Education & Reference an evolutionary question

[bunsen burner]

So I was thinking about the dinosaurs, you know with the evolution of aggressive and defensive weapons and what not.

So it got me wondering, in terms of the evolution of humans.

If we were to take a person - shoot them in the chest but ensure survival, then do it with someone of the opposite sex - then make them have kids then get their kids and arrange from them to be shoot in the chest and survive.

my question is, how many generations of the same family (assuming we make sure both parents of each person has also been shot in the chest) would it take before the chest became thicker to the point a bullet wouldn't actually penetrate the chest?

or doesn't evolution work like that

I think we should try this on the inhabitants of Israel.

 

[Cap]

I'd like to think that my future children will just automatically know not to click on a thread like this when they come across one sometime in the future.

you're kids probably won't have access to a computer, so I think you are safe.

 

[Djcjdees]

My advice for you is to keep not going to that board much. It's a poisonous quagmire. Evolution is not only a debated topic within science (even among scientist who are dedicated to the theory) but evolution is also a hotly debated topic in each category of 1.) Society 2.) Religion and 3.) Politics. It's a topic that can really belong anywhere although I don't recommend it in pub full of drunks.




See? I told ya. Gravity isn't the quality of down-ness. Nor is it in any quantifiable sense the curvature of spacetime. We all know gravity can be a harsh mistress, but she's also a deeply and profoundly mysterious bitch who probably holds the keys to all the answers of instrinsic reality. Walk a while with her and you will probably not concern yourself with whether or not evolution is a science or a social subject.

To be fair, you haven't said what gravity is either. Rather what it isn't. But I think you only mentioned gravity so you could plagiarise someone else's thoughts on it and pass it off as your own. Surely watching Good Will Hunting should have cured the urge to do that.

 

[neroblack]

you're kids probably won't have access to a computer, so I think you are safe.

It's "your", not "you're"..

 

[Cap]

It's "your", not "you're"..

thankyou master linguist, I will berate my smartphone for the poor choice of auto-correct.

 

[neroblack]

thankyou master linguist, I will berate my smartphone for the poor choice of auto-correct.

Good to hear. For what it's worth my original comments were less about your OP and more about where the discussion headed afterwards, although I wasn't very clear about that.

 

[Cap]

Good to hear. For what it's worth my original comments were less about your OP and more about where the discussion headed afterwards, although I wasn't very clear about that.

for what it is worth, my response was just shite

 

[Mooster7]

To be fair, you haven't said what gravity is either. Rather what it isn't. But I think you only mentioned gravity so you could plagiarise someone else's thoughts on it and pass it off as your own. Surely watching Good Will Hunting should have cured the urge to do that.

1. I mentioned gravity because Mr. Bluelegs mentioned it. That's what you get for thinking instead of reading the text/context.
2. Unless I quote someone explicitly or implicitly, what I write are my own thoughts and in my own writing. Plagiary isn't a crime on a message board, but it's still a nasty accusation which you shouldn't make without any evidence - which you haven't provided. Again, you were just "thinking." Go ahead and find a quote somewhere that I've lifted from a science website or a scientific paper somewhere. Be careful though, you might just be finding something else I've written under a name other than Mooster7.
3. No one knows what gravity is. That's my whole point (which you missed). Bluelegs, in his post, implied that he had complete faith in gravity. Yet science doesn't know what it is. Scientists cannot reconcile gravitation as it's understood in general relativity with quantum mechanics. They never will. Although I completely understand if you "think" they will.
4. If you follow the cutting edge of what is going on in science today (instead of say, latching onto the ideas of others) you will find that it takes as much faith to believe in scientific explanations for natural phenomena as it does to believe in a faith-based religion. Interesting thought, isn't it? ...and it's my own.
5. I've never seen Goodwill Hunting. I probably never will.

 

[kaysee]

So I was thinking about the dinosaurs, you know with the evolution of aggressive and defensive weapons and what not.

So it got me wondering, in terms of the evolution of humans.

If we were to take a person - shoot them in the chest but ensure survival, then do it with someone of the opposite sex - then make them have kids then get their kids and arrange from them to be shoot in the chest and survive.

my question is, how many generations of the same family (assuming we make sure both parents of each person has also been shot in the chest) would it take before the chest became thicker to the point a bullet wouldn't actually penetrate the chest?

or doesn't evolution work like that

42 generations... 42 is the numerical answer to all of life's questions.

In all seriousness... I would say about 10,000 - 20,000 years. If you look at a human evolution timeline it took about 40k years for Cro-Magnon man to evolve into us today... so if we take something like that as a reference point.

 

[Mancey]

AFAIK, DNA doesn't work that way. So it wouldn't really work.

