What ever happen to natural selection?

Question

Ok, so with all of our medical advances and safety precautions its getting harder and harder for the "inferior" human being to "eliminate" themselves. These sub humans then go on to mate and have kids, usually like 4. And since these people are not fit to exist, and would not have existed 100 or even 50/60 years ago, therefore they are unfit parents and are poorly raising their children, not really caring if their kids are like 12 and going to rated R movies for example.

And they children will have a hard if not impossible time eliminating -their-selves, and the trend continues, and soon the human race is just a bunch of sub-human idiots like the first one I described... So what can we do, like put all the idiots in camps and contain them or something? Just so that they don't ruin the human race? Or do you all just want to de-evolve into a species that will eventually become too stupid and just die off.

Answer 1

Evolution also works better when there is more diversity and a larger population to select from.  It probably would be bad to allow certain genetic disorders into the general population but the alternative of not allowing people to live doesn't seem acceptable.  Hopefully people will become educated in the future and some sorts of controls will be available.  It is not something that will likely permeate the gene pool but if does, selection or medical procedures could probably fix it.

Answer 2

I agree with Mathilda's main point.  However, genetics is a bit like a card game, in that when a hand is delt from 2 good hands it is more likely to produce a better hand than when one is delt from 2 poor hands.  However, two poor hands do sometimes produce a superior hand and how the hand is played can have a significant influence on the outcome of the game.

That moves us into the nature Vs nurture debate. Because my current children are adopted, (the biological children are grown) I am experiencing this on a small scale.  Some children will be successful regardless of how they are nurtured & others will become criminals or failures in spite of the advantages they are given.  However, both nature & nuture can play a big part in human development.  

Our society does have many short commings & the least educated & lower IQs are producing far more offspring than the more educated.  Chuckle, that may be the reason the US has so many creationists & anti science people.  I see no acceptable solution to resolving this problem, because all methods of enacting birth control are just too draconian to consider.

Humans continue to evolve, but one may debate wheather or not the species is evolving in a positive direction or toward extinction.

Answer 3

do humanity a favor,go jump off a cliff and eliminate yourself.

EDIT:well you dont prove your point with your " what ever HAPPEN(ed) to natural selection"

and i wont even change it, so everyone can see my "idiotness" compared to yours.

EDIT:okay, so i will stop with the childish insults and tell you my real point of view. Since when do genes and the ability to survive have to do with behavior. So you are saying that a person that for example has a hereditary heart disease would be a bad parent?

okay well i think jonmcn   already explained that point. It just really maddens me that you are able to consider someone sub-human. Did you know that in history, jews (and many other races throughout history) were forced to be castrated because they were considered to be the lesser race? who are you to decide who is  a "sub-human". Its not like we are dogs to be spayed or neutered. You think you are better than everyone? and you couldnt even identify the difference between genetics and morality, does that mean that you should be put into the "camp". Well im not even trying to offend you anymore,im just explaining why i thought you were an idiot and dont agree with you.  

and by the way, we humans, the "superior species" are going to end up destroying this earth anyway. The world wont last enough for us to evolve because we the "superior species" are going to destroy it.

just wanted to explain my point, i know you probably dont care, this is the last time i reply. bye.

Answer 4

I agree with everyone, mostly.  On a fun note, the question reminded me of the movie "Idiocracy" by Mike Judd.  Check it out if you've got some free time. :)

Answer 5

Someone worked out recently that the people alive in the UK are mostly descended from the upper classes of the late  middle ages.

You are talking about 'dysgenics', where our social system encourage the criminal and stupid to have more children. And it does, criminals manage to have an average of 3 to 4 kids, professionals average at one.

http://www.eugenics.net/papers/lynnrev.h...

Previously, when there was no contraception or social care, everyone had the same number of children, but it was the children of the better parents who were more likely to survive, from being better cared for, and having parents with more money.

IQ is known to be mostly hereditary. Also, the lower your IQ the more likely you are to s***w up your contraception.

There's a story called ' the marching morons', where some one is frozen and wakes up in the future, where the people are nearly all idiots because the smart people wouldn't breed fast enough. Sounds like your kind of thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marchin...

Afterthought..

Your and idiot? ROFLMAO!

Answer 6

You are somewhat confused about selection and evolution. Evolution does not have a direction, so you can not " devolve. "

Natural selection pays in reproductive success, not intelligence, or what you consider a good society. And reproductive success is many grandchildren throughout the generations.

Intelligence is polygenic, so one or two of those " subhumans " may have children of normal intelligence.

Moral and societal choices are not based on natural processes, even though moral choices may have evolved components.

I am sure you will garner other objections to your position. Since this is a social science section, perhaps many will be ideological, rather than biological.

Answer 7

I think your point is quite valid, it's just that natural selection takes tens of thousands of years to manifest its progeny.  And frankly, yes, advances in medicine do interfere with the process, of nature taking its course... but really becomes complicated when we can 'artificially' intervene in the process, but in theory, given a long enough timeline, natural selection should still select for the fittest organism.