread, because tens of thousands of years ago myopic people would be far less likely to survive and pass on their genes. The same is true of all sorts of other examples of genetic non-optimalization.
In many ways this is a good thing: antibiotics, universal health care, better education and nutrition, etc, have all contributed to the greater survival of individuals. Nor is it necessarily a political point. But sometimes the liberal left (and the liberal right for that matter) kids itself when it avoids thinking through the consequences of our moral choices.
I'm delighted that people don't drop dead a year after retiring. But it costs the country a fortune in pensions and NHS costs. I'm thrilled that premature children can now survive at earlier and earlier ages. But most very premature children have significant health difficulties that require ongoing treatment.
It is a simple extension of natural selection that reduced pressure on a species allows more non-optimal individuals to survive and breed. Now it is the very cultural advances that have created the lowered pressure that can also help deal with its consequences. There is no need to despair just yet! It's just that I get a little annoyed when some of us seem to imply that we are somehow beyond the universal effects of biology. Maybe it's the fear of being seen as some kind of Galtonian eugenicist: but we shouldn't allow political correctness to blind us to basic truths.
Most people don't understand evolution. It has nothing to do with individuals surviving in an environment, it is to do with genes surviving in a gene pool. You can't second guess a genes usefulness. How do you know the gene for Myopia isn't also a gene that prevents certain types of cancer? Perhaps myopic people were much less susceptible to certain diseases that meant they were more likely to survive?
"non-optimal" in comparison to what?
Please don't patronize me. I know about the gene's eye view of evolution, the neutral theory, etc: but even Mr Dawkins would not claim that 'evolution has nothing to do with individuals surviving in an environment' (my italics). The individual may not be the unit of selection but, as is clear with viruses, parasites, etc, without the individual surviving in its environment long enough to breed successfully the genes don't get passed on!
Of course you are right about second guessing in some cases - sickle cell anaemia being an outcome of increased malarial defenses springs to mind. Perhaps I'm naive, but given that the eye has evolved separately at least 40 and perhaps 60 times, it seems that it's a pretty useful bit of kit (I say that as someone who's been shortsighted from the age of seven!). For all we know, a gene that shortens one leg might have helped influence other genes that prevent senility and age-related cancer - but on the African plains, it would never have got the chance to show its lighter side.
I'm not some sort of Nazi scientist! 'Non-optimal' in meaning, at its simplest, individuals that would find survival more difficult/impossible in harsher conditions. No-one's trying to suggest that we need to improve the human stock, or sterilize 'the unfit', or any of that nonsense. As Sir David says, we live in a world where perhaps the highest survival influences are now cultural: smoking/diet/economic situation, etc. All I mean - and I think he does too - is that the straightforward evolutionary pressure in response to fierce selection is somewhat abated in human beings at the moment, but that may not always be the case.
You ARE a Nazi!
Sorry only joking, couldn't help a bit of post breakfast Godwinian outburst ;-)
I don't agree that smoking/diet/economic situation are just cultural. They are part of the real world, the real natural environment in which we live.
I remember reading about a study in PNAS last year on Finns which showed that, at least up to a century ago, humans were still evolving (is subject to natural and sexual selection). The same article referenced some research on the population of a small American town where the authors showed selection for decreased height and increased weight. So it seems that Sir David is wrong, but the human race might all be evolving to look like me!
Not sure what you are saying, but there is some empirical research that shows in "more recent times" how humans are continuing to evolve - with the case of how humans have adapted to mountainous environments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/science/mountain-populations-offer-clues-to-human-evolution.html?_r=0
Every time PNAS is mentioned, I can't help but giggle. Makes journal club fun!
I guess I was saying that there's peer reviewed literature out there which contradicts the idea that humans have stopped being subject to natural selection:
m.pnas.org/content/early/2012/04/24/1118174109
However the timespan of that study doesn't run up to the last century, so it seemed worthwhile to mention that there's evidence for this as well:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-1253564
A bit redundant to reply now given today's follow up in the Guardian, but I felt guilty about not citing the literature properly!
Agreed, natural selection in human beings is probably all-but done, but cultural evolution is much more than just about knowledge -- just in the last couple of hundred years, we have already evolved into a species that reaches puberty earlier than ever before and we're now living far beyond our child-rearing years too. It's also possible that our fertility is declining. In other words, cultural changes are already having a direct and profound influence on us, as biological entities.
