Evolutionary enigmas

[Mr. Somebody]

eventually being right

darkness into light

ignorance into knowledge

testing a theory and seeing it work

learning something even if it doesnt work out

science

 

[The Real]

Whats so great about being wrong though, friend.

You're in a better position to answer that than most, friend, since you have a great deal of firsthand experience doing it.

 

[Blackking]

So who knows why our brains have been shrinking? Some of you have linked our brains in relation to our body size as a reason our minds are so advanced... but I don't think that's true.. plus our brains are constantly shrinking.

 

[Blackking]

I don't agree with this sh1t....

'Junk' DNA Mystery Solved: It's Not Needed | Carnivorous Plant Has Tiny Genome | LiveScience

One person's trash may be another person's treasure, but sometimes, trash is just trash.

So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins, really isn't needed for a healthy organism, according to new research.

"At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk — it's not required," said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

While the findings, published Sunday (May 12) in the journal Nature, concern a carnivorous plant, they could have implications for the human genome as well. Genes make up only 2 percent of the human genome, and researchers have argued in recent years that the remaining 98 percent may play some hidden, useful role.

For decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn't seem to contain genes or turn genes on or off. The thinking went that most of this vast terrain of dark DNA consisted of genetic parasites that copy segments of DNA and paste themselves repeatedly in the genome, or that it consists of the fossils of once useful genes that have now been switched off. Researchers coined the term junk DNA to refer to these areas.

The findings suggest junk DNA really isn't needed for healthy plants — and that may also hold for other organisms, such as humans.

But it's still a mystery why some organisms have genomes bloated with junk while other genomes are studies in minimalism.

 

[daze23]

So who knows why our brains have been shrinking? Some of you have linked our brains in relation to our body size as a reason our minds are so advanced... but I don't think that's true.. plus our brains are constantly shrinking.

 

[Blackking]

this is starting to become very tedious.


If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? | DiscoverMagazine.com

 

[blackzeus]

Lol that is not what the article said at all.

YOU need to reread the article. They thought species genetic/biological makeup got more complex as they evolved, which is why they put the sponges and the jelly fish at the top of the evolutionary tree. Later on, when they checked the genome count, they found out the sponges was just as complex (had just as many genomes) as humans, which basically destroyed this whole complexity via evolution theory, or that we came from amoeba to humans. Basically, if the sponges are just as complex at the DNA level as we are, how could we have evolved over millions of years? More or less it is 99% chance impossible that we came from sponges and jellies, because they are just as complex as we are at the DNA level. So the rational solution would be that both the sponges and the humans were created at the same time, but instead they continue to find another way to prove evolution Smart dumb nikkaz.

 

[daze23]

this is starting to become very tedious.


If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? | DiscoverMagazine.com

interesting, and they seem to offer some theories

 

[Mr. Somebody]

You're in a better position to answer that than most, friend, since you have a great deal of firsthand experience doing it.

Im not perfect and i can admit when im wrong. I've never seen you do that, and its not because you're always right, friend.

 

[Blackking]

interesting, and they seem to offer some theories

As I soon discover, only a tight-knit circle of paleontologists seem to be in on the secret, and even they seem a bit muddled about the matter. Their theories as to why the human brain is shrinking are all over the map.

“You may not want to hear this,” says cognitive scientist David Geary of the University of Missouri, “but I think the best explanation for the decline in our brain size is the idiocracy theory.” Geary is referring to the eponymous 2006 film by Mike Judge about an ordinary guy who becomes involved in a hibernation experiment at the dawn of the 21st century. When he wakes up 500 years later, he is easily the smartest person on the dumbed-down planet. “I think something a little bit like that happened to us,” Geary says. In other words, idiocracy is where we are now.

or

The optimal solution to the problem, he suggests, “is a brain that yields the most intelligence for the least energy.” For evolution to deliver up such a product, Hawks admits, would probably require several rare beneficial mutations—a seeming long shot. But a boom in the human population between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago greatly improved the odds of such a fortuitous development. He cites a central tenet of population genetics: The more individuals, the bigger the gene pool, and the greater the chance for an unusual advantageous mutation to happen.

or
We are becoming soft as hell.

“My suspicion is that the easiest way for natural selection to reduce aggressiveness is to favor those individuals whose brains develop relatively slowly in relation to their bodies.” When fully grown, such an animal does not display as much aggression because it has a more juvenile brain, which tends to be less aggressive than that of an adult. “This is a very easy target for natural selection,”