De-evolution?

Absolutely not. Humans are probably not evolving very much these days anyway because the population is too large and has a great deal of genetic inertia. That said welfare systems and healthcare are part of our environment. Do lions "de evolve" when rain results in abundant prey? Also just because we let people survive, or have human dignity does not mean they are morre fit. Survival is but one aspect of fitness, as is reproduction. Fitness is not about how many kuds you have its about how many grand kids and great grand kids you have

De-evolution does not exist. It's based on a misconception of evolutionary principles. Evolutionary strength is not a social construct and hence poverty and IQ tests which are to a utterly complete or large degree socially defined phenomenon.

What we are experiencing I would call "sexual selection" as opposed to "natural selection". While natural selection is about survival of the fittest, sexual selection is the survival of the sexiest. In both cases though the most fertile and sexually successful organisms are the ones that exert the greatest influence on the genetic diversity within the population. Combine sexual selection with an absence of natural selection. I'm not sure how much of a role genetic drift is playing here (the random accumulation of alleles that are neither selected for nor against currently.

No, there is no such thing as de-evolution. You have to know that evolution doesn't really mean moving forward, it means to adaptive by change (physically or mentally). So even if it means going back to the primitives form to survive some environment impact, its still called evolution.

You compared the poorest are reproducting the most while that the better off are not producing as much, but you must know that poorest reporduces the most is because not all of their offsprings will be successful ( "successful" compared to animal kingdom means "reporduce in next generation", but in our term it means money ). The well off are not producing as much because they know that any offspings they produce will be successful in term of money.

There is something wrong with my theory...because according to actual evolution theory, the success are base on how well can the offsprings of next generation reproduces. :S Its all reverse for human because we use tools to help each other and keep all alive. But in long term, the evolution theory must still be right...

:S enjoy

I think that you adapt to the environment you live in. If tomorrow I decided I wanted to move to say, I don't know, the middle east, I probably wouldn't last very long because I am

1)socialized so drastically different and

2) am probably feared by most there

This is the element you have going on...

Ive known many people on welfare who were much more intelligent and adaptive than say, Paris Hilton, it is just not practical for them to move forward. Even if they are very strong, they live in communities that are somewhat isolated. The culture is very different and they are seen as outsiders to the mainstream.

In addition, the welfare system does not encourage one to go out and become productive. A single mother on welfare could take the 3 hour bus ride to work and back, and make minimum wage, and leave her child to strangers, or go on welfare and subsidized housing and stay at home for about the same amount of compensation, without having to worry about paying bills

Interestingly, although you may not want to hear it, its in the rich mans best interest to keep communities like this isolated and feared. This is where highly profitable dirt can be done out of sight.

Its a problem that could easily be fixed with equality in education, expectation, and opportunity. Its just not in the best interest of the guys on top. Its my personal experience that most, if not all welfare recipients (that aren't on drugs of course) want desperately to assimilate to mainstream culture.

What you may see as de-evolution might be just another form of adaptation, adapting to that social environment in order to survive.

The term "De-evolution" implies that evolution follows some sort of predetermined direction. That's not the way evolution really works. Furthermore, in the case of lower-class citizens being rewarded and given some kind of advantage, that has much more to do with political and social issues than biology. They're better tools for modeling phenomena like that. There have been plenty of ups and downs like that in human history, but if it's not a genetic trait that can have huge impact on a population's survival, so again it doesn't have so much to do with biological evolution.

In some ways - yes. I've had this discussion with my father, who is a doctor. The impact of medical science is to allow those who would naturally die to survive, reproduce, and potentially, pass on defective genes to the next generation. Strangely, only the very fittest among us are able to join high-risk occupations such as the military, where chances of death (and *not* passing on healthy genes to subsequent generations) are increased.

However, this is not to say that this is the trend all over the world. In many countries, survival is still a struggle, and only the fittest and most adaptable survive.

No, you misunderstand evolutionary theory. Reproducing the most does not effect allele frequency change in a population, unless it is successful reproduction. Also, sexual selection keeps the mating assortive. And, those that leave the most descendants are not de-evolving; as that is the point of an evolutionary process that has no direction and is not progressive.

I think that those who are rewarding the least adaptive do so in order to keep themselves in power - thereby offsetting any de-evolution that may be taking place.

1)--This Question is more of a political troll than a sincere inquiry about either biology *or* natural selection, don't you think?

2)--Even so, you forget the time scale on which natural selection operates. Evolution, or its undoing, takes a minimum of thousands of years and *no* human civilization has remained steady, intact, or constant for more than a single millenium, not even Egypt (it's changed too much both in size and culture, not to mention it's been conquered time and again by Romans and Ottomans and Muslims alike...the kingdom of the pharoahs is as dead as the mummies themselves).

Really. Unless you have an ecosystem failure (think Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island, or even a large-scale meteor impact), and/or some serious geographic isolation going on (think of the way plate tectonics isolated Austrailia, causing marsupial mammals to remain dominant long after placental mammals replaced them almost *everywhere else* in the world), evolution has not *got* enough selection pressure behind it to go faster than that. Not faster than thousands of years. And *no* human culture or empire or nation has *lasted* so long regardless of whether it had a welfare state or not...Rome came closest, but even if you combine the Republic and Empire years, it was only 800-odd years.

