(n) the messy process by which basically irrational hyper-cephalic primates attempt to ask and answer questions about the world in a way that overcomes their own biases and foibles and simultaneously make a living, build a reputation and do the other things highly social primates need to do.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Long Term Prediction
Several thousand years from now, if there are still humans around, someone will look back and describe the last few thousand years as a time of extraordinarily rapid biological evolution for humanity.
Don't have time to explain fully, but populations are always evolving into their environments. If the selective pressures they experience are fairly constant for extended periods, they tend to reach some sort of an equilibrium, and change fairly slowly. If a species, such as humans, experiences rapidly changing environments, with very different concern determining who has the most surviving offspring from one millennium to the next, the population is no longer selectively optimized (or even close to it) for its surroundings, and as such is expected to evolve rather rapidly.
Blog of science isn't one of those science blogs about cool scientific results. It's about the experience of being a scientist doing science. It's about science the process, not science the outcome, or science the list of facts.
2 comments:
Because...?
Don't have time to explain fully, but populations are always evolving into their environments. If the selective pressures they experience are fairly constant for extended periods, they tend to reach some sort of an equilibrium, and change fairly slowly. If a species, such as humans, experiences rapidly changing environments, with very different concern determining who has the most surviving offspring from one millennium to the next, the population is no longer selectively optimized (or even close to it) for its surroundings, and as such is expected to evolve rather rapidly.
Post a Comment