You'd be better off shooting 100 people in the chest, finding which ones had the least damage done to them, then breeding them together. That way, a 'thick chested' trait would be favoured and more likely passed on to any offspring.

This guy is pretty much onto it.

You`d basically have to find a isolated group of humans, cut off from the outside world and unable to interbreed with anyone outside that population.

Before they reach breeding age, you'd need to shoot them all in the chest. Some would die, some would survive. Only those that survived would be able to breed.

Maybe one day a few individuals would develop a mutation that rendered bullets to the chest non life threatening. Maybe by having a thicker chest, a second heart or some such. The individuals with this trait would be genetically superior to their peers in this crazy world of chest shooting initiation, and would become more prolific.

How many generations would this take? Tens...hundreds of thousands of years basically. Man today is essentially the same now as he was 200,000 years ago. Higher organisms evolve slowly.

A similar experiment with single cell organisms, adaptation can occur in hours.

Your example is pretty crap really. Humans are unlikely to anatomically adapt to being shot in the chest. We are smart enough to adapt our behaviour to avoid such occurrences. Behaviour adaptation is a huge barrier to anatomical evolution.

Surviving an epidemic is perhaps a better hypothetical

 

[J_Moore]

4. If you follow the cutting edge of what is going on in science today (instead of say, latching onto the ideas of others) you will find that it takes as much faith to believe in scientific explanations for natural phenomena as it does to believe in a faith-based religion.

No it doesn't. That's a massive misrepresentation of what faith is and what science is.

 

[nicky]

Is it possible, that if conditions would allow, then another species on earth could zoom past us in intelligence, whilst we still exist?

 

[nicky]

No it doesn't. That's a massive misrepresentation of what faith is and what science is.

Agree, i thought the same when i read his post. However i think he probably meant whether it be science or religion, claiming to know how existence came to be, requires a leap of faith.

 

[Mancey]

Is it possible, that if conditions would allow, then another species on earth could zoom past us in intelligence, whilst we still exist?

Some sort of planet of the apes situation?

 

[nicky]

Some sort of planet of the apes situation?

Yes.

Like what has been prophesied with 'artificial intelligence' but instead of machines being more intelligent than humans, environmental factors facilitate a speedy evolutionary process making the garden snail more intelligent than humans.

 

[Mancey]

It took us 2 million years to get where we are now. Don't think there's much chance of anything zooming past us.

We're quite good a killing anything that starts getting too uppity

 

[Sydney Bloods]

Evolution goes kind of like this. Say there is a species of bear in northern parts of the world where it snows are all time, these bears are generally brown but colour can vary slightly from bear to bear, so there are dark bears and light bears by genetic luck. Turns out the lighter bears are more effective hunters as they are able to blend in with the snow moreso than the dark bears, so the dark bears are more likely to go hungry and less likely to mate and bear (no pun intended) offspring. Meaning that the lighter bears become the dominant population and their lighter fur genes progress rather than the darker fur genes. After a ******* long time the darker bears either migrate or go extinct due to their disadvantages in the great white north and the lighter bears continue to get lighter and lighter as their generations progress. Eventually these lighter bears become polar bears a species which can nearly perfectly camouflage with the snow.

So your question was if you shot generation after generation in the chest would they eventually gain a stronger chest that could withstand bullets. I'm not exactly sure it would. Rather a situation would have to occur in which a lot of people got shot in the chest, a fair bit and there were naturally some people who had stronger chests than others and could survive the shot. Those ones are more likely to have kids who would carry the same strong chested genes, rinse and repeat eventually there might be a species of people with strong enough chests to withstand bullets.

Not exactly comparable in the case of being shot it doesn't become part of the environment, the evolution of hair pigmentation evolves from a constant need that occurs over the entire lives of the subject. its highly unlikely that you could identify an evolutionary trait for a gun shot wound that only occurs once a generation.

Besides given that it's a gunshot wound you would expect clotting and cell regeneration would be a better identifiable evolutionary trait as it applies to all wounds and would take less time to evolve.

If you want thicker skin, bone and muscles your better off beating the shit out the subject's over the course of their lives up until they are too old to reproduce.

Even then there's no guarantee that the evolutionary trait you want will be adapted as it may not be the strongest adaption to deal with that scenario.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

We're quite good a killing anything that starts getting too uppity

Except sharks. Not allowed to kill sharks, no matter how many people they eat.

 

[GOAUS!]

Some sort of planet of the apes situation?

Wait a minute, Statue of Liberty, that was our planet. DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL!

 

[Mooster7]

No it doesn't. That's a massive misrepresentation of what faith is and what science is.

Not remotely.

