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Old 01-27-2011, 10:59 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,618 posts, read 86,592,874 times
Reputation: 36637

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Originally Posted by JohnHAdams View Post

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a successful government program. Government is authoritarianism, it is raw uncontested power. Power corrupts......


Authoritarianism came first, and when that was pried out of the hands of those who could marshall the most brutal and potent armies, we coined the word "government" to describe the form of authoritarianism that was milder and more humanely regulated then the kind you apparently want to go back to. You want "government" by Grog, the alpha male who has the biggest club and inspires the most fear and terror and takes everything for himself. That was a successful government program, especially if you're Grog.

Setting that aside, there is a strong tendency today for parents to want to have beautiful and superior offspring, and to know if their babies will carry a genetic code that will make them "defective" children, or carriers of unpalatable tendencies. And also to have technolgical advancements available to them to maximize their lifestlyes in many other ways. If you think people are having those sympathies forced upon them by Maos and Hitlers, I'd like to know what page you're on. Authoritarians forcing kids to sit around all day texting each other, when they'd so much rather be back in the pre-authoritarian era, picking cotton for The Man who enslaved them?

Last edited by jtur88; 01-27-2011 at 11:20 PM..
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Old 01-28-2011, 08:01 AM
 
13,134 posts, read 40,508,562 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Authoritarianism came first, and when that was pried out of the hands of those who could marshall the most brutal and potent armies, we coined the word "government" to describe the form of authoritarianism that was milder and more humanely regulated then the kind you apparently want to go back to. You want "government" by Grog, the alpha male who has the biggest club and inspires the most fear and terror and takes everything for himself. That was a successful government program, especially if you're Grog.
T
Those damn ancient Sumerians
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Old 01-28-2011, 08:31 AM
 
1,402 posts, read 3,490,736 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
No it isn't. It's based on the idea that no evolution would be possible at all, without the cumulative effect of a panoply of single mutations in single genes all working in concert. And if we subvert that, by intercepting all mutations in all genes (which is now within the theoretical capacity of genetic scanning and manipulation), that will shut off the possibility of any future evolution to a form better adapted to present or future environment.

Genetic engineering screens that reject every mutation in every gene in every human fetus will in fact lock our evolution into its status quo.
Your argument is based on the assumption that there is a "correct" genome that we can compare a person's set of mutations too. We would then "remove/manipulate/change" those mutations, thus halting evolution. That is not the case though.

You are correct that we sequence a person's genome and we we can detect mutations in that genome. But this is done by comparing a given DNA squence to some sort of reference sequence/genome. Who is to say that the reference sequence is correct and that one is the "correct DNA sequence" for a human to have?

For example, the human genome sequence assembled by Celera is that of Craig Venter, the company's founder/president. So are will we be comparing all of our genomes to Dr. Venter's and calling his genome as the correct one? If not, whos?

You are talking about billions of mutations (some unique, some not) and comparing them to another genome with its own set of mutations (again some unique some not. We are aren't even remotely close to being able to make changes to a genome and halting evolution in this manner.
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Old 01-28-2011, 09:15 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,618 posts, read 86,592,874 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by broadbill View Post

You are talking about billions of mutations (some unique, some not) and comparing them to another genome with its own set of mutations (again some unique some not. We are aren't even remotely close to being able to make changes to a genome and halting evolution in this manner.
No, I'm not talking about making changes to a genome. I'm talking about gratuitous termination of any fetus that exhibits a genome pattern that is out of tolerance with what is expected---i.e., "normal". And I'm asking if that would halt evolution if it were consistently practiced throughout the species.
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Old 01-29-2011, 07:26 PM
 
Location: Toronto
3,295 posts, read 6,988,462 times
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Mutations are ultimately the source of variation that drives evolution, the variation which is selected on and used up -- the "fuel" that evolution acts on.

So yes, if the mutation rate was actually nothing, nada, zip, no evolution could take place. If you somehow could magically stop all mutations at this moment in time now, you'd still be left with the variation that is still occurs between individuals (thus mutations that happened in the past and "stuck around", to select on.

Good luck making that happen though.
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Old 01-30-2011, 11:06 AM
 
1,402 posts, read 3,490,736 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
No, I'm not talking about making changes to a genome. I'm talking about gratuitous termination of any fetus that exhibits a genome pattern that is out of tolerance with what is expected---i.e., "normal". And I'm asking if that would halt evolution if it were consistently practiced throughout the species.
Again, the assumption you are making is that you have some sort of "normal" genome to compare to. The human genome is 2.9 billion base-pairs in length. Each person has literally millions of "mutations" (they are actually called single-nucleotide polymorphisms)...the combination of which makes them a unique person. Computationally speaking, there is no way to meaningfully aggregate that data (even if you are successful in collecting and making sense of it in the first place) to come up with a "normal" genome in which to select for. There is too much "noise" in the system.
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