Human Evolution

I'm not entirely sure why this discussion has to enroll after my memorial post, but I'm glad if it inspired people to try and use what's between their ears, soooo...

GunsNCrüeSWE wrote: Why would the human work so that you make sure your relatives reproduce But not yourself in first hand?

I'll be really daring now and ask you, why wouldn't it? universally thinking, is there anything that actively speaks against it? what difference does it make to the universe if I die or you? and if the answer is none, then why can't it work in a way that is completely nonsensical to the individual? We don't really know all that much about how things work really...

if you really want to believe in a cause and effect chain (something which is doubtful once you realise that cause and effect always depends on a timeline. Time on the other hand is something that is something potentionally very subjective, as any quantum physician will try to explain to you (and will probably fail in.))
I want to propose a slightly different theory: What if a species doesn't survive because it's indivduals strive to keep it's genes alive at all costs, but because it actually is good at surviving?

Humans live in groups, right? Living in a group is safer, but it also requires a certain amount of giving and taking, otherwise it won't work.
Evoluition happens because changes randomly happen. Maybe compassion and martyrism is the deciding evolutionary advance humans had that enabled them to survive. Maybe a few indivuduals had the "mistake" of not thinking about themselves, and suddenly could cope better with the environment because of that. You see compassionate behaviour in every animal that lives in groups.

So in other words: Maybe we don't show selfless acts to survive, maybe we survived because we can be selfless.

There is no proof that people can only think of themselves really.
I think we really dont have a clue.

But why do I even bother, people will believe what they want to believe, I do too...

GunsNCrüeSWE wrote: Evolution cares about genes

see, THAT is actually a little false. First of all evolutions doesn't "care", it happens by accident and has no goal whatsoever, and secondly, if it would "care" it would care about being in a well working synch with the environment the living being is in. The selection happens throgh the circumstances, not through the species.

Like this: Birds live on Island. They pick little corns. The Birds born with the thick, short peaks die, because they can't pick the tiny corns. Change of scenario: A tsunami destroys all the plants that give corns, now theres only nuts to crack left. All birds with long, thin peaks die, because they break when they try to crack the nuts. The birds with genes that pre the tsunam would have been false survives, because their peaks are strong enough.

A species doesn't survive because genes are brought on, it survives because it FITS into it's scenario. Thats what the sentence "Survival of the fittest" actually means.

izzie wrote: Based on this, the genes have got a bigger chance of surviving if all of your relatives reproduce

...and that's why I'd say the reproductive aspect is only secondary to the survival of a species, because essential to the survival of a gene is not automatically being there often, it's being the gene being necessary for the species' life.

I don't actually know much about evolution psychology, but from all I get it's a bit of a difficult field because we don't really know much about it. I mean reproducing is obviously necessary for a species to survive, but in the greater scheme of things it's not really the will of a species to survive that decides if it will or not, is it?
Evolutionary leaps are caused by RARE genes, not by common ones.

I don't really know where I'm getting with this haha, but it supports my theory I think?

Please confirm if anyone gets anything from what I say?!

haha, I love this so much actually, I wanted to study biology, particualry genetics and evolution before I decided for graphic design and sometimes I still miss it... theres sooo many thoughts on this in my head, and I can't get them out in good, qualified way xD

thanx people for making my day!

^ yeah, but you basically stated that suicide would always be independent from others. wich we basically said isn't true, and used evolutionary arguments to prove it

izzie wrote: The scenario described above, or that a man that is born with a thumb can take food from a man without a thumb and therefore the man with thumbs can reproduce so that eventually all humans will have thumbs is common knowledge. Almost everyone knows this.

There are so many popular misconceptions about evolution tho. Many people feel it's some kind of achievement of a species to end up the way they are, but thats not really the case. The first thumb could just as well be pratty awkward and in the way for "normal" tasks, just for some reason it survived and became useful.

What isn't that commonly known is that man is also born with thinking patterns and emotions (read above). This means that ALL of our feelings has been to our advantage in the past (when talking about the past in this discussion, I almost always refer to the stone age). For example, envy could be good because it would drive the individual who carried that emotion to exceed the person he felt jealous about, and therefore achieve greater things which was good for the whole group (for example putting down a bigger animal).

ah okay. So "evolution psychology" is about inherited behaviour patterns, I wasn't sure what exactly this was about because I actually never heard that term (never looked much into behaviour and psychology before).

izzie wrote: Suicide could probably be explained by that the individual thinks that his relatives will be better of without him/her. So it's quite the opposite.

I'd be a bit careful with the term "relative" here tho. We assume that that means siblings, cousins etc, but we show just as easily the same care towards freinds or even strangers in rare occasions, so it's not necessarily about our genes, it's obout the species genes. My personal take on this is that reproducing is something we are programmed to do, because being programmed that way is a pattern that brought us here through evolution (for obvious reasons.) Altruistic behaviour is another pattern that brought us here. That's just what seems most likely to me tho, It's really hard to tell if those two are linked, if altruism is shown because it benefits our need to keep up the species, or if it is something we inherited independently.

either way, I think it's a bit simplifying to say "you only show altruism because you care about your species, so in the end even that is a egoistic action, therfore you can't TRULY care" etc etc. You can't impossibly define what true care is. Fact is, if you for exemple love someone and want that person to feel good and to achieve that you have to go through something that doesn't benefit yourself at all, you go through pain for someone else. Might be you only do that beacause in a great scheme evolution programmed you to do that, but the pain you feel is still your own, individual one, that you choose to go through. (Now I know that free will and "choosing is something heavily debated, but since this discussion started under the premission that you "choose" to kill yourself I'll just go with it.)

I guess I think theres alot of reason to commit suicide, and theres no absolute truth about why people do it.
There could be reasosn totally down to caring for others, there could be reasons where everybody else is dismissed, but you can't say only one of the two is true,
scientifically speaking it's dangerous to use absolutes anway, any IT person will tell you that you can't programm even simple software with absolutes because it won't work. The universe we live in is a little bit more complicated than computers tho, so why would that work with absolutes?

sorry for rant .____,

izzie wrote: A theory that I've heard lately is also quite interesting....

yeah we had that in school as one possible theory shortly. It seems likely to me, altho I think denial still could be our downfall

Marmetal wrote:

heating24 wrote: Man is the only animal that is rational. We act with reasons and consciousness.

The older I get and the more I see or hear, the less I believe in human kind actually. So I don't agree, heh.

what has one thing to do with the other? I am not sure if humans act with reason & consciousness, but if they do, it seems reason & consciousness seem to be reasons not to trust a person one bit