DevilInside wrote:
I guess i should have thought that one more through.. however, it still stands to reason that human society has come to a point where the standards imposed by natural selection have become irrelevant for the most part.. people can thrive in all sorts of special niches even if they have something that would be considered a disability in the wild.
That I can agree with. It does seem that humans have managed to re-work the world enough that our DNA can get a little creative (I know I'm anthropomorphising) and genetic variations that would lead to death without civilization get tried out and passed on. I think that as a species we have practically cast aside natural selection and have huge genetic diversity within one species as a result. That's a good thing. It means that if there is ever some sort of apocalypse that wipes out most humans, there will be at least some who have- by sheer chance- the genotype that lets them survive it.
. It is impossible to know in advance what this genotype is. Who knows? It might be the ability to make some particular enzyme. There is just no way to know in advance. And hopefully there won't be an apocalypse. But the more genetically diverse we are as a species, the better the odds that something that won't come in handy until 700 years from now is nevertheless being passed on.
24 May 2011, 5:45 pm
