[ExI] Now we've got 'survival of the weakest'!

[Dan]

I think the analogy can be made, too, with other organisms. An animal that can 
build, say, nests might be able to save energy on making thicker egg shells. 
(I'm just guessing here. I don't know if anyone's done a study of nest-building 
egg laying animals that shows their eggs have thinner shells than their 
non-nest-building egg laying ancestors.)

Regards,

Dan


----- Original Message ----
From: Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com>
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Sent: Thu, August 26, 2010 4:46:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Now we've got 'survival of the weakest'!

Aleksei Riikonen <aleksei at iki.fi> replied:

> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 11:14 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Is he saying humans are degenerating?
> 
> Yes, and of course we are since because of e.g. better
> healthcare, we
> are under less evolutionary pressures than we used to be.
> Today,
> people with much more costly deficits in fitness can have
> lots of
> children than was possible during our earlier evolutionary
> history.

No, because 'humans' are more than their biology.  The biological component of 
humans has been getting slowly weaker and less capable, over a long period of 
time, but the technological component is quickly getting much more capable, and 
may soon overshadow the biological part entirely.

Ben Zaiboc
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