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I would assume he's referring to the fact that evolution works by allowing the weak to die, or at the least not reproduce and without those mechanisms evolution
by precisioncoder 13y ago
I would assume he's referring to the fact that evolution works by allowing the weak to die, or at the least not reproduce and without those mechanisms evolution is a different beast.
- 0x09 13y agoI don't think he was making a statement about society. Rather pointing out that when we think of the benefits of evolution, we tend to think of the combined effect over billions of years. But holding a microscope to it on scales like that of human history reveals a cumbersome and nearly imperceptible process. As it is, it offers nothing on any timescale that is meaningful to us.
- vidarh 13y agoI tend to agree. But a point about timescales: While it offers little on timescales that is directly relevant to our individual lives today - we're not going to see the generation of our children grow to turn out to include super human mutants like in X-Men -, it does offer something on timescales most of us can reasonably comprehend. E.g. I believe HIV resistance is higher amongst people that have a certain gene that appears to have spread to something like 10% of people in Northern Europe after the black plague, for example. And blond hair in Northern Europe spread out of the Baltics from as recently as the 1700's, and went from nothing to 90%+ of the population in some areas.