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Originally posted by ******** but I think there is a certian value that seperates human from beast.

free time

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Originally posted by Nrg2Nfinit doing basic tasks for our species is an acquired (learned) trait. The critical learning age plays a huge roll in this. Look at all child protegy's again. how come we hear nothing of their parents?

We don't? Mozart's father was acknowledged to be the best music teacher in Europe. John Stuart Mill's dad was a renowned historian. I don't think you can say that the parents of child prodigies are generally dunces or unremarkable.

I'm not saying at all that intelligence can't be influenced by environment. Being trained by smart parents is probably one big reason why Mozart and J.S. Mill succeeded in the ways that they did.

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Originally posted by astroboy True.. but then why not 100+ or 1+ to be safe. The true figure is in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Several orders of magnitude higher than your lower limit to the point that it is safe to assume you had a much lower estimation in mind.

Really?

It's only been 5-600 years since America was discovered and already the facial features of Americans are becoming distinctive when compared with those of other Caucasian nations. Ear lobes have also started to disappear only in the past 500 years.

Evolution happens a lot more quickly than you think.

to be fair i think it has a lot more to do with fried chicken and fried lard

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles We don't? Mozart's father was acknowledged to be the best music teacher in Europe. John Stuart Mill's dad was a renowned historian. I don't think you can say that the parents of child prodigies are generally dunces or unremarkable. I'm not saying at all that intelligence can't be influenced by environment. Being trained by smart parents is probably one big reason why Mozart and J.S. Mill succeeded in the ways that they did.

fair enough. But you cannot compare the genius of mozzart however to his father. Haven't you ever seen that show about child geniuses where the parents are like working minimum wage and their kids can do complex algebra at the age of 6? Thats critical learning age influence, not a genetic perfection created by the mating of two average parents.

It also has to do with luck as neural pathways are formed somewhat randomly within the brain throughout learning experience.

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Originally posted by Domesticated Really? It's only been 5-600 years since America was discovered and already the facial features of Americans are becoming distinctive when compared with those of other Caucasian nations. Ear lobes have also started to disappear only in the past 500 years. Evolution happens a lot more quickly than you think.

I'm not aware of any empirical research to support this claim, but even assuming this is true it would not be an example of evolution. More likely it is a homogenisation of certain aspects of the gene pool.. eg. get a bunch of black people and a bunch of Chinese people dump them on an island and come back in 500 years.. it'll be an island of "Chi-Negroes" with their own unique facial traits... this will not, however be a direct result of new mutations that selectively stayed in the gene pool as a result of environmental pressures. ie it is not evolution.

A better example of an evolved trait would be something like the preponderance of sickle-cell disease among populations where malaria is prevalent. This is a unique, inherited, genetic trait that is overwhelmingly prevalent in one population, where it carries a survival value while being pretty much absent in all others. It now affects 1 in 3 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the first mutation probably occurred in the Arabian peninsula 70-150 thousand years ago, it would be fascinating to graph the rate at which the trait became more and more common over the years.

Having said that, the book isn't closed on whether evolutions works in jerks or creeps.. I think most people say a bit of both.

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Last edited by astroboy on May-31-2009 at 03:28

i guess it would be comparable to the selective breeding of dogs or muts,

you have alot of morphological differences between dogs but they are still the same species.

It is not an example of evolution since the environment is not creating a pressure on them to change a certain way. Instead humans are selectively breeding them.

As humans we have a choice of who we breed with. if we breed with different races we will have different outcomes.

long ear lobes could be a recessive gene, thus you breed with natives as a caucasian the ear lobes may disapear in the next generation. Another plausable explanation would be the following. I don't think native populations were very large, so if you throw in an abundant amount of caucasians with phenotypic differences (visual traits) they will overwhelm those of the natives and eventually they may dissipate.

lets give an example of dogs:


you have 3 labradors and 50 german Shepperd.
eventually all the dogs will look like german Shepperd.

This is not evolution and can be thought more of as selective breeding

It comes down to semantics. essentially you have the same mechanism working here. Mutations that were naturally selected for and now you are overwhelming them with breeding from a different group to dilute or dissipate them out. This is not evolution where as the original acquired traits were (Through random mutation and selective pressures form the environment that made the traits advantageous.)

I hope this may help clear things up.

This is just an addition to what astroboy said which i obviously agree with.

Evolution is change in frequency of heritable traits within a population over time, so the examples you gave are examples of evolution. Humans are as much a part of a dog's environment as anything else is.

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Originally posted by R.j. I lived in absolute solitude for a about two months, doing nothing but reading books; after them two months, you see, I got out and, verbally, had trouble putting sentences together. True story.

Would love to hear more about that.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Evolution is change in frequency of heritable traits within a population over time, so the examples you gave are examples of evolution. Humans are as much a part of a dog's environment as anything else is.

"random mating must occur"

this is one of the clauses for evolution to take place.

its not natural selection if we are choosing who the dogs mate. its force selection and selective breeding.

Its a play on words but there is a reason why evolution is so gradual and slective mating the results occur extremely quickly

It's what plants crave.

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