Humans could become extinct if sperm counts in men from North America, Europe and Australia continue to fall at current rates, a doctor has warned.
Researchers assessing the results of nearly 200 separate studies say sperm counts among men from these areas seem to have halved in less than 40 years.
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Aren't people in other areas besides North America, Europe, and Australia classified as humans?
Diotrephes
They didn't do studies in Africa, Middle East, or Asia.
xenoview,
The way the researchers titled their research indicates that they don't consider people in those areas to be humans.
It is all fine by me if humans slowly die off from decreased sperm count. World could use a lot less people. The time scale of it will be longer after we die, and any possible grandkids we know before we die.
Seems like a painless way to get earth's human population under control.
Sperm count could decrease all it wants, all it takes is one sperm and we'll be here for a long time to come. But it does go to show that evolution doesn't even have reproduction in mind.
Evolution doesn't have reproduction in mind...it has nothing in mind...it has no mind. It is just an explanation.
An explanation for the diversity and complexity around us presumably. But it can't even explain why we reproduce.
It isn't meant to do so.
John 6IX Breezy,
Why do stars exist? Why does oxygen exist? Living organisms reproduce because if they didn't reproduce they would die out as a distinct group. You don't see any live T-rexes do you?
Why should an organism care if they go extinct when the organism dies anyway?
Organisms aren't driven to reproduce by fear of extinction. Organisms are driven by orgasms.
But organs are driven by genes, which is where evolution takes place.
Any animal reproduces as a matter of survival and to pass on their genes.
Not true. The praying mantis kills its mate. Salmon die after breeding. As far as they're concerned, reproduction is the opposite of survival.
You also don't "pass down" your genes like a baton. Only half your genes get passed down. Then a quarter of your genes make it into your grandson, and by the time he too has a son, there's hardly any of you left. Reproduction is genetic suicide.
You are missing a basic tenet/concept of evolution.
Genetic diversity is crucial. We do not live forever because it is far more efficient and effective to reproduce, (with a mix of genetics,) then it is to live forever. Nature/diversity is perfectly capable of creating living things that do not age and given the right conditions, that the basic building blocks of life, cells divide perfectly forever, remove any buildup of waste/toxins and repair it self. There are plenty of plants that have been shown to be thousands of years old. A glass sponge has been found to be at least 10,000 years old.
The point is evolution absolutely explains why reproduce, because it is more efficient and effective to reproduce then it is to live forever. Plus if an organism did not reproduce or live forever it would not be around for very long :)
Reproduction has been a basic building block of all life for billions of years. Mitosis (cell division,) is reproduction. Just more advanced species (made up of cells) through evolution learned that a mixing of genetic material is more effective and efficient then the ones that do not.
We humans also keep learning the importance of genetic diversity over and over again. It is likely within the next 5 years or so, the bananas you eat at the store will no longer be available. (At least not, unless you pay 5x the price you pay now for bananas.) 95+ percent of all bananas grown are genetic twins of each other by human intervention, a new type of disease rot, comes along and wipes out acres and acres of bananas all equally susceptible to the rot, and it is spreading throughout the world. This has already occurred, a better tasting banana has already gone mostly instinct (from mass cultivation,) 30 years ago because of this mistake in the past.
It was more than 30 years ago but yeah. The dominate (market) variety in the past was the Gros Michel, now it is the Cavendish.
You are going to have to substantiate that claim. Because it seems more efficient and effective to keep what you have alive, than recreate the wheel every generation. You are essentially making a whole new organism from scratch when you reproduce, and dividing up resources between the parent and the offspring. Far better to just keep the genes you have alive, and focus resources on them. Your glass sponge example is evidence of that.
So I don't think evolution explains reproduction. In fact, the goal of a species should be NOT to evolve. Since evolving means the end of your kind and the beginning of a new one. Unless you view the whole river of evolution to be the important factor, and not the individual species that make it up. But if that's the case, letting a child die to save an ant shouldn't be a problem.
