Has our ability to gain information through direct observation with our enviroment?

Question

slowed natural selection with technology by interfering with the gain of that important information in our genome?

for instance; someone with bad eyesight is now as equally likely to pass on those genes because he/she has adapted with glasses

A child with poor vision is less likely to see a car about to hit them; where as a child with better vision under the same circumstances would have increased probability of avoiding death - small chance, yea, but remember evolution works in small steps

Answer 1

The important biological considerations are those of increasing intelligence; man's intellectual capacities and ingenuity have rendered purely physical limitations, such as bad eyesight, to be, at the very least, much less important.

Besides, man's effect on his environment renders the purely physical characteristics much less important than in times past. We need not require deadly accuracy throwing a spear to protect ourselves from predators, nor do we require such physical stamina so as to survive harsh climatic conditions, as was the case in ages past.

As long as man's intelligence continues to surmount the physical challenges of our environment, natural selection is more or less rendered obsolete.

Answer 2

Hi sweetie! ;-)

Well, hmm.

Coming from someone who needed glasses back in childhood, and sort of still do, even if I have a 20/20 vision someday, I would still be able to pass down poor eyesight to if I have anymore children. I don't predisposition to anything will change. However, technology and the kind of homes we have now helps us to be able to live longer lives, many of the stuff today.
Like, how many people died from extreme heat from Death Valley area 2 centuries ago? I would think it's a lot more than today!
Who knows, with the right kind of technology, people may someday to live to see 100, and it would be such a common thing that it no longer becomes front page news. Maybe less preemies will die ( I was a preemie myself).
Evolution does work in small steps, agreed!

Answer 3

In some cases, maybe. I don't know that having poor vision/blindness would ever have prevented someone from marrying and having children (and this probably hasn't happened for a few centuries anyway), though, but I get what you're trying to say. Maybe chronic conditions such as diabetes and treatment with insulin which would increase the ability of the person to survive to a reproductive age would be a better example.

But in others, maybe we've speeded up natural selection: antibiotics and herbicides select for resistant organisms, global warming selecting for organisms that can survive higher temperatures or increased moisture (water level rise), adaptability to higher light levels (deforestation), lower blooming heights of weeds (mowing your lawn), etc.

Answer 4

Sure. We are no longer adapting to the "natural" environment that once was. But we are in a different environment now. So the human genome is adapting to this new environment, which has new natural selection criteria, such as people with bad childhoods who never marry or have children, or teenagers who drive their car fast and crash and die before they have children, people who die early from cancer, drug addiction and such.
So I guess if society collapses and most of our technology goes away, there will be a major thinning out of the human population. But I think there is still natural selection going on, unless you maintain that what's happening to the world now is un-natural. Boy, now we have to define natural LOL.

Answer 5

No. Think of the vast gene pool now in existence and all the mutations being presented to natural selection. Actually, they think our mutational rate and evolutionary rate has quite stepped up its pace since the dawn of agriculture.

Remember, reproductive success is the coin evolution pays its organisms in. So, sexual selection is the great driver of human evolution.

Answer 6

It is hypothesized that the human species, as it is now, is the pinnacle of our evolution because, as you point out, we have overcome the slight changes in our environment.

We live in climate controlled environments. We modify and overcome any environmental change. We have, therefore, eliminated the stimulus for natural selection and its effect on our species.

Answer 7

i believe that being the supreme of all species, man has the natural ability to survive whatever kind of stimuli he may be facing.