I met a marine biologist recently. She was busy completing a PhD. We started talking about evolution. She says that natural evolution for humans no longer exists. Instead we are now immersed in directed evolution. Directed evolution is where because we have neutralised the trials and tribulations in our environment, we no longer evolve in response to them. Instead of our bodies and brains evolving to be bigger or stronger or faster in response to the environment, we build cars and trucks and computers. These things then give us the advantage that normally evolution would have figured out for us.
I don’t beleive this and argued that we are still evolving, we are evolving in response to the environment of technology. And no matter how much of a hand we have to play in that environment, we still must respond to it. Those who respond better that others, will perpetuate their genes better too. The rule has always been that individuals don’t evolve, populations do. So while we see ourselves dominating the world with technology, it can be hard to step outside of ourselves and see a picture a million years wide.
Another interesting ethical aside to the evolution argument is this: as we create technology to support ourselves, we actually become weaker. We contrive to perpetuate weaker sets of genes that would not otherwise survive. But then the argument stands, have we not evolved to develop technology to support ourselves?
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