Are humans still evolving? | Anders Sandberg goes head-to-head with Samir Okasha
80Anders Sandberg and Samir Okasha debate whether Freeman Dyson was correct when he concluded that, "the epoch of Darwinian evolution ended about ten thousand years ago."
Are culture and technology now the driving forces behind human evolution?
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Once controversial when Darwin first developed his theory, it is now almost universally accepted that humans evolved from apes and earlier ancestors by a process of natural selection that ensured the traits of the fittest were passed on while others were discarded. But many now argue that this process has ceased to apply to humans, since almost all of us survive to childbearing age. Leading primatologists and geneticists maintain "modern nutrition and medicine have removed the selection pressure driving human evolution," with the result that "natural selection no longer has death as a handy tool." The prize-winning scientist Freeman Dyson concluded "the epoch of Darwinian evolution ended about ten thousand years ago."
Is natural selection over and humans at greater risk of succumbing to a new threat or pathogen? Is our evolution now driven by culture and technology and do we need a radical overhaul of our evolutionary theory as a consequence? Or is the case mistaken, human evolution through natural selection alive and well, and continuing to determine the future of the human race?
#evolution #biology #science
Anders Sandberg is radical futurist and transhumanist. He was previously a senior fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
Sunetra Gupta is an award-winning epidemiologist and novelist. She is currently a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.
Samir Okasha is a leading philosopher of science specialising in biology and evolutionary theory based at the University of Bristol.
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a renowned philosopher of science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of many books including Darwinian populations and Natural selection, and Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness.
Hosted by filmmaker and presenter Curt Jaimungal.
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00:00 Introduction
00:23 Is natural selection over?
02:07 Evolution is not the same thing as natural selection
02:49 The importance of genetic diversity
03:39 The selective pressure of traffic accidents
05:27 Culturally dependant genes
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