Any time someone says something like this, that's proof that they don't actually understand evolution.
I won't be snarky. I'll just point out that evolution has multiple meanings and I think that it's obvious from context that in this case I'm using 'evolved' as shorthand for more intelligent/advanced/sophisticated.
> I'll just point out that evolution has multiple meanings and I think that it's obvious from context that in this case I'm using 'evolved' as shorthand for more intelligent/advanced/sophisticated.
Yes, but that's not what evolution means. Natural selection chooses the fittest genotype, not the "more advanced". The idea that evolution progresses from simple to complex is a myth -- a persistent myth, but a myth nevertheless.
Evolution isn't a program with a specific outcome, it's a blind algorithm that chooses the fittest genotype at every turn. If the "fittest" genotype is a cockroach, for example after a nuclear war, that's the outcome. Evolution doesn't care about our tastes because nature doesn't care about our tastes.
Biological evolution is only one of many meanings of the word evolution. (I promise, I'm aware that bugs have been biologically evolving for longer than humans.)
Whoa, hold on, In a technical or scientific discussion, you don't want to rely on a dictionary. Dictionaries, contrary to common belief, do not define words -- instead, they dispassionately describe how people choose to use words. If a word use makes no sense, that doesn't matter as long as the use is widespread. This is why "literally" and "figuratively" are ... wait for it ... synonyms.
it never occurred to me that a discussion on an internet bulletin board about whether space aliens are likely to be hostile was a 'technical or scientific discussion'.
Isn't that exactly the problem? The relationship between intelligence and duration-of-evolution is not direct and linear.
In response to your assertion, it seems to me that with our advances in medicine it doesn't look likely that we're going to evolve greater intelligence. I would expect any species that evolves our level of intelligence will take an interest in medicine and arrive at basically the same steady state. So I'm going to make a completely unsupportable and useless from-first-principles prediction that intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos will be approximately as intelligent as us.
The belief that humans have arrived at a plateau and no longer are subject to evolution is also evidence that you do not understand evolution.
I assure you, homo sapiens is under great evolutionary pressure to evolve an effective response to birth control.
It is also worth noting that it is suspected that our large brains mostly reached their present size to enable us to be more effective in interacting with each other. As long as we would prefer to not wind up alone on Saturday night, we'll be under pressure to better figure out how to get other humans to do what we want them to do. There is no upper limit to how much intelligence could be brought to bear on that problem.
(Though in practice I believe that we'll build machines smarter than us, which will improve far more rapidly than we could ever hope to.)
So, your counterargument is that birth control and Saturday Night Fever will have a bigger effect on the evolutionary process than enabling people with congenital diseases to reproduce, and that, moreover, this will somehow continue to produce increases in intelligence at the same rate as we experienced going from ape to human?
I'm not claiming evolution is finished. I'm claiming it is affected and I don't see compelling pressure to select for ever-greater intelligence. Even if I found your argument compelling, you're hardly talking about the same kind of intelligence as the GP. Intelligence is one of those squishy things that resists good formal definition.
I am not trying to predict the future. I am merely saying that evolution isn't done, and the presence of medicine and a high quality of life doesn't change the basic equation of "survival of the fittest".
And intelligence is selected for for reasons that are not addressed by modern medicine.
I won't be snarky. I'll just point out that evolution has multiple meanings and I think that it's obvious from context that in this case I'm using 'evolved' as shorthand for more intelligent/advanced/sophisticated.