The word ‘faith’ is quite simple. I shouldn’t need to define it, but something along these lines will do:

(1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust

b: something that is believed especially with strong conviction

So what about faith in science? The problems with a scientific understanding of the universe, especially in the macrocosmic world in which we presume to exist and interact, are many and require a great deal of faith. Just as a Judeo-Christian religious stance requires faith in an ultimate giver of laws to universal origin and workings, science too requires a strong faith in there being universal laws which are not only consistent throughout the universe, but in time as well. Science requires faith in an ultimate set of laws, with or without a law giver. It’s absurd to state a ‘belief’ in a scientific set of laws and at the time refuse to have ‘faith’ in a law giver when neither are necessarily mutually exclusive and neither have been proven. That’s right, the existence of a universal theory of science is completely unproven. Therefore belief in science requires an unproven belief that there are universal fixed rules of physical operation and that a unified theory will someday be discovered. That’s faith, full stop.

But wait there’s more. Exactly what do you mean by science? Biology? Chemistry? Astronomy? Geology? Newtonian physics? Things like that? Sure, we can discuss a petrol molecule, a large bowl of petrol molecules and what happens when you drop in a lit match. You can have a very strong belief in what will happen in a proven controlled experiment which is happening in the mundane macrocosm. However, on a quantum level, which is (as far as anyone knows as of right now) is the very foundational reality of the universe (in theory) nothing at all is happening. That’s because in fundamental reality, there isn’t really any petrol. There’s no real gravity to “pull” the match down into the nonexistent petrol. Most importantly, there’s no thermodynamic arrow (the illusion of time) for there to be a cause and effect in which the petrol can ignite. Worse, there’s no reconciliation between quantum mechanics and the universal theory of the workings of the universe in which the scientific believer has so much faith. In actuality it’s all very illusory.

In truth, the very cutting edge of science and salvation (interesting word, eh?) of science itself rests on finding a universal field theory. As stated, there’s not only faith without evidence that there exists such a thing, there is a great deal of faith that this field theory will be resolved. This cutting edge has hit a wall though and hitting this wall isn’t new. It’s about a hundred years old as a matter of fact. In the past hundred years, there hasn’t been any genuine advances in real science. I know some will say that we’ve had advances in medicine, invented the airplane, jet airplanes, split the atom, went to the moon, discovered ever newer subatomic particles by crashing things together inside particle accelerators, discovered the fact that black holes do indeed fart out radiation, discovered this, discovered that etc. etc. etc. These “discoveries” however have come from applied science. That is, cleverly coming up with new applications and inventions based upon extrapolations of things we already knew. Science is still facing that impregnable brick wall. Albert Einstein himself was so shocked by the implications of the wall – that without a unified theory there is no nice and tidy order and working of the universe which could be known (and thus no real science as we know it) – that he denied quantum mechanics for a very long time despite the fact that his own equations and workings in relativity pointed straight to the science quantum mechanics. There’s faith for you.

What’s more, scientist don’t know why the mundane physical world exists. I like the word ‘macrocosm’ for the physical world even though it’s not a technically correct term “approved” by the pantheon (there’s an interesting word) of science. According to what is currently known in science, the computer you’re reading, the chair you may be sitting on, the desk you might be sitting at shouldn’t spring forth consistently from the quantum foam and continue to exist from nanosecond to nanosecond, or shake to shake or whatever word you prefer for “absolutely tiny bit of time.” Science types have faith that they are going to figure this out though because it’s essential that they have this faith or else they might have to have faith in something else they don’t want to have faith in [preposition]

But your chair doesn’t really exist, Nor does your desk, or your computer. These things along with the entire universal macrocosm are nothing but a tiny hologram existing in your own mind (whatever that is). Or maybe it’s a great big hologram existing in your great big mind. Regardless, the macrocosm relies upon being observed for its very pseudo-existence. Be sure to tell the universe, “you’re welcome.” This has some fun implications for astronomy. The universe perhaps isn’t very large at all. Trillions of light years? What’s that? Any rate, if you are convinced you are an infinitesimally small part of something in a vast universe which has physical laws, and we know that this universe absolutely requires observation to exist, who is making all these nearly GOD-like observations to keep the universe from winking out of existence? Don’t bother answering that because I’m already very familiar with the scientific counter argument to that, and I only want to say that the counter argument is unproven and requires faith. Myself, I’m fine either way.

