Are humans the epitome of evolution thus far?

You may have missed where he said "so far."

Stupid comparison -- we are one species, "dinosaurs" were hundreds.
Compare Dinosaurs to Mammals, maybe. We both got going about the same time, they dominated large-animal roles for millions of years, mammals did fairly well in the small animal niches where no dinosaur that we know of did well.

Then the tables were turned, dinosaurs wound up mostly in small-animal roles, mammals have become dominant as large animals and are doing very well in smaller sizes.

>liberals are the pinnacle of evolution
rly makign me thingken

/thread

Yes, but so is corn and protozoa and squid and...

Evolution isn't intelligent design, it's the principle that things which are better at surviving and reproducing are better at existing.

(to nitpick my own post, technically that's natural selection not evolution, but the two are close enough for layman's terms that there's no point differentiating)

No there's aliens. If you saw them you would stop all this nonsense about evolutionary local maxima. They would be like an invasive species and an adaption or two would make them completely Superior to anything on this planet. Eg more specialized brain circuits or mental categories for things which we do not perceive. Eg a circuit that not only says "what is the use of (x) such a thing" and the ability to discern a separate physical object by the association and sturdiness of it's parts when moved around and shook up, but also... "what was I thinking when I did that" to come up with a better train of thought. Basically better memory and useful for programming and mathematics and engineering on complex designs.

Humans did not evolve

humans have good digestive systems, great eyesight, good efficiency to walk long distances, and most important of all, big coggin noggins.

Its crazy how much the human experience is about the human noggin. Big baby heads yet completely and totally helpless babies for years and years and years.

Outside of natural events fucking over the Dino master class, what species do you think is the best?

That's namely because their lifespan is short enough to cycle through many hundreds of thousands of mutations before humans even get one.

Op here

As for as uncommon animals go, I think the tardigrade or tube worms are some of the best evolved organisms. As for common animals that humans interact with, I can't really think of a better evolved species because of our intellect being so far advanced. That has given humans the power to pseudoevolve through applications like technology and creativity.

Evolution does not work to put all living organisms on the same playing field. With a world being constantly shaped by species intermingling and natural occurrences, an organism must survive it all. There's levels to how sensitive a species is to extinction by the way. Those species are still products of an epitome?

>what is k selection
>what is r selection

You guys are putting too much emphasis on
>muh smarts

Look at ants. They're perfect.

Nah, cockroaches are.

ants are the masterrace

50% of ants in a colony are freeloading slackers

I killed an entire colony of ants because they were annoying me by crawling on my desk

What a perfect species

>for layman's terms that there's no point differentiating

We should anyway, though.

The two ARE different.

Evolution, natural or manmade, is an observable fact.

The mechanism of natural selection is the currently favored (and overwhelmingly supported) theory of why it happens in nature -- but like any scientific theory, it may be refined or discarded IF countervailing evidence comes to light.

In the unlikely event that we had to abandon natural selection as a theory, it would not alter the observed facts of evolutionary change.

Speak for yourself.

I don't have a tail, so yeah, my lineage evolved.

We can't possible know with the tools we have now.

Common sense would point you towards definitely.

>Evolution does not work to put all living organisms on the same playing field.

Didn't say it did. My point is that every living thing is the result of evolutionary processes that have been going on from day one, which in the case of everything alive today was successful in allowing each of us to be here today.

It was intended as a refutation of the concept that there are some "less evolved" species, some "more evolved." We have merely evolved in different directions, fitting into different niches in different environments.

I would be comfortable with the statement that there is no pinnacle of evolution, which seems to me the same as saying we're all the pinnacle. (In the same way that if everybody is special, nobody really is.)

As far as sensitivity to extinction, extinction is the inevitable destiny of any and all species. We living things are descended fro extinct species that left descendants -- if you want to use a Playing Field metaphor, we are winning so far.

I'm comfortable with equating that with OP's "pinnacle so far," as long as we are clear that there is no "goal state" organism towards which evolution is driving .

There's no such thing as "evolved", because evolution never stops. There aren't any known cases of an organism that has stopped mutating.

First of all, what would the epitome of evolution look like? My guess is an organism that survives easily enough OR long enough to pass on its genes consistently in many different environments. Tardigrades fit that bill more than anything else so far.

Well, if we're going to get all nitpicky, then natural selection is a tautological fact (whereas evolution is an empirical fact). That most "things" of a future point in time will be things that didn't go extinct is self-evidently true, and can be shown just from first principles of logic. The part that could be changed with enough evidence (again, unlikely but technically possible) is that the primary cause of evolution is natural selection, not either phenomenon in and of itself.

>atural selection is a tautological fact (whereas evolution is an empirical fact). That most "things" of a future point in time will be things that didn't go extinct is self-evidently true, and can be shown just from first principles of logic.
Really wish this was the way evolution was taught to people, because so few people actually understand this intuitively.

No we just lucked out on being specialists in memetic information. It's a hell of a lot faster than genetic information.

We've evolved a plenty--in fact, evolution has accelerated after the Neolithic revolution.

Dumb model without experimental verification.