And that's just the start. The biotech revolution is barely underway, and the odds are that we'll eventually be able to do all kinds of things that will permanently alter us as a species. We will soon be able to completely eliminate certain inherited genetic diseases, and eventually it may be possible for parents to select for specific traits that they deem advantageous to their children. That's not necessarily a good thing in the long run, but the pressure to allow it (for certain beneficial traits, anyway) is going to be tough to resist.
Finally, if we ever solve the problem of old age, then there can hardly be a more profound way in which to alter the course of human evolution.
The point is that natural selection cannot hope to keep pace with all these innovations. Our technological prowess likely put us past the last moment when it could thousands of years ago already (fire, weapons, agriculture, language, etc.) and barring a complete civilization-ending catastrophe (that somehow destroys all knowledge but fails to kill us all off), there is no going back.
I think it's only natural to be pessimistic about the future, just like it's easy to look back on your early life and believe that it was a better, simpler time (and forgetting the fact that your parents tend to shield you from the worst of things).
However, in spite of the myriad challenges ahead, I remain an optimist. Believe it or not, we've just lived through the least violent decade in history (fewest wars, fewest casualties of war, on a per capita basis), and while there is still a long way to go, a greater percentage of the world's population is living under democratic rule that ever before, and the fewer people are living in totalitarian states. (There is a large fuzzy bit in the middle -- e.g. weak democracies -- which is why these two things are not synonymous).
Life expectancy is up, birth rates are finally beginning to fall in some places where high birth rates were expected to continue (many Arab nations, for example). Women's rights, gay rights, children's rights, and minority rights have all improved appreciably in many parts of the world (though not all) over the last 50 years alone.
Of course, it could all go pear-shaped tomorrow, and the burden imposed by climate change could prove impossible to counter successfully, but I really do think that overall, we still have a great chance of preserving the best of our world and society for future generations. It's not all going to work out, for sure, but I don't see a need to be overly pessimistic about our future.
What a very optimistic post, lots of positive examples of human advances. Personally I like to think that the environment which we can influence will continue to get better for the majority of the human population.
However, I fear we may have already poisoned our planet to the point of no return. Petrochemical industry causing not just global warming, but also floating continents of plastic, metals which were never previously found in isolation being mined and refined, where will be put out the refuse? Nuclear power produces contaminated waste, have we found safe storage? Unfortunately not.
But the human condition has improved vastly, as you say, for the majority of the population.
The problems you state are serious, no doubt, but they are ultimately solvable, if the will is there. The main problem is that while we're pretty good at crisis management -- i.e. responding to short term threats, we're nowhere near as good when the problems are coming to a very slow boil -- as with global warming. That may lead to some degradation of living conditions for many people, perhaps even for several generations, but I don't believe it's inevitable.
Yeah, I'm an optimist, but I don't think I'm being unrealistically so. I just try to remember that while there are still many terrible things happening in the world today, overall, there are fewer terrible things happening than there used to be. Just in my own lifetime, Europe has emerged from centuries of wars between nation states to a point where the very idea of war breaking out between two European nations is almost unthinkable (the Balkans maybe being the exception, though even there, things have improved markedly in the last 20 years).
Great optimistic post, but my feeling is that those examples of a (positively) evolving society are only valid if you agree that the original definition of the terms 'democratic' & 'totalitarian' have been preserved. I think our economic system has allowed an elastic defenition to be applied to 'democracy'. The end of vioelence may be, the begining of another altogether means of supression perhaps.
Just like 99.99% of all the other dead end species.
Nonsense. As a species, not only have we been one of the most successful in the planet's entire history, we probably have a greater capacity to avoid extinction than any other species before us.
Even if all our worst fears about the future come true, the odds that all of us will be completely wiped out without a chance to rebuild our civilization are already close to minimal.
While I broadly agree with your assessment, I think you may be underestimating the complexity of our civilisation. Nowadays even a simple manufactured item can be dependent on hundreds or thousands of separate processes - the extraction of many different minerals, refining of chemicals, different kinds of transport, treatments in agriculture and the manufacture of the inputs for those, the production of factory machinery, various kinds of administration, etc. etc. - it's all incredibly complicated when you look into it. Maintaining civilisation is feasible, but the kind of civilisation that can build computers, mass produce flu vaccines, and provide every household with drinkable water and practically unlimited energy? That might be tougher.
