What impact does agriculture have on natural competition and human well-being?

[Loren Booda]

Which artifice will fastest outpace inborn adaptations?

 

[FZ+]

None of them. You can't reverse natural adaptation. You can have continued adaptation in the opposite direction (like if it suddenly became desirable to be a lump of primordial slime) but there is no such thing as deevolution.

 

[Loren Booda]

The reversal of natural adaptation is imposed maladaptation. Such de-evolution would lead to the extermination of the species without artificial supports.

 

[FZ+]

But that is not deevolution. Evolution is movement towards local highs of survivability. All you do is change the landscape of survivability. You do not reverse the process itself. Do you see the difference?

 

[Loren Booda]

Yes, I think I see. What I would differentiate is not evolution from de-evolution, but "natural" (inborn) from "unnatural" (artificial) adaptation.

Which artifice will fastest outpace inborn adaptations?

 

[FZ+]

Agriculture.

 

[Loren Booda]

Please explain - junk food, hybrid corn, radiated meat?

 

[FZ+]

Not quite. I am saying that the discovery of agriculture itself has already greatly outpaced natural selectional pressures. With agriculture, man is immediately freed from the typical requirement to evolve lean, mean hunters, and with time, the high sense of reliability agriculture provides lessens the requirement for tolerant physiques. If after a few million years of agriculture, we decide to suddenly stop, we would not be able to survive in the same competitive niche that we once did, that we would still be in if we didn't begin farming.

 

[Loren Booda]

It seems ironic that agriculture, an immediate adaptation toward man's prosperous civilizations and increased survival, would cause him to alienate natural competition, the health of his crops and eventually his own well being.