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Originally Posted by floppynutz
No longer do the fastest, smartest and strongest survive.
The fastest, smartest, and strongest never have. It's inefficient. The smartest get their over-sized heads stuck in the pelvis, the strongest and fastest have to eat more to maintain their muscle mass. With these limitations mitigated by technology, the selection pressure toward strength and speed and smarts will likely increase.
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So I theorize that while natural selection simply can't be stopped, it has certainly been mitigated to an enormous degree. Does it follow that given enough time the human gene pool would 'weaken'?
No, neither's the case and the opposite actually follows. Right now we have differential reproductive success and a new environment with new selective pressures. Natural selection is going at a breakneck. And while we'll probably be less adapted to our past environment, we'll probably be much more adaptive in general.
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I'm aware of the huge leap that word makes. 'Strength' in the context of this discussion is this: If you were taken out of a city, and placed in an environment for which your species spent tens of thousands of years adapting.... Would u survive? Or would you not fare well without your zylodrophin and frazzleitol (imaginary medications ;-)
Well, what we were taken to an environment in which our gut flora didn't exist? We'd all die right quick. So obviously we're "less evolved" now than we were back when we were primordial fish, as our newly acquired dependence on these bacteria have weakened us (by the standard you're using).
Nah. Zylodrophin and Frazzleitol are part of our future environment just as much as trees and sabre-toothed tigers were part of our past environment. I don't see the Pleistocene returning any time soon, so I'd rather be adapted for the future environment. And I'd rather that we expend our energies on being stronger, faster, and smarter than on having arcane immunological defenses against the deadly forces of...strep throat.