Agreed -- a serious setback is always possible, but knowledge, once it becomes widespread, is hard to unlearn and forget, and that includes the principles by which the first computers and vaccines were created. They can be created again, even if they're not up to the standards of today's technology, at first.
Also, we have already seen the type of mobilization that happens when a major calamity occurs. People, governments, and organizations can put on an impressive display when they want to. It could be possible that something happens that overwhelms all efforts, but again, I suspect the odds of that happening are very low at this point.
Could we end up in a poorer, more polluted world where famine and war come back with a vengeance. Yes, of course, but it's likely that innovations will continue (and may even be accelerated by need) and I wouldn't like to bet against us succeeding in the end.
Evolution happens over hundreds of thousands of years. The ready availability of birth control not much more than 50. Even the whole of recorded human history is a blip in our timeline. It's a little soon to say that evolutionary forces no longer affect us.
But do you really think that we'll be able to study the impact of birth control on human evolution after another 100,000 years of technology-driven evolution?
We could easily be some-kind of semi-immortal, nanotechnology-driven hybrid machine/human species by then, making any possible analysis of any trend in natural selection moot.
Beautiful women have children to rich men. Rich men make war. Poor men and ugly women die.
You need some man-made antidepressants pal.
Sorry I can't go to bed yet without another tiny rant.
People seem to take evolving as meaning getting better, so the human race evolving would mean us all ending up as those benign aliens from Star Trek who take our food from the air and only kill when we meet William Shatner.
I know this is a tv column, and I know that my knowledge is extremely limited, but that isn't how it works.
Also I know that evolution works extremely slowly but surely.
If, in a million years the offspring of your offspring are feeding on the livers of mine because of the nutritional value of the meat, then that is evolution.
If they are living in a lovely garden eating even nicer food and being happy all the time then that is evolution too.
I really don't think that people know what it means.
The elephant is a result of evolution but so is the ebola virus.
Yes, natural evolution is not directed, but for the human species, natural evolution is being massively outpaced by societal and technological evolution, and those two things are under our control (to a greater or lesser degree, anyway).
There is always the risk of subversion and/or unforeseen consequences, but ultimately, we are pretty much in control of our own destiny here -- should we have the will to exert it, of course.
I see what you mean and how under control are you of your societal and technological factors?
Less than you would think, I assume.
This is not a go at you and by the numbers I imagine you are right.
You know the thing about unforeseen circumstances though?
They always happen.
A lot of what makes futuristic science fiction so great stems from the seemingly unlimited ways in which people can screw things up.
It all makes for great entertainment, but I suspect that reality will be far more mundane, and less perilous than that. As I said a previous comment, many of the overall trends on this planet have been positive in the last 50 to 70 years, making the world a better place to live in for more people than ever before. Even the threat of nuclear annihilation, although still present, has receded markedly since the 1960s.
I think a lot will rely on the pace of developments. For example, people love to speak doom and gloom about the possibility of parents being able to select the genetic traits of their children. It's a scary thought, no doubt, but it's not going to be reality for several decades, at least, and we will have a very long time to discuss the merits and pitfalls of the technology before it becomes practical. Yes, sex selection is already with us, and causing some concern, but it's not something that's going to completely derail us, even if it causes mischief in the short run.
The thing is, I don't see too many "unforeseen circumstances" that will send us on a one-way trip over a civilization-ending cliff. Even in the direst of circumstances, like a deadly pandemic, we will still have the capability to isolate segments of the population from the infection.
I agree that our evolution will be uneven and there will be set backs, but I am still optimistic about the future, overall.
Nature has subtle ways of signalling good genetic make that's up fit for purpose.
I look around me and see beautiful vibrant living entity's, it a crying shame that none of it is human and I fear Mr Attenborough is correct and homo erectus is on a downward spiral to the lowest common denominator.
@smugtory 10 September 2013 1:30am. Get cifFix for Firefox.
homo erectus is extinct,
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oGkmaXpy5SDwcAyYBLBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0bGNsaHFoBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA1VLQzAwMl83Mg--/SIG=11thlrpi1/EXP=1378818071/**http%3a//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Erectus
maybe you meant homo sapiens?
