[ExI] Humans might be making genetic evolution obsolete

[William Flynn Wallace]

It's been tried many times:  communism - no personal property  How many
times has it failed?  Every time . This is a cultural thing of course, but
something tells me that genes are playing a limiting, restraining role
here.  Not everything can be learned.  Not all cultures will fit human
genes.  Probably true of magpies as well. Genetics probably is playing a
role in the magpie's behavior.  How would we know?  Check magpies from
other locales and look for similarity.  Nature/Nurture - always
interactions.

 the appearance of human culture represents a key evolutionary milestone.

Just when are they talking about?  How many millions of years ago?  Humans
have always had a culture, and so did the creatures that became humans.
All it requires is the ability to learn more than very simple things.  bill
w

On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 12:27 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Quoting BillK <pharos at gmail.com>:
>
> > Humans might be making genetic evolution obsolete
> > By Cameron Duke - Live Science Contributor   14 June 2021
> >
> > Humans now evolve faster than ever, and it's not because of genes.
> > <https://www.livescience.com/culture-evolves-faster-than-genes.html>
> > Quotes:
> > Waring and Wood argue in their new study, published June 2 in the
> > journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, that at some point in
> > human history, culture began to wrest evolutionary control from our
> > DNA. And now, they say, cultural change is allowing us to evolve in
> > ways biological change alone could not.
> [snip]
> > It?s possible, the researchers suggest, that the appearance of human
> > culture represents a key evolutionary milestone.
> > -----------
> >
> > Sounds good to me........
>
> Indeed. The relationship between genetics and culture is much like the
> relationship between hardware and software. Culture runs on top of the
> underlying biology. Which is why, while I agree with the scientific
> study, the Live Science article headline was off-putting for me; it
> was like saying "Software might be making hardware obsolete" or
> "Automobiles might be making wheels obsolete."
>
> Another thing I didn't like was that it was unnecessarily
> anthropocentric. There are some pretty clear indications of culture
> among many higher animals: primates, elephants, dolphins, and as your
> video suggests, magpies. After all, it is not genetics that has that
> flock of magpies following that woman around.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
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