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The future of human evolution

san cor var
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Posted 01/04/05 - 03:44 AM:	#1
This is my opinion on the future of human evolution and what needs to be done to address it. I would like to read your opinions on the matter. Evolution of the mind is the future. Survival is based on what a organisms mental abilities are, and how they use them. If Homo-sapiens survive in these conditions, where mental abilities define survival or extinction of individual organisms, Homosapiens would develop a physical body that would increase the chance of survival in the conditions that they live in. The mentally successful would thrive. I picture a person who lives in this kind of future as one that would look like an alien in movies. as a people of this kind we would lose the ability to fight without the use of technology, as fighting without the use of technology would not become an essential survival attribute, therefore eliminating it's need in a future evolution. If survival is based on who is smarter, any evolution that would occur in a prehistoric environment would not occur in that environment. Traits that could possibly ensure the future of human survival in the distant future, may never have a chance to imprint itself in our DNA. I am not talking about traits that could be achieved at any time in the chain of human evolution, I am talking about traits that could only be attained through evolution in a direction different to the one that we are currently following. Imagine a world in which people lived in family groups, without technology that bases survival on mental agility, but coordinated the evolution of the mental aspect and the physical aspect of the body. homosapiens are at a time where they have the choice to accept a future as a mentally agile people with decreased functions in other areas or to continue evolution in a way so that they have a chance in the future to continue mental evolution coordination with physical evolution. Think of how a body is structured. A body has cells, cells do every task a body needs to survive. when single cell organisms evolved into multiple cell organisms, those different cells coordinated to increase the capacity of functions that organism had. If the mental aspect and the