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oGkmj7py5SLEQAJOFLBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0ajdya2NjBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMgRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA1VLQzAwMl83Mg--/SIG=11tcu8vtv/EXP=1378818171/**http%3a//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens
You are correct I got my homo's mixed up, the result me thinks of the combination of too much booze and too little attention at school way back when in the mists of time.
You don't want to take that paragraph out of context!
We might not have natural selection. But we have very unnatural selection in the form of War. I don't accept that we have stopped evolving. I agree that in the near furure most of our evolution will be cultural, like maybe not killing each other for resourses. Isn't breaking a world record evolving. 1 day Usain Bolts 100m record will be broken, And after that at some point maybe tens of thousands of years into the future running will seem primitive as we'll be using our mind to project us to the finish. Or talking might seem primitive as we communicate via telepathy "there is computers now that react to brainwaves". Maybe not but even look at our imune systems arn't they evolving. A plague could kill allot of us off leaving only those with natural resistance. I think most evolution will be in the brain or in our ability to actually properly use our brains to the maximum potential this could take hundreds of thousands of years. Obviously thats if we don't wipe or selves out in thermo nuclear war
That's possible, but again, technology will almost certainly get there way ahead of us. Developments in computing power will continue, as will smarter devices, and possibly even true artificial intelligence, one day -- and in far less than 100,000 years.
For example, if you could implant an AI processor in your brain that was capable of presenting all the good choices to you for any specific situation you are likely to face and recommending which is best, would we need such an ability as an innately evolved part of the brain?
The problem with technology is who is controlling it. Don't get me wrong I think u make a very good point. In fact AI chips will probably happen fairly soon most likely in the military. I think the blending of technolagy to body and brain is happenning now and will accelerate. This could actually help the brain to evolve. However I would resist having a chip implanted in my brain cause you know such a chip would have a back door and I still believe in the long run the physical will become less important. Obviously I'm a bit too primitive to know for sure.
The difference between an AI supplying information to your mind and an AI being able to directly control your mind will be too great to be of any real concern.
The worst it would be able to do is feed you incorrect information for some nefarious purpose, but the odds are that any such system would have a load of safeguards against that type of thing.
Well, I'm living proof that natural selection has been affected by technology, as I was born 6 weeks premature and would never have survived without a feeding tube (i didn't want to wake up, and quite honestly, I think i had the right idea). But then again, I've chosen not to breed, so my genes won't affect the evolution of humanity anyway.
But I think he's right about population, and at some point we will be in a situation where our technology doesn't solve things in time to prevent a population crash. Unfortunately, that may not be in time to save the present diversity and beauty of our planet.
That really isn't natural selection though.
Very glad it happened but it just isn't.
If people are going to bandy the phrases about it would be polite to learn what they mean.
I think that was bekibunny's point.
She survived because technology made natural selection redundant.
Yeah sorry I wasn't very clear in my reply to bekbunny, and a bit snitty as well, sorry about that, blame the beer.
On an individual level of course technology can make natural selection redundant, in many wonderful ways, as bekibunny being here to post proves.
I just meant that these processes work over hundreds of thousands of years and generations, one off, or even thousand off stories are really just a drop in the ocean.
My guess is that natural selection is still occurring in at least some human populations. Amongst the very poor (currently at least a billion or so) one of the principal causes of infant/childhood mortality are diarrheal diseases. It's hard to imagine that there isn't fairly strong selection pressure to keep kids from having their food, electrolytes, and water run right out their asses. In the future perhaps humans will be able to use even the most fetid latrines with impunity. Oh joy, oh joy!
I'm rather skeptical of the 'benefits' of exponential growth of populations already numbering in the billions. The number of people has more than doubled in my lifetime and I'm still waiting to see market forces, or whatever baloney population growth advocates tout, halve the number of hours I have to work per week to maintain the same standard of living.
Jesus has no one got the capacity to read?
Evolution by natural selection is happening everywhere to everything.
It is not a thing that you can pass on to your children, it happens over millions of years.
It is not the obesity crisis, that is not even a blip in the eye of a blip who might one day have blippy grandchildren.
You, and David Attenborough may have worries about over population etc but none of that will be a memory of a memory of a memory soon.
David Attenborough, god bless his soul, is good at talking about animals, he doesn't, obviously, do evolution.
