Since the pace of evolution has clearly been increasing recently, this seems like a rather retroactive prediction.
I refer you to Katja’s blog post, “‘Clearly’ covers murky thought”. I’m not aware of any evidence that the pace of evolution has been increasing recently. I am pretty sure that the pace of DNA evolution has not been increasing recently. I am aware of many reasons for predicting that the pace of evolution of humans has been decreasing in the past centuries.
But I will change the statement to specify rate of information acquisition in genomes.
Evolution as a whole is has clearly been speeding up recently—due to the current mass extinction, the evolution of intelligent design, genetic engineering, etc. Today we are witnessing an unprecedented rate of evolutionary change. Just look out of your window.
We are witnessing many extinctions. That’s a loss of information, not a gain of information. But, yes, massive disturbances and relocations increase the rate of evolution, all else being equal.
If you refer to the “pace of evolution” I should hope that mass extinctions count as rapid evolution. The gene frequencies there are changing pretty rapidly.
If you mean to refer to some other kind of metric, you should probably be more specific—for example, you might want to consider talking about “constructive evolution”—or something similar.
Don’t call it “evolution”, then—or people will get very confused. Evolution is about change—not about gain or loss. Check with the definition of the term.
I refer you to Katja’s blog post, “‘Clearly’ covers murky thought”. I’m not aware of any evidence that the pace of evolution has been increasing recently. I am pretty sure that the pace of DNA evolution has not been increasing recently. I am aware of many reasons for predicting that the pace of evolution of humans has been decreasing in the past centuries.
But I will change the statement to specify rate of information acquisition in genomes.
Evolution as a whole is has clearly been speeding up recently—due to the current mass extinction, the evolution of intelligent design, genetic engineering, etc. Today we are witnessing an unprecedented rate of evolutionary change. Just look out of your window.
For the human genome, perhaps see: Human evolution is ‘speeding up’
We are witnessing many extinctions. That’s a loss of information, not a gain of information. But, yes, massive disturbances and relocations increase the rate of evolution, all else being equal.
If you refer to the “pace of evolution” I should hope that mass extinctions count as rapid evolution. The gene frequencies there are changing pretty rapidly.
If you mean to refer to some other kind of metric, you should probably be more specific—for example, you might want to consider talking about “constructive evolution”—or something similar.
I wouldn’t. That’s just loss. If your planet was hit by a supernova, would you call that rapid evolution?
I’ve been quite specific. I’m talking about the accumulation of information in the DNA of all organisms.
Don’t call it “evolution”, then—or people will get very confused. Evolution is about change—not about gain or loss. Check with the definition of the term.