How is the mixing of genetic material more efficient than cell multiplication? I could accidently pair up with someone with a genetic disease, or someone with dominant alleles that will overshadow mine. Better to just divide what I have and grow clones.
That fact that both exist, shows evolution doesn't care how you reproduce. And if homosexuality is genetic, then it definitely doesn't care if you reproduce at all.
I like bananas.
Strawman.
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It isn't. In fact, the whole concept of efficient is meaningless in this context.
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That is what the majority of lifeforms do; of course because of mutations, the clones are not identical. So you still get change over time, which is what evolution (mathematics) is, and why that word is used in biology.
How is that a straw man lol. Its my own counter-argument, not a misrepresentation of his. He said evolution explains why we reproduce. I'm basically saying no its the other way around, reproduction explains evolution, and its in the animals best interest not to evolve.
I agree with the rest of what you said. Which is why I'm right and they are wrong lol.
Ironically, I do think single cell organism "evolve" in the sense that mutations do accumulate when you multiply and create clones. The problem is that this math changes when you go from multiplication to division, as occurs in sexuality. Mutations in this case, have a 50% chance of making it to the next generation, and keep decreasing.
That is false, you have omitted natural selection.
How so? Worst case scenario nature selects against me before I reproduce. Best case scenario it doesn't select against me, I reproduce, and my children only get 50% of my genes, and my grandson only 25%.
OK, clear your head of the garbage you've been taught. Then reread these statements of yours:
Can you spot your hidden (and quite dubious) assumption yet? You are better than this.
No lol I honestly have no idea. I've had to fill Mendelian heredity boxes before, 50% is the magic number.
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Starting with simplified genetics of sexual reproduction (Mendelian/Punnett squares/boxes):
The percentage of your DNA that gets passed to the next generation, BY YOU is given by p(n) ≈ 100-100*0.5^n; where n is the number of offspring you have. You told us that p = 50, which is not a function of n.
So basically 50% given that you only have one offspring. Having more offspring doesn't solve the problem tho. Say I have 10 children, they each inherit 50% of my genes. Then they each have 10 children, now there's a hundred kids with only 25% of my genes. Then there' a thousand with only 12.5%, 10,000 with only 6.25%
It's like playing a game of telephone. The message you start with gets mixed up by the time it gets to the end. I'm slowly disappearing.
It does. With 10 offspring, more than 99.9% of your DNA will be passed to the next generation. Compare that to what you said:
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And again you ignore selection. I think you are smart guy, but clearly your religious beliefs prevent you from thinking about this subject. We've seen this from you ad nauseum.
Right, but that opens up into the "Ship of Theseus" paradox. If there's a ship at a museum, and someone steals the boards one by one and replaces them with new ones until he's stolen the whole ship, we can no longer say that its the same ship. Likewise, perhaps mathematically I exist in a thousand pieces, but there's no more "me" left. Who I am has dissipated and become someone else.
I can understand the logic behind reproduction if it produces an identical copy. But saying I exist in many parts is too abstract to have concrete biological merit.
That is how the cookie crumbles.
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Really? How abstract does something have to have, before it is of no "concrete biological merit"? And while you are on the subject, what are the dimensions of abstraction? Or were you just making shit up?
Simple, "form fits function."
The form of the human heart enables it to pump blood. The form of a neurotransmitter enables it to activate the receptors. You go abstract the moment you go beyond direct physical forms.
I, John Bryan, am represented by my genes in a direct physical form. The moment those genes are broken into bits, and recombined with someone else's genes to make an entirely new person, it becomes abstract to call the sum of those genes John Bryan.
Reproduction does nothing for me, and it does nothing for my genes, but it does everything for the new person that's being brought into the world.
Go back and read how people were talking about reproduction as if it worked wonders for the organism, as if I survived through my offspring. But now in order for that to be true, there's math involved. I need to have least two children, and even then its no guarantee I've passed down all my genes. I have to keep going until it becomes statistically improbably that I haven't passed down my genes.
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