It seems to me that natural selection is, for the most part, broken now for humans. Intelligence and other positive characteristics don't seem to get involved in whether they have surviving offspring today the way I imagine it did a few thousand years ago. Is it true that natural selection for humans is mostly dead? Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it's something that interests and concerns me.
I hate to sound unimpressed, but does biological evolution strike anyone else as rather irrelevant, now? I doubt we will be held hostage by these mortal coils for much longer.
Talking about how we are going to evolve in the next thousands of years is a waste of time. Artificial interference is going to kick in long before that. I believe we will be very different 300 years from now.
> Akey specializes in what’s known as rare variation, or changes in DNA that are found in perhaps one in 100 people, or even fewer.<p>This classification of variations into "rare variations" and "common variation" is interesting (and new to me).<p>Any one knows resources that explain more about this?<p>Popular science depictions of "mutations" make them sound like "one lucky shot" kind of thing. This model never made sense to me. I figured these variations must be occurring constantly across the population.<p>It's interesting to me that even the variations which are considered "rare" actually occur at a rate that's around 1 in 100. Hell, even if it was 1 in a 1000, that's still quite a lot.<p>I need more resources about this topic!
One advantage of this grand diversity of the gene pool is that if a worst-case scenario apocalyptic epidemic does happen (weaponization of pathogens, anyone?) there's more odds a small subgroup of us could be naturally resistant.
At the rate biological research is progressing, anything beyond this century is impossible. In a couple of centuries, we'll have replaced carbon with silicon in our bodies and be living a couple millennia.
I wonder if there will be future speciation of humans. Will humanity become a big, homogenous melting pot or will some isolated humans (or Martian colonists) veer into a new genetic branch?