fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1715 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1715 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Generation Kill]

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03.

[WWE]

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04.

[Four Lions/Benedict Cumberbatch]

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05.

[Pretty Little Liars]

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06.

[Singin' in the Rain]

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07.

[Kagerou (webcomic)]

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08.

[SPN]

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09.

[Gregory Maguire]

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10.

[Switched at Birth]

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11.

[FFX]

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12.

[9/11 naudet documentary]

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13.

[Football]

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14.

[Metal Gear Solid]

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15.

[Pandora Hearts]

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16.

[The Walking Dead]

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17.

[Hey Arnold!]

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18.

[Shortpacked!]

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19.

[Rocky Horror Picture Show]

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20.

[Mortal Kombat]

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21.

[10 Things I Hate About You]

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22.

[Resident Evil]

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23.

[SGA]

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24.

[White Collar]

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25.

[Homestuck]

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26.

[Magical Transvestite Cherry]

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27.

[Football]

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28.

[Skins (Gen 1)]

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29.

[iCarly]

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30.

[Darker than Black]

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31.

[Chris Colfer]

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32.

[Legend of the Seeker]

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33.

[Planetes]

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34.

[Phelous, Channel Awesome]

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35.

[Sons of Anarchy]

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36.

[Bedknobs and Broomsticks]

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37.

[The World Ends With You]

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38.

[Frasier]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 156 secrets from Secret Submission Post #245.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - ships it ], [ 1 - take it to comments ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Natural selection is a force that is always at work, like gravity. Saying there's no natural selection at work because as a species we're getting very good at keeping ourselves alive is like saying "gravity is not at work on me right now because I'm not falling."

This.

Just because people aren't dying of (whatever) anymore doesn't mean that natural selection has stopped- it just means that that particular trait is no longer being selected against because it's ceased to be a disadvantage.

Or not even ceased- it's not as if everyone has equal chances at reproducing, even with increased survival rates. Despite the whole "survival of the fittest" description, natural selection is ultimately less about surviving than it is about passing on your genes. As long as humans are choosing who to get down and dirty with rather than tossing sperm and eggs together at random, selection is taking place.

This really boils down to whether human behaviour is "natural". If human behaviour is not natural, then we have defeated many natural causes of selection and are thus subverting it. If human behaviour is natural, then "natural" is a completely meaningless term as there is nothing that is not natural - 'natural selection' is generally used in contrast to selective breeding that humans do to deliberately guide evolution.

Not...exactly. True, breeding dogs or crops or anything in order to bring out certain traits is not natural selection. That is selective breeding. It is done purposefully by humans, with an end goal. When humans do this on other humans it is called "eugenics" and has pretty much been out of style since the Nazis did it on a large scale to do what they thought of as improvement to what they thought of as their master race.
The fact that humans pick mates nonrandomly IS natural selection, because it means that certain traits (popular now: bigger boobs, shinier hair, skinny waists, muscular torsos, etc) are currently attractive traits that natural selection favors because it's currently advantageous in reproduction to members of our species. I'm pretty sure men haven't all decided, together, to breed with women with big boobs because they think it's advantageous to the species somehow and want the future generations of mankind to have it. They, as individuals working basically alone or in a small group, think it's attractive because their society and their brain and their hormones tell them it's attractive (oversimplified but essentially this, anyway) so it naturally becomes an advantageous trait in reproduction. Until there's a massive human-led and human-engineered movement to push humans as a species in one way or another (and again this has historically been done through things like massive genocide or forced sterilization of oppressed minorities, so people tend to be pretty fucking wary of it) then humans are subject to natural selection.

Again, with the gravity comparison: birds can fly. Humans cannot. But gravity works on birds and humans equally. Both of us have adapted differently to the natural, inescapable force that is gravity in different ways, just as we have adapted differently to the natural, inescapable force that is natural selection. Birds, being able to fly, have adapted so well to gravity that they can work against it to fly even while following all of its rules. Humans had to work very hard for thousands of years on our own technology to be able to do that. Likewise, birds do not have the society or brainpower to create medical science, but that's a natural advantage we have to deal with natural selection. Diseases like diabetes are no longer as much of a disadvantageous trait as they used to be in human history, so they are not selected out of the species as much now.

[ SECRET POST #1715 ]

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