Sayonara

For many people the attraction of the armed forces is a balance between education and finances, nothing more. I'm sure there are people who join the army in order to kill other people, but fortunately these kinds of people are the ones who are most likely to die first in a conflict and find it difficult to successfully mate. Every single person I have known who has joined any of the armed forces - and there have been quite a few - has done it because they wanted to, but the major factors involved were that (i) they would be accepted into that occupation with less qualifications than required by other jobs offering the same salary, and (ii) overheads will be reduced due to provided clothing and accomodations, even for immediate family - therefore the salary can be more efficiently utilised. The fact that these attractive factors influence their decision does not mean that they have no choice to begin with. If people took a longer view of their lives, and accepted the fact that even one person's single decision in a single moment affects outcomes for everyone around them, then they would not join the armed forces. Because if there is no armed forces, there is no war. However, because of the way we are taught to think by our "cultures", this is as far as most people bother to take it: "They pay well, and I can get out after three years, and I'm not likely to actually fight anyone, and it's not like I am the one declaring war on people even if I do have to fight anyone..." Most people you see are programmed to believe that their actions and moral obligations are just a drop in ocean, so they don't need to take responsibility for the evils and horrors around them because it's society's problem. The 'longer view' dictates that this may well be so, but just as ultimately an ocean is made only of drops, so is society ultimately made only of individuals making choices.

Using cybernetic implants is unlikely to affect us evolutionarily, or at least not in the way you might expect. Think about it - you have your hand removed and replaced with a prosthetic in the fashion of the times. Does this result in people being born with 1 hand and 1 prosthetic-ready stump? No. If the prosthetic hand is an evolutionary advantage, in that in some way it makes people more likely to pass on their genetic information (and to more partners) than people without prosthetic hands, there will be no specific genetic material passed on as a result of the presence of the prosthetic hand. Nor will there be any genetic material passed on that makes people more likely to have prosthetic hands fitted. In short, the next generation are no more or less likely to have a prosthetic hand fitted than the last (due to any genetic reasons, anyway. Fashions and attitudes will undoubtedly vary). There is no gene for "likely-to-have-a-prosthetic-hand-ness", nor are the genes that result in you having hands dropped out of your genetic code if you remove a hand. Therefore there is no way such a self-imposed modification can have any widely-ranging selective effect on a population.

People don't have to join the armed forces. People don't have to live in strategically important cities. People don't even have to live in the country they were born in. If humans were more inclined to take the responsibility for their actions and choices seriously, and recognise that every country is part of the same population, we would not be the puppets of a few men in suits. It is perfectly possible to manage the planet and its resources properly without people killing each other off - the reason that this does not happen is not because of the fact that different people rarely agree, but more in the way that we react to that fact.

Erador: It would help if the question made sense. At the moment, it either suggests that everything that isn't a tree is an animal, or that anything that is not an animal is a tree. It's probably perfectly possible to trace back to where trees began appearing, but I'm not sure that's what KH was really after. As for god being in opposition to life occuring on its own then evolving - since there is no good evidence for how life began (and probably never will be), there's no reason to believe that some 'god' entity did not kick it all off on this planet. Personally I don't see religious beliefs about god as being a problem for evolutionary theories, seeing as evolution is something any smart creator would ensure featured in his creations if he wanted life to last more than a few years. However even basic principles such as Occam's Razor suggest that coming up with flights of fancy such as "Genesis" just because there's no reason to assume the world was not created by god are nothing short of folly. Maybe it was, but we really don't need to make up the story to go with it and then modify our group behaviour accordingly. When a group of molecular biologists in a lab in Switzerland discovers a mechanism for spontaneous amine synthesis that may have been involved in the aggregation of the first pre-cellular structures, or when a deep ocean survey team find a sulphur vent on the bed of the pacific, feeding a unique ecosystem heat from deep within the earth, you don't see them dancing with glee and denouncing any religion that attempts to explain the origins of life in a contextual way.

We cannot say that there will never be a utopia or perfect society without acknowledging that we are discounting the possibility that mankind's drives and behaviour will ever change. Since we know that man's ability to adapt (and indeed react) to the environment around him is one of the major evolutionary advantages we have, and the reason we pretty much dominate the planet, that is not a reasonable assumption to make. "there will be advanced countries looking to harness the resources of the world. to ensure they gain what they need, puppet governments will be established." You mean like Bush's administration? Yes, have to say I agree with you on that one. "how does a country sending soldiers to kill other soildiers solve anything?" It creates a real-terms cost and a genetic cost for the country under attack, and reduces their capacity to defend their ideology. This has massive knock-on effects in the way that the country manages its resources and makes its decisions.

[To matter] No, you're completely right. We do have many of the selective pressures removed artificially these days. But any advantage that increases individual fitness (by which I mean evolutionary fitness, not fitness in the everyday conversation sense) still applies, particularly when you are considering evolution (since individuals don't evolve, populations do - which reduces everything to maths).

The fact that some people die through causes they did not bring about does not negate the fact that higher intelligence makes the passing on of genetic material more likely, and the range of dispersal greater. YT - the men hitting dinosaurs for a kill was tongue-in-cheek, right?

ARGH! We're not all doomed! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3081520.stm

lol f00

Collating data that others have worked hard for then constructing elaborate ideas in your head is one thing, interpreting it and presenting an actual hypothesis with a reasoned explanation is something quite different. That's what you have failed to present, Garry, and that's why Greg is right.

I was promised Frankenstein. Cough up.

They'd be screwed either way. Nobody to supply them, and no hospitable planet to land on even assuming they could get back down here safely with no shuttle and no ground crews.

That would be one hell of a trick shot.

The best thing about Stark was the music (although not in the book, obviously). And the camel too. Ps - I agree with MrL. All indications point to a non-glamorous, non-dramatic end to humanity. "Not with a bang, but with a whimper" and so on. Bottom line though is that unless we can colonise the galaxy, we will always be at risk of complete extinction.

It will be funny?

Timothy changed my title It was originally "RIAA Sueing Train Gathers Speed". And he removed the BBC link, which is understandable I guess.

I got a front-page article on Slashdot. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/03/160241&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=123&tid=141&tid=188&tid=99 "Quite a few" comments too. I rock :banana:

Not in an evolutionary sense, no. Slightly less hair and a slightly smaller lower jaw, with a small increase in average height. Most changes between then and now are related to longevity, due to the advances in medical science, hygiene education and even cooking.

Still not seeing a connection between biblical descriptions and a pagan/druidic calendar. This is going into pseudoscience unless and until a testable hypothesis is presented in a readable fashion.

Why? You can dig a very deep hole in 10 years.

Unless having no little toenail or no appendix confers an advantage in dealing with selective pressure there is no reason for it to be selected against - species don't just drop organs or appendices they no longer use, hence the prehensile tail (coccyx) and appendix in humans. The appendix is getting smaller and has been for some time - it has no digestive function - but it will take a while to disappear completely. Also remember that having your appendix removed does not "update" your genome accordingly.

I should really have read the question ;-)

Whut?

Why would we be less tolerant of UV, lose the little toenail or the appendix, or have a reduced immune system?

Archaeopteryx as an extreme example. The equine fossil record shows very good intermediate species, assuming of course you start up with the common ancestor and finish with modern horses. Think of it this way. You can see the differences in adaptive biology between, say, Galapagos Finches, because you can look at them and observe their characteristics, diet, behaviour etc. Conversely, two similar fossilised dino skeletons from a sedimentary rock tell you very little about the differences in tissues, organs or behaviour that may have existed between the two animals in question.