Here, do a search, look up the *whole phrases* "recent genetic changes" and "human brain size" at the following web site:

http://www.sciencenews.org/

You'll see...the most recent evolution in human brain size took place roughly 14,000 and 5,000 years ago, which roughly corresponds, respectively, to the first times people *gathered in villages and made polished stone tools* and *the dawn of literacy*. Barring major catastrophes or major isolation, this stuff takes *major time* to happen. So long that so far, no culture and no welfare state has been a relevant influence, because they're done too quickly.

3)--Poverty and welfare-state issues are not the bipolar, either/or thing you make them out to be. The truth is, there is a whole continuum of "poorest and least adaptive" out there because there are both rich nations and poor ones (not to mention rich and poor societies within the larger ones such as the United States, the UK, France, or Germany). "Poor" in California would almost be considered "well-off" in Appalachia, up in hillbilly country. And in turn, "Poor" in Appalachia would be considered "low average" in Mexico.

The point? You assume "they're all alike" when it isn't the case....some poor people adapt *very well* to their circumstances regardless, while others don't, and the *least adaptive* of the poor--many of your mentally ill, drug abusers, and criminals, don't quite breed like rabbits the way you think they do. Social isolation, homelessness, illiteracy...in many ways these *are* relevant anti-survival selectors for poor people where they *wouldn't be* for someone wealthier and more privileged, like say, George W. Bush (alcoholic, cocaine addict, and "soft in the head" by his own admission on US national television). In other words....the truth is that the "least adaptive" members of society are *more* likely to be thrown out of the gene pool when they are poor, not less, at least in comparison to their wealthier counterparts. Civilization is less of a buffer against natural selection when there is no money for health care, education or rehabilitation.

And yes, history bears this out....look at all *three* of the French Revolutions if you dare....to some degree, they were all about the weakness of the privileged, and the strength of the most adaptive and pissed-off of the destitute.

4)--And finally....you forget that natural selection is *itself* an amoral force. Evolution truly knows of neither "forward" nor "backward". All natural selection does is dictate that: those who can live in a niche long enough to reproduce, are free to do so and pass on their traits, courtesy of their DNA, to their children. Once reproduction is done, for any given individual, evolution is *no longer relevant*. As far as natural selection goes, *we are all salmon*. Once we spawn, we may as well die, because the point is to spawn as many salmon as possible given the chance.

So what does it mean for people? Just this: natural selection is all about our mating choices. Meaning, you won't *see* any degradation amongst *any* social or economic class unless that population is isolated (either physically or socially) enough to influence mate choices. But I'm not going to make the population argument, the "we are everywhere, so we cannot be isolated" argument....

Because history proves that wrong. The truth is, some families in some cultures *have*, historically, been socially isolated enough to have become inbred and degenerate....and with one or two rare exceptions, most of those families have been *royalty* at the Top of the Social Food Chain, and not poor folks at the bottom. Quite simply, people don't choose to stay poor and marry poor and breed with each other if they can possibly help it (meaning, they don't do it unless cultural/ethnic isolation, illness, drug abuse and/or criminal records *force* the issue). Women fight to marry up. Men struggle to keep jobs and keep up and self-improve. And functional, healthy poor families generally *encourage* their kids to be independent and hard-working at a young age so that they *can* get out given the chance.

It's only the people At the Top, the Royalty and the FatCats, who have to sweat issues of "breeding*, because they *do* isolate socially.

Edit: Oh really? Heh, I tease and troll you back a little and this is what I get. ^_^ But seriously now....please enlighten me, how is your *Question*, at face value, not itself "very political"? Especially with a couple of sentences like, and I am copying and pasting here: "Especially in places like Europe and America with welfare systems the poorest and least adaptive are rewarded and actually reproduce the most. Since this essentially means that the weak are surviving is man kind going to experience some kind of de-evolution?"

Where to begin here? You lump "poorest" in with "least adaptive" as if they were identical, which is a political assumption, you assume that being on welfare is some manner of reward when in the United States at least, *millions* of poor people and their children do without adequate food, clothing, shelter, education or health care, you assume that they "reproduce the most" when teenage pregnancies are at an all-time low and the percentage of single mothers out there on the welfare rolls who *aren't working somewhere* has likewise dropped....

then you lump in "the poor" with the statement "the weak are surviving", and do this without either explanation or evidence, so your Question, at face value, just doesn't *follow* if you are talking strictly about *natural selection* and an apolitical biology as you attest. I think a LOT of poor people living in both Detroit, Michigan and in New Orleans Louisiana both would highly disagree with your assertions that they're rewarded *or* surviving.

So yes....enlighten me. How *am* I supposed to read your Question at *face value* and not see another Myth of the _Bell Curve_, or another latter-day *Social* Darwinist, couching a "very political" argument in terms of biology so he can avoid a discussion of history where the *forensics* are there that might prove him wrong instantly? [*]

But yeah, I hope this was at least a little bit helpful. Thanks for your time and patience. ^_^