I hate to use the analogy of ‘The Matrix’ movie because it’s been done to death – especially by teenagers getting high after school. But it’s a really good analogy so I’m going to use it anyway. The hologram in your mind which you believe is the physical macrocosm in which you live, is very much like those stuck in the matrix. Very much. Practically identical. Could be identical, although we don’t know if our hologram is computer generated from outside. You can think so if you want, but that requires faith without proof. Doesn’t matter because I want to make a different point. Imagine you’re watching The Matrix, but instead of following Keanu Reeves around on his kung fu adventures, you are watching a learned scientist and a theologian, who are trapped unknowingly in the matrix, arguing about the origin and nature of physical reality and the universe. Aren’t those two people absurd? Actually, the scientist is the most absurd of the two because the theologian actually has a point even though he doesn’t fully understand the enormity of it. Then imagine the scene shifts to two people arguing about whether the material world exists and one of them says, “I know my desk exists because I can see it and touch it.” Elsewhere people are talking about evolution....Funny, isn’t it?

 

[nicky]

Jesus!
Mooster i thought you hated the s&p board. Why are you treating this board like it?

I hope everyone feels smarter after that lecture.

 

[J_Moore]

Not remotely.

The word ‘faith’ is quite simple. I shouldn’t need to define it, but something along these lines will do:
... Etc etc

Science is falsifiable, faith is not.

Don't confuse an incomplete or theoretical understanding of a topic with a belief in an unknowable, unobservable, unchanging power.

 

[Mooster7]

Science is falsifiable, faith is not.

Don't confuse an incomplete or theoretical understanding of a topic with a belief in an unknowable, unobservable, unchanging power.

I wasn't making the case for an omnipotent god if that's what your'e saying. I don't care what anyone believes about that either way. What I did do is clearly make the case that science requires the faith in the existence of "an unknowable, unobservable, unchanging power". Not necessarily a cognizant god, but the ever ellusive unified field theory. In that, science does in every way require the same kind of faith as does a faith based religion. Your idea of what science actually is obviously outdated to the tune of 100 years. In short, and in keeping with the analogy, you're in the matrix. Have fun.

Jesus!

Mooster i thought you hated the s&p board. Why are you treating this board like it?

I do hate that board for the most part. I was talking solid science as it is, not as it was in a Grade 6 science book. I obviously wasted my time just as if it was on the S&P board, but I wrote all that while at work so I got paid to do it. Now I'm finished. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience.

I hope everyone feels smarter after that lecture.

They don't and won't.

 

[nicky]

I wasn't making the case for an omnipotent god if that's what your'e saying. I don't care what anyone believes about that either way. What I did do is clearly make the case that science requires the faith in the existence of "an unknowable, unobservable, unchanging power". Not necessarily a cognizant god, but the ever ellusive unified field theory. In that, science does in every way require the same kind of faith as does a faith based religion. Your idea of what science actually is obviously outdated to the tune of 100 years. In short, and in keeping with the analogy, you're in the matrix. Have fun.







I do hate that board for the most part. I was talking solid science as it is, not as it was in a Grade 6 science book. I obviously wasted my time just as if it was on the S&P board, but I wrote all that while at work so I got paid to do it. Now I'm finished. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience.
.

You made an incorrect statement about science and religion. Or at the very least a statement that needed qualifying. Instead of clarifying you've bombarded us with a lecture that has nothing to do with the original point that Jmoore raised. And i think you did it to say "look at me, i'm intelligent" - which is just stupid in light of what you were saying about posters on the s&p board.

 

[Roobs321]

Is it possible, that if conditions would allow, then another species on earth could zoom past us in intelligence, whilst we still exist?

Maybe if global warming turns out to be true, in 500 years maybe certain apes like chimps will be more suited to the conditions and in 2000 years, start to evolve noticeably.

Honestly, killer whales are the only intelligent animal positioned to keep getting rapidly smarter imo, thanks to their communications, culture, food source variety, strong sense of family, and relationship with humans. Problem for them is that they are stuck in the ocean (although beaching as a primary tactic for food for a pod over 1000 years could start leading to some sort of evolution). Since they are in the ocean, you would think they are trapped there for atleast the next 1-5 million years, especially considering how prosperous they are there. I think culture is the key factor there. They are one of the only species that pass down stories through the generations. That makes them more capable of adapting to situations more quickly than other species, and developing tactics and behaviours over decades, not centuries. For instance, imagine if no humans today knew about WWI & II. If we forgot about slavery, european empires, bubonic plagues, even muhammed & jesus, etc. Culture is necessary to rise to the top.

But obviously, if they were seen as a threat, we could just go out and overfish, cull seals and restart whaling. Unless tidal waves drown out the planet and all land animals perish, killer whales only rule the seas 2nd to humans.

But in all honesty, humans are so adaptable that its impossible to envision another species taking over this planet. If temperatures get hotter, epidemics increase, etc, humans will just look a little different, be more immune to certain viruses and poisons, withstand harsher temperatures, etc. Most mammals adapt in this way, but humans are more aware of what needs to be done. I guess reptiles have previously shown that they can get big when conditions allow it.

Hopefully the honey badger doesnt get bigger (ie. bear size)