I think the real point is that societal and technological innovations have a far greater impact on the evolution of our species than natural selection does, these days.
Does natural selection even get a look-in when we continue to make and remake our society every few decades?
Again using evolution in a strange way.
We haven't been able to type long enough to call things evolved.
Yet I know what you mean.
Give me a shout in a hundred million years and see who is right.
But he's made a very valid point in pointing out that medical advances have enabled one strata of species to override the 'fail' factor.
That is a great gift but humanity seems disinclined to return the favour.
What is the point of there being so many of us on the planet when the benefits are so reduced.
Frankly, I feel I would be happier and more enriched if I was in feudal times with my precious strips of the estate that I would have been able to farm.
I had no idea there was such widespread ignorance about even the most rudimentary elements of the Theory of Evolution.
I'm giving the whole class an F and setting new homework.
Can I have a D for half remembering my lessons?
No. You should have gone to bed a long time ago.
Let's face the fact that Sir David is being realistic when he expresses his lack of optimism in the future. He is old enough and experienced enough to know the score.
The basic reason for many of the rapidly-increasing problems facing life on earth is an exploding population of humans. An obvious solution is for all of us to move forward into a more humanitarian, self-sufficient and simpler lifestyle - a combination of population control and backyard or community-based, organic food production.
Community food gardens have proved to be extraordinarily effective at shattering racial, sexual, religious, class and other barriers. That's because growing food together allows people to share ideas while working alongside each other.
It's time we recognised that human greed - this mad, meaningless, selfish desire to accumulate vast wealth and control over the earth's diminishing food, water and energy resources, always by a tiny minority - is the real reason why too many people continue to be brainwashed into supporting a seemingly endless series of back-to-back wars.
Community activities, helping each other, growing and eating the healthiest food of all while relentlessly exposing and fighting greed is the way of the future. In many tiny ways it is already happening. It is the only intelligent way forward for the human race and survival of life on earth.
How can you be realistic while expressing doubt in the future?
You can't.
However revered he is he is talking opinion based tosh.
I wouldn't necessarily opt for a `simpler` lifestyle, but certainly for a sustainable one.
For low-impact agriculture, more high-rise well-connected efficient urban dwellings, reforestation of arid areas, renewable and nuclear power, high-tech communications to reduce the need for physical transportation, and crucially: A new economic system that does not depend on perpetual growth.
So having doubt in the future means you're talking rubbish? Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden, or something, Pollyanna?
I will shut up now, I've never seen giant turtles shag before my very eyes, tortoises yes but it was very dull.
That was a bit of skit, sorry about that, can't seem to help it.
This is the Guardian so I'm sure I don't have to spell out the fact that he has massive influence while having no qualifications.
I once spent months studying evolution, I never really got a concept that people think is simple, I am in awe of it though, wonder if David, watching the apes, ever did the same thing. :(
And now it looks like I'm having a go at David Attenborough. I am really not.
I'm just running away now.
Natural selection cares nothing about being rational, just whether you breed and your offspring survive to breed again. Bin Laden had more than 25 kids, Mel Gibson has 8. Dawkins has 1 and Ricky Gervais has none. Belief in an imaginary friend, or at perhaps communities gathering around a common philosophy that has just enough to keep them safe and fed and encourages breeding, works from an evolutionary point of view. Rational and sensible population control is not in our future. Once the resources become limited I suspect the atheists will be the first to be culled.
Oh god I just despair, of you, not the future.
Please, please, please go to bed! You PROMISED you would hours ago!
Eeek sorry, note to self, never, ever come onto CIF after a night out.
So ashamed.
If they succeeded, they'd be able to squeeze out a few more years of economic growth - at the expense of the natural world and at the expense of our already frighteningly stretched food and water resources.
Well, he's absolutely right. Overpopulation is the elephant in the room. When I see people with large families, I see selfish, thoughtless people.
Yes, how dare they threaten the capitalist economic system.
It isn't the capitalist system they are threatening, quite the reverse. Capitalists want lots of chep, disposable labour, and don't care if there isn't enough food to go round because they will get what they want to eat, and if the environment some people live in ends up being dire, that doesn't matter as the capitalists think they can always live somewhere else.That's why they tend to harness religion's obsession with sex and children to make that happen.
"We must save the earths dwindling resources for my five chidren"
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