Could you just say what you are saying without the faff? Don’t get me wrong, it looks like there is potential for an interesting debate. Or/ maybe I shouldn’t smoke so much lols, but either way its hard going when posters keep lobbing blocks of c/p text on pages.
Well, I guess my interest in maladaption concerning biology, nature, and evolution is because I view all of human civilization as one giant maladaption.
The so-called “Neolithic Revolution” was a process of settling, husbandry (agriculture and stock breeding), urbanisation. This process has not ended yet.
For it to be a maladaption, at least to demonstrate it clearly, the species has to be wiped out. Not just some collapse where a few hardy individuals survive, but homo sapians end.
But then you can’t call civilization a maladaption, it would be whatever traits we have that lead us to civilize ourselves that would be the maladaptions.
But moreno, pretty soon all of humanity will be reduced to rubble when the pending economic collapse destroys civilization. I mean…didn’t you know that. I mean shit man, the chinese are manipulating gold prices and sometimes there are fluctuations in the stock market. All these things prove that civilization is going under.
Not necessarily, maladaption is merely evolutionary adaptions that are more harmful than beneficial. There is nothing regarding the subject that a species must kill or destroy itself first before a maladaption can be alluded to.
To be fair however it has yet remain to be seen whether humanity will destroy itself or not although there is a real likely chance it will.
Who can argue that modern civilization across the planet isn’t more harmful than beneficial? I would guess nobody.
The desperation of a man so readily to defend the status quo and his position within it is starting to show itself more with each post. So unlike you Mr Reasonable. You seem worried and sweating about some things.
By the way, humanity is destroying itself in many more ways beyond economics.
So, you’ll have to do better than that with your sarcasm meant to tear me down.
You’re playing to the wrong gallery. I believe stuff you would dismiss as conspiracy theory. But relevent to this topic HHH believes there will be survivors. If there are survivors then there need not have been maladaption.
But then it is very hard to judge. Even what we consider genetic diseases were useful in some times/environments, which is why they caught on. Right now there are more humans than ever before. So far reproduction is going well. If it is not reproduction, not the propagation of the species that is the measure of maladaption, then what is it?
If you want to argue that the lives we have are diminished, so the adaptions are bad, this leads to problems because SOME humans live extremely vital lives, even by neolithic standards Probably more than did then.
IOW by what value do you HHH decide that something is a maladaption.
I am reacting to you who 1) think that you and some others will survive the coming collapse. So the survival criterion is taken care of
2) has values that can be satisfied in a post-collapse society. IOW with humans who are physically and brainwise like they are now.
How are you maladapted?
If you are not maladapted, are you the only one?
If not then homo sapiens are still viable. Not all members of a species need to be strong/right from an evolutionary perspective, as long as a number keep on surviving?
Once we have the prefix mal we are judging. So according to what values are we judging
cause in terms of evolution, propagation is the only value, and we are propogating.
To answer the question in the opening post more precisely (and with a link too):
Yes, and instead of “maladaptability” one could also say “false-selection” or “negative-selection” or “dysgenics” … and so on and so forth ( viewtopic.php?f=4&t=188393 ).
According to nature that may be true, but we have adapted to the things we have created. First we devised things from nature in prehistoric times, then came metals and we could now shape things however we wanted e.g. swords. We have continued to adapt to all the inventions through the industrial revolution and til now. I agree that that is a maladaption in terms of evolution and nature, then to a lesser degree so was the stone age. We are not the only animals which use tools tho.
The solution of that problem is that a disadvantage can later become an advantage then (and only then), if (and only if) the environment changes in a way that leads to the maladaptation-adaptation change. So the maladaptation can become an adaptation, more exactly: a postadaptation. A postadaptation does not mean that there was no maladaptation; the reverse is true: a postadaptation means that there was a maladaptation that has later become an adaptation due to the change of the environment.
Tools used by other animals are not enough. Language (I mean - of course - the human language) is the most important tool. But there are many preconditions necessary for the use of the human language, and one of them is the human brain, thus the human intelligence.
My point was more that if what seems bad now can be good later and the survival/propagation of the species is generally the measure of adaption, then we need to be agnostic about such evaluations. Especially given the context: here we are describing a species that has more individuals than it ever did before. Now I understand how that can, in the end, be detrimental TO MOST OF THE INDIVIDUALS, but to the overall species, I see little threat, especially given that HHH thinks he is going to thrive post-collapse.
If he is going to thrive - and for him this means not a lone invidual but with procreative options - then homo sapians will surivive. Many animal populations go through cycles with huge population dips.
This is why I am asking him about values. If he means maladaptions that are determined by looking at the vitality of most individuals or some other criterion, well OK I can see where he, HHH, might consider some things maladaptions.
But without this added information about his values, I don’t think it makes sense for him to use the term maladaption, since he expect to survive and presumably procreate post collapse, that a neolithic type lifestyle is better for humans and is coming.
So I don’t see any POSSIBLE maladaption at the species level for him in relation to his values.
If he means in pure evolutionary terms, well we are, so far doing rather well.
I will respond to this thread in due time but I must interject here on one thing.
Moreno, you think the world and human civilization is doing quite well? That’s quite a leap and stretch.
The word ‘well’ implies values or you have some objective measure in mind. I am trying to get at that objective measure or the value.
As you know, I dislike modern society in the extreme. I think it suckes the creativity, vitality out of us.
But you are talking in evolutionary terms. Suddenly we are looking at humans through Darwin and natural selection and propogation. In those measures humans are doing fine. They may be heading towards some very large scale population dip, but unless there is a full nuclear exchange, there will be many homo sapian survivors. So in Darwin terms, things are going along fine.
What is your measure/value for maladaption and how is it Darwinian?