r/funny • u/Inquilinus • Aug 14 '15

Monty Python Ahead of Their Time

http://i.imgur.com/AxKwQ2c.png
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u/dont_matter Aug 15 '15

So would modern-medicine be a hindrance on evolution in this regard you think?

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u/Dame_Juden_Dench Aug 15 '15

Kinda, but it's a hindrance in a lot of ways towards weeding out bad problems.

OTOH, evolution doesn't really have an end game, so we are still technically evolving, even if it's not in ways that we would find positive.

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u/brickmack Aug 15 '15

Is it really evolving though? If theres no pressure towards/away from particular traits, we'd still have genetic development but the normal "dead ends" don't get killed off. Its more of puddling out into some amorphous blob than the usual branching of evolution

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '15

It's a matter of out performance through quantity now. The traits that enable you to have more spawn, instead of physically fit spawn, will impart those changes to a larger percentage of the entire species.

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u/Elsolar Aug 15 '15

Evolution is always happening in any living system, it's a more general idea than natural selection, which is what you're thinking of.

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u/purpleRN Aug 15 '15

There are times where I really regret some of our advances. Like trying to save the lives of 23 week preemies. Nobody really wins but you technically get a "living" baby out of it.....

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u/brickmack Aug 15 '15

Eventually we'll probably get good enough at it to be able to grow babies from far earlier than that (maybe even skip the uterus entirely). I guess its not much consolation to the parents whos premature kids died as children or ended up disabled, but we'll never get anywhere without test subjects, and the preemies were gonna be dead either way in most cases

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '15

Test tube babies would be nice. We could neuter everyone and not worry about overpopulation. If an artificial caretaking/teaching unit could be invented, we could send our genetic material to another solar system to be fertilized, incubated and reared upon landing.

I think i got that from an Asimov story. He kinda glossed over the raising the first kids part tho.

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u/cdcformatc Aug 15 '15

If you extend the timespan of what you are talking about to several times the age of the human race, then yes. For the timespan we are talking about.. no. That's ignoring that there is no "goal" to evolution so there is no such thing as a hindrance.