According to Darwin's theory of evolution?

Question

Is it true that the Human species will never get smarter unless people kill the stupid? Researchers found an ancient Greek calculator 1000 years more advanced than it was supposed to be. That person who designed that calculator 1000 years ago is probably smarter than 99% of humans today.

Answer 1

Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years. Because people's intelligence does not necessarily affect their reproductive ability, it is not selected for per se by natural selection. In fact, humans in general have weak selection pressure on them. The reproductive differential of different people is not always affected by the person's genes at all. Anatomically, the ancients Greeks were identical to all of us. The reason 'modern' humans may appear smarter than the Greeks is that everything done in the past to increase human knowledge still exists today. That is, collective knowlegde, transferred written or orally, increases exponentially; the more there is, the more there will be in the future.
The Greek who designed that calculator probably was smarter than 99% of people today, just as Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Eistein were. 1000 years ahead of its time perhaps seems 'smarter' than the above men because the Greeks knowledge was much lower than ours then.
Technically, if we kill all the 'stupid' people (people with less genetically predisposed intelligence that is) then the average human would be smarter than at present. This would not be natural selction, though, and not really evolution. Also, this would not necessarily increase the intelligence of the smartest people and there would still be relatively 'stupid' people who are not as smart as the average person. But technically the Human species would have a higher genetic predisposition to intelligece than right now, draw from that what you will.

Answer 2

Well, first off, what does "1000 years more advanced than it was supposed to be" mean?
Supposed to be according to whom?
What is more advanced?

And no, evolution doesn't imply that a species will never change unless some die off. It states that those that are more well-adapted to surviving in the current environment will indeed survive better, and will produce more offspring. That could just as well lead to a new or seperate species from the less-well-adapted ones as it could the ones better adapted to completely take over.
With regard to humans getting smarter, if indeed being smarter does give an advantage to survival, then more smart people will live longer and produce more offspring. It's possible the not-as-smart ones will die out, but it's not necessary.
When I look at, say, the current president of the US, I'm not sure being smart right now has an evolutionary advantage ;-) In the long run it probably will be an advantage for humans to be smart, and the not-so-smart ones won't survive and will die out -- but that could take hundreds of thousands of years.

Finally, that somebody in ancient Greece came up with a cool calculator doesn't make him "smarter" than anybody living today. It means he had a good idea and was able to execute it. But he also probably believed in the Greek gods, didn't know anything about what caused diseases, didn't know anything about space or even the planets in our solar system, etc. Overall, despite hanging on to superstitious ancient myths aboug god-beings, people today are smarter than humans have ever been. This guy was obviously good in math, and may have been ahead of his time...that doesn't make him smarter than people today.

Answer 3

No, killing your own kind is not a good thing to do as far as evolution is concerned (hence the fact that most intra-species combat in the animal world is ritualized and not deadly). Morals aside, if we start selecting for murderers (apart from reducing genetic diversity which is very bad as far as evolution is concerned) we will be harming our own species survival prospects.

Humans can get smarter by sexual selection, eg. statistically, people are more attracted to intelligent and wealthy people of the opposite sex, hence such people are more likely to have more children (however this is currently offset by the correlation between more education and later reproduction and therefore less children). More powerful is improvements in education. And, likely soon, genetic manipulation of ourselves.

2000 years is almost nothing otherwise, although there is some evidence that mutations have lead to European Jewish people, as a population, becoming smarter than average over the past 2000 years, perhaps due to the fact that they were often restricted by law to some of the more intelligent occupations.

Answer 4

The calculator, though very complicated, was not 1000 years more advanced than it was supposed to be. It is possible, though, that the person was in the 99th percentile of intelligence.

PS The calculator was dated to about 100 BC, more like 2000 years ago. It could even predict eclipses, they posit.

Answer 5

That's is absolute rubbish!

According to Darwin's theory, evolution aims at the survival of the species. This happens through natural selection. So, for the survival of the human species, natural selection will favour the smarter, stronger, genes in human beings - hence the continued survival of the species.

We do not have to interfere with the processes of nature (by killing the stupid), says Darwin.

And anyway, if we did decide kill the stupid, who would be be left behind? Think about it, there's always someone smarter than you and me - that would mean that we would have to be killed since (compared to more intelligent humans) we are stupid. I wonder, then, who would qualify as intelligent, since - I think - there would be someone smarter than that person, and hence he/she would have to die along with all the other stupid ones.

Will there be one MOST INTELLIGENT person left? I don't know!

Surely, then, killing the stupid is not a solution that would lead to the survival of the species - but to its demise!!!

Answer 6

No Darwin argued for the descent of all contemporary species from a single person-friendly ancestor in our planet's distant previous. He proposed a extra or much less appropriate mechanism and defined the device in question properly adequate to allow him to allure to three very reliable inferences from even the limited volume of counsel that he had. In any experience in case you theory that Darwin became no longer arguing for person-friendly ancestry you should study the e book lower back.

Answer 7

There have been people throughout time such as Da Vinci who was simply far more intelligent than most of the people of his day (and also of today). It is a mistake to underestimate peoples intelligence, which is a measure of there ability to learn, from up to at least 30 to 40,000 years ago in my opinion. I doubt that we have changed significantly. The brains of Neanderthal averaged larger than ours so who knows just how intelligent ancient humans were.

Answer 8

1000 years is barley enough time for anything to happen, evolutionary wise. I would take more like 10,000 or 20,000 years for noticeable differences to occur. So yes, that guy is probably smarter then a lot of people today.

Answer 9

No that is not entirely correct...
The calculator you speak of is over 2000 yrs. old...
And yes, the guy that made it may be smarter than most of todays people ..
2000 yrs. of evolution is not much....

Answer 10

If you want to know about what Darwin thought why don't you read his book? instead of asking people on here who probably didn't read the book either..unless you aren't smart enough to read..in which case we should kill you for the good of the species