US Income Inequality Higher Than Ancient Rome

[Elements]

Originally Posted by Classic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There are many ways your pancreas can be damaged. I think a lot of it is environmental. Some of it genetic.

Also people are getting more genetically weaker. Not because of evolution or anything. But because pollutants and toxins and bad food fucks up the replication of our DNA which gets passed on to our copies and gets fucked even worse.

Our cultures and diets focused around dead food and sterile environments. Not saying we should all go out and eat living hamsters. But its a spiral towards technological dependency for biological functioning. I.e. insulin shots. Just another symptom of a bigger problem with the world. A long with cancer etc...

Human beings in the developed world are getting genetically weaker but not so much for the reasons you listed. More so due to healthcare by which we coddle the weak and allow them to pass on survivally unfit genes to subsequent generations.

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm with ya. Let's eschew technology and modern food preparation and go back to the days where life expectancy was a ripe old 35 years. Shit, I'm practically a senior citizen now.

That's a false dichotomy, Jelly.

There are plenty of distinct middle grounds between "overuse of antobacterial soap and antibiotic medicine" and "lets pick our butts and then prepare unrefrigerated chicken."

[Ahldagor]

so, basically, eat better and exercise in order to be potentially healthier. but we could lose train wrecks like honey boo boo, whatever that obese family's show was, to entertain us. damn this dilemma in the great u s of a.


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[Raavak]

EBT card system breaks down, shows no limit. People on foodstamps raid Walmart.

http://youtu.be/kwU6XrkbhLg

[Hasbinbad]

yea those people are screwed

[DrKvothe]

The fitness (measured by the relative ability to produce offspring who in turn are capable of reproduction) of an individual human being in the US is largely independent of gene function, as long as certain minimal threshold activities are reach. You can run really fast? Good for you, but tubby McLardFat over there can probably match you on grandchildren (even if we won't live to actually meet them).

Imagine a world where Darwinian selection on us is strong. If you're not optimally athletic or clever, or you're the wrong size or shape or color, you die. Under these conditions, we would all end up pretty damn similar, since certain phenotypes (and the small number of corresponding genotypes) would be necessary for survival.

Genetic polymorphism is a predictable consequence of relaxing Darwinian selection. We're still left with a basic set of purifying selections: if your DNA polymerase has a destabilizing mutation, you're fucked at the cellular level. However, even these are significantly relaxed. I'll elaborate. Fitness benefits for the fastest runner is an example of Darwinian selection. Fitness penalties for those who can't walk but no noticeable fitness benefit beyond a minimum walking speed is an example of a purifying selection. We live in an age of wheelchairs.

It's important to note that this genetic polymorphism is ESSENTIAL to surviving future, unpredictable Darwinian selections. Maybe cyborgs will rise up and kill anyone not in a wheelchair. It's been empirically demonstrated that neutral drift (that is, genetic polymorphism that results from relaxed Darwinian selection) increases the frequency of adaptive mutations within a population compared to constant Darwinian selection.

[DrKvothe]

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Good for you, but tubby McLardFat over there can probably match you on grandchildren (even if we won't live to actually meet them).

Supposed to say "...he won't live...". Why can't I edit my posts here?

[Elements]

Originally Posted by DrKvothe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The fitness (measured by the relative ability to produce offspring who in turn are capable of reproduction) of an individual human being in the US is largely independent of gene function, as long as certain minimal threshold activities are reach. You can run really fast? Good for you, but tubby McLardFat over there can probably match you on grandchildren (even if we won't live to actually meet them).

Imagine a world where Darwinian selection on us is strong. If you're not optimally athletic or clever, or you're the wrong size or shape or color, you die. Under these conditions, we would all end up pretty damn similar, since certain phenotypes (and the small number of corresponding genotypes) would be necessary for survival.

Genetic polymorphism is a predictable consequence of relaxing Darwinian selection. We're still left with a basic set of purifying selections: if your DNA polymerase has a destabilizing mutation, you're fucked at the cellular level. However, even these are significantly relaxed. I'll elaborate. Fitness benefits for the fastest runner is an example of Darwinian selection. Fitness penalties for those who can't walk but no noticeable fitness benefit beyond a minimum walking speed is an example of a purifying selection. We live in an age of wheelchairs.

It's important to note that this genetic polymorphism is ESSENTIAL to surviving future, unpredictable Darwinian selections. Maybe cyborgs will rise up and kill anyone not in a wheelchair. It's been empirically demonstrated that neutral drift (that is, genetic polymorphism that results from relaxed Darwinian selection) increases the frequency of adaptive mutations within a population compared to constant Darwinian selection.

In all likelihood some catastrophic disaster will probably result in a global food shortage in the not to distant future leaving many athletic/fit individuals with high metabolisms at a disadvantage, and the ones with an extra 300 pounds of energy reserves and the metabolic ability to make better use of their caloric intake at an advantage.

What's interesting is how some healthcare companies think. Assuming no reproductive intervention, a company that provides a treatment that allows an individual to reproduce (when they otherwise would have died, removing their genome from the subsequent generation) can look forward to more individuals that will need to use their product in the subsequent generation. This is why it is rare to see a for profit organization spending research dollars on cures rather than treatments. Treatments are long-term cash cows.

But how can public dollars/insurance afford to keep treating everyone generation after generation as we further pollute our gene pool?

[Ahldagor]

yellowstone gonna go boom

[DrKvothe]

Originally Posted by Elements [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In all likelihood some catastrophic disaster will probably result in a global food shortage in the not to distant future leaving many athletic/fit individuals with high metabolisms at a disadvantage, and the ones with an extra 300 pounds of energy reserves and the metabolic ability to make better use of their caloric intake at an advantage.

What's interesting is how some healthcare companies think. Assuming no reproductive intervention, a company that provides a treatment that allows an individual to reproduce (when they otherwise would have died, removing their genome from the subsequent generation) can look forward to more individuals that will need to use their product in the subsequent generation. This is why it is rare to see a for profit organization spending research dollars on cures rather than treatments. Treatments are long-term cash cows.

But how can public dollars/insurance afford to keep treating everyone generation after generation as we further pollute our gene pool?

An important point to make is that it's impossible to predict what sort of strong selective pressures we might face, and therefore every phenotype has some potential value. The most likely threat is probably an omni-drug resistant bacteria, and the only solution will be specific molecular phenotypes that provide immunity. It's impossible to predict the visible phenotype that corresponds to that molecular structure.

Your idea that drug companies are selectively breeding customers has little merit. First, any disease that predominantly kills people beyond the age of 40 has little effect on fitness, and that's pretty much every lethal disease that drug companies care about. Second, drug companies don't reap the benefits of a next generation of customers because patents don't last that long. Third, 'cures' to noncommunicable diseases can be extremely lucrative. All cancer 'treatments' ARE 'cures' that attempt to kill the cancer, ending the threat of the disease. It's just really, really difficult to do.

We're not 'polluting our gene pool'. We're diversifying it, and that is an essential strategy to avoid extinction. There's very strong evidence that the health problems in our country aren't genetic. For one, the same health problems begin to appear in areas of the world that are introduced to our processed food.