A species cannot know in advance what traits will be beneficial in the future. The dinosaur cannot prepare for the incoming asteroids, the mammoths and cave bears cannot prepare for the end of the ice age.
If the enviroement dosen’t change the species simply stop to evolve, evolution only happens when there’s a near-miss with extinction, when something in the enviromement changes.

What we most find attractive is simply the “norm” for the species, perfect simetry and lack of any mutations.
Sexual selection dosen’t evolve us it dosen’t produce a better and better humanity, it is on the contrary a “break” working against change.

Evolution happens precisly from the assimetrical, the abnormal in a species in a moment of crisis. These alternatives exist so that when some event occurs the species dosen’t simply disappear – part of it may survive because these alternatives may be better suited to the new enviroement.

Like for example, when you use antibiotics to kill bacteria, most might die, but the few of them that by chance were a bit different may survive – and sure enough soon all the bacteria will be resistent to the drug. If all the bacterias would’ve been “perfect” none would survive something it can’t hope to plan for.

It would be foolish for the species to “put all it’s eggs in one basket/body design”.
Beauty is just the average, and if some part of the species disappears at some point, it will be the average of those left, even if they may seem ugly to you or me now.

So the feutures that make someone good looking genetically, are those that show youth, health, and sexual prowness.

Therefore, technology can scew the results, because the guy with the gun would have the apperence of being able to take care of there offsprings.

In conclusion, smarter, healthier, and better looking people will develop faster and in greater numbers when there is more technology, repairing there defects, or when there is less making them less competitive.

eataloser@gmail.com

Evolution and Natural Selection are the right and left hands of progress, the strong surviving the reproduce with a mate who finds them to have considerably superior traits to the other possible mates around. That’s fine and dandy and works perfectly for the rest of the animal kingdom, but not for humans!

Humans bend the laws of their natural instincts disgustingly, not to mention the habits which cause birth defects to produce undesirable members of the species over and over again. Humans reproduce with a random possibility, though it always does seem to lead to the more attractive members some times.. not always. For the human race to lose it’s ugliness, it’s stupidity, it’s incompetence that spawns from the very basis of physical engines, then every single human capable of reproducing must go with the smartest, most intelligent, and healthiest person they ever find in their life.

We don’t, of course, we find that “special someone” and squeeze out little blessing after little blessing, feh, and it usually doesn’t matter how ugly, stupid, unhealthy the parents were because they apparently were “in love”.

So if you’re going to blame something for the lack of human evolution, blame love.

not really. but still…

Woohoo!! one more night to go and I am coming home baby!! Yeah!!

“look at the cheetah. their gene pool is now quite small” Certainly too much scarcity in the environment and too little diversity in the species can lead to extinction.

It is the very risk of mass deaths though that powers selection. It really is a fine line that must be walked for any given species to survive and evolve. Most populations tend to go through times of plenty when genetic diversity is at a maximum and then time of scarcity when selection pressures are at a maximum.

p.s. i know its a silly point. so dont bother with countering it

“Of course, once that crashes, we are doomed anyway and a new species will get evolved =P!”

Thats pretty much what I’ve been trying to say. Evolution does not occur until a species is exposed to a change, to which it has to learn to adapt. Thus, the two points that your presented pretty much states that technology is a hindrance to evolution.

@Joe: I agree with that completely. but i’d like to add that natural selection does not entirely depend on the species alone. look at the cheetah. their gene pool is now quite small and cheetah population i africa are prone to more diseases and death because of inbreeding. thus, scarcity is not conducive for adaptation by evolution. it hampers it. imagine if there were only 10 women left and only one male (to make matters worse, lets say that that male is me). The species will be extinct in no time.

I live in a society with ugly, stupid, and unhealthy people of both sexes. Many of whom what to get laid from time to time. Also, there is alcohol.

I highly disagree with the contention that beautiful people get laid a lot. Virtually anyone in our society (barring disease or disability) has the opportunity to reproduce.

First off, this is interesting. Which society do you live? Me wanna know =P!

Secondly, “barring disease and disability” is a very strange clause you know! Both denote health and intelligence and in some weird form – beauty =D!!