5 ms·

The link to the paper wasn't loading for me. But I would love to see the reasons for extrapolating present-day biology back 250k years?

thaumasiotes 4y ago
A fundamental tenet of much modern science (and, especially, punditry) is that humans have completed the evolutionary process.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- smt88 4y ago
  There are no modern scientists who understand evolution and think it can be "completed" or that humans have done so. If you stand by your assertion, please provide evidence.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Not parent commenter, but what can be argued is that evolutions “rules” are way different to us then to any other animal (except the ones we closely handle ourselves). E.g. healing people, far smaller infant death rates, no basically no food scarcity from natural causes, etc. Our selection process is societal, not “natural”.
    - alserio 4y ago
      Are you implying that Cindy saying "ew" when I asked her out is not as much as natural as being mauled by a sabertooth tiger in my teens?
    - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
      Our selection process looks pretty natural to me. Also we solved food scarcity, like, a century ago?
      - kaba0 4y ago
        Is our weak culled by predators, or are we pressured towards some change (e.g. more efficient digestive track) due to food scarcity? Those would be some natural selection processes, and they don’t apply to us in any significant way since.. I would say the agricultural revolution at least, but maybe even sooner (the very reason we can “feed” such a hungry organ as our brains is due to our efficiency at hunting/processing food even back then thanks to tools/fire)
        int_19h 4y ago
        Anything that has some effect on the number of children one has, and their probability to survive until they can have their own children, would be a natural selection process. Nobody actually has to die, or even to remain childless.
    - smt88 4y ago
      > Our selection process is societal, not “natural” That's culture, not evolution. It's absolutely natural (in every sense of the word) and there are biological components. Outside of that, though, there is also physical natural selection that occurs. Human "hardware" is evolving along with the "software".
      - kaba0 4y ago
        That argument will quickly devolve into just https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ , though. But the point is, evolution is not a “thing”, it is an observation explained by selection pressures, an emergent property if you will. The characteristics/statistics for people are way different than any other wild animal, so I think it is fair to attribute that to society vs nature.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > There are no modern scientists who understand evolution and think it can be "completed" or that humans have done so. There are many modern scientists who don't understand evolution.
    - smt88 4y ago
      > There are many modern scientists who don't understand evolution. A. I doubt there are many who don't understand natural selection and/or want to talk about evolution without understanding it B. I excluded those people explicitly, so what's your point?
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        They don't stop publishing just because they're stupid.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    It is indeed an unusual assertion, but it does bring up some interesting ideas - it seems obvious that the speed of evolutionary change in species is highest whenever the environment changes (especially after various great extinction events associated with drastic change) but in any particular place would settle up in some local optimum (or Nash equilibrium between the related species) after some time of no significant change, so in some way one might say that the evolution is "completed" at that point. Of course, even for this definition human evolution is absolutely not "completed" at the moment, since however fit/adapted homo sapiens were to the conditions of Africa 200 000 years ago, the last few thousand years have seen enormous changes in our environment to which we definitely haven't adapted yet in the insignificantly small span of 100 or so generations; If the major changes in our social and physical environment would stop today, perhaps we might reach some evolutionary "stable spot" in a 100 000 years (or much more), but right now we haven't even fully adapted to agriculture, much less modern conditions.
    - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
      One known recent evolutionary event is geographic variation of lactose intolerance.
      - PeterisP 4y ago
        Yes, the relatively novel adaptation to process lactose is a great example of an adaptation to agriculture and animal husbandry that started to happen but didn't even yet have the time to properly spread out until the environment changed again so much to make it not as relevant due to wide and easy availability of all kinds of arbitrary dietary choices. We could consider our "evolutionary adaption to modern agriculture" to be completed only after probably hundreds of such and larger effects have had enough time to both occur as a mutation and either spread across all the population or stabilizing to some equilibrium state.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- epistasis 4y ago
  I don't know if any science that takes this as a tenet. In fact, since our population is growing so much, it's likely that the rate of human evolution has accelerated quite a bit.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  I've never heard this before. Do you have a source?
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    I guess it was derived from the old (or layman?) definition of evolution as survival of the fittest as in human society the unfit survive with the help of medicine, technology and charity.
    - shepherdjerred 4y ago
      Weird. I'm sure you could say any other intelligent species that helps others is no longer evolving too.
- tayo42 4y ago
  I thought we still need to evolve into crabs?
tanbog5 4y ago
It's 10,000 or so generations - which is not much time for things to radically change. And similar genetic studies work on other species so that's even more evidence it's reasonable generic a technique.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  That's quite a lot of time and a lot of things changed: genome, technology, food, pollution, radiation, climate, biosphere, medicine, lifestyle.
jareklupinski 4y ago
curious... did your firewall also light up when trying to access the link?
waterhouse 4y ago
It's weird—the link in the article body goes to some sketchy IP address, but the "More information" section after the article has what looks to be the real link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7047 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7047

thaumasiotes 4y ago

A fundamental tenet of much modern science (and, especially, punditry) is that humans have completed the evolutionary process.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smt88 4y ago
There are no modern scientists who understand evolution and think it can be "completed" or that humans have done so. If you stand by your assertion, please provide evidence.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Not parent commenter, but what can be argued is that evolutions “rules” are way different to us then to any other animal (except the ones we closely handle ourselves). E.g. healing people, far smaller infant death rates, no basically no food scarcity from natural causes, etc. Our selection process is societal, not “natural”.
  - alserio 4y ago
    Are you implying that Cindy saying "ew" when I asked her out is not as much as natural as being mauled by a sabertooth tiger in my teens?
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    Our selection process looks pretty natural to me. Also we solved food scarcity, like, a century ago?
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Is our weak culled by predators, or are we pressured towards some change (e.g. more efficient digestive track) due to food scarcity? Those would be some natural selection processes, and they don’t apply to us in any significant way since.. I would say the agricultural revolution at least, but maybe even sooner (the very reason we can “feed” such a hungry organ as our brains is due to our efficiency at hunting/processing food even back then thanks to tools/fire)
      - int_19h 4y ago
        Anything that has some effect on the number of children one has, and their probability to survive until they can have their own children, would be a natural selection process. Nobody actually has to die, or even to remain childless.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > Our selection process is societal, not “natural” That's culture, not evolution. It's absolutely natural (in every sense of the word) and there are biological components. Outside of that, though, there is also physical natural selection that occurs. Human "hardware" is evolving along with the "software".
    - kaba0 4y ago
      That argument will quickly devolve into just https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ , though. But the point is, evolution is not a “thing”, it is an observation explained by selection pressures, an emergent property if you will. The characteristics/statistics for people are way different than any other wild animal, so I think it is fair to attribute that to society vs nature.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > There are no modern scientists who understand evolution and think it can be "completed" or that humans have done so. There are many modern scientists who don't understand evolution.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > There are many modern scientists who don't understand evolution. A. I doubt there are many who don't understand natural selection and/or want to talk about evolution without understanding it B. I excluded those people explicitly, so what's your point?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      They don't stop publishing just because they're stupid.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  It is indeed an unusual assertion, but it does bring up some interesting ideas - it seems obvious that the speed of evolutionary change in species is highest whenever the environment changes (especially after various great extinction events associated with drastic change) but in any particular place would settle up in some local optimum (or Nash equilibrium between the related species) after some time of no significant change, so in some way one might say that the evolution is "completed" at that point. Of course, even for this definition human evolution is absolutely not "completed" at the moment, since however fit/adapted homo sapiens were to the conditions of Africa 200 000 years ago, the last few thousand years have seen enormous changes in our environment to which we definitely haven't adapted yet in the insignificantly small span of 100 or so generations; If the major changes in our social and physical environment would stop today, perhaps we might reach some evolutionary "stable spot" in a 100 000 years (or much more), but right now we haven't even fully adapted to agriculture, much less modern conditions.
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    One known recent evolutionary event is geographic variation of lactose intolerance.
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      Yes, the relatively novel adaptation to process lactose is a great example of an adaptation to agriculture and animal husbandry that started to happen but didn't even yet have the time to properly spread out until the environment changed again so much to make it not as relevant due to wide and easy availability of all kinds of arbitrary dietary choices. We could consider our "evolutionary adaption to modern agriculture" to be completed only after probably hundreds of such and larger effects have had enough time to both occur as a mutation and either spread across all the population or stabilizing to some equilibrium state.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
epistasis 4y ago
I don't know if any science that takes this as a tenet. In fact, since our population is growing so much, it's likely that the rate of human evolution has accelerated quite a bit.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
I've never heard this before. Do you have a source?
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  I guess it was derived from the old (or layman?) definition of evolution as survival of the fittest as in human society the unfit survive with the help of medicine, technology and charity.
  - shepherdjerred 4y ago
    Weird. I'm sure you could say any other intelligent species that helps others is no longer evolving too.
tayo42 4y ago
I thought we still need to evolve into crabs?

tanbog5 4y ago

It's 10,000 or so generations - which is not much time for things to radically change. And similar genetic studies work on other species so that's even more evidence it's reasonable generic a technique.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago
That's quite a lot of time and a lot of things changed: genome, technology, food, pollution, radiation, climate, biosphere, medicine, lifestyle.

jareklupinski 4y ago

curious... did your firewall also light up when trying to access the link?

waterhouse 4y ago

It's weird—the link in the article body goes to some sketchy IP address, but the "More information" section after the article has what looks to be the real link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7047 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7047