Re: Income from a tax on land.

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 01/01/05 

Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:26:32 GMT

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 11:25:26 GMT, "robert j. kolker"
<nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote:

>royls@telus.net wrote:
>
>> Oh, no we ain't. Selection pressures have become orders of magnitude
>> more complex since the last Ice Age ended, but the chance element has
>> declined commensurately. We've probably evolved more in the last 15K
>> years than we did in the previous 50K.
>
>All evidence indicates that humans have not changed physically in over
>50K years.

That is false. Even American aboriginals are physically
distinguishable, in their gross anatomy, from the North Asian
populations they separated from less than 15K years ago. On the
molecular level, there is little doubt that e.g., genetic resistance
to a number of contagious diseases has increased markedly in just a
few thousand years.

>There is nothing to indicate Darwinian evolution is taking
>place.

ROTFL!! Just _weeks_ ago, we learned that a dwarf pre-modern hominid
species was still inhabiting an island in Indonesia less than _20K_
years ago! Evolution sure happened to _them_, all right...

As always when you presume to dispute with me, Bob, you are just flat,
outright wrong as a matter of objective fact.

>However, there is the rapid form of social adaptation in which
>people change their habits and ideas, rather than their genome. You
>apparently do not understand variation and natural selection.

<yawn> Back atcha, pal. What happens to the ones who are genetically
unable to change their habits and ideas to fit a new social norm?

>There has
>been NO essential change to the human genome as far back as anyone can
>reckon.

?? What is an "essential" change? Speciation? Who said evolution
only happens when a new species arises? And even if you think the
demise of a species is evolution, it clearly happened not that long
ago, in Indonesia.

>In addition one of the promoters of evolution is genetic isolation.

That is more a promoter of _speciation_. Not the same thing at all.
 
>Google <Galapagos Darwin Finches>. The human race is a very non-isolated
>bunch of mutts. We are six billion strang with a maximum separation of 6
>or 7.

Evolution is often rapid when isolated populations are brought into
contact. The selection pressure exerted by contagious diseases
brought to the New World from the Old just a few _centuries_ ago is
just one obvious example. Selection for tolerance of alcohol is
another.

-- Roy L

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Human Hyperevolution?
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    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Apropos the "Cost of natural selection revisited"
    ... Our evolution was well affordable. ... plenty enough permutability, and in an absolute sense no timely constraints. ... "opportunity type" challenges (by directly procreation promoting ... between a subset of selection pressures of adversity type that may be called ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Edited repeat
    ... It is not easy to run an marketing campaign for a heuristic principle ... etymological retrofitting of the Darwinian concept of "selection pressures". ... This "semantic side" of what the word evolution can reasonably rationally ... It can be seen that a principle and philosophy such as the one I have been ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Intelligence Influences Evolution
    ... posits that intelligence can influence the course of evolution. ... thus exposing themselves to new selection pressures. ... They extracted data on 7,209 bird species from the scientific ... that brain size explains 12 percent of the variation in body size. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Co-optation Today
    ... extinct were separate species not to arise. ... theorized to cause speciation, such as geographical isolation. ... I don't see how this is a problem for evolution. ... Next you will tell me that transitionals are selected for other than ...
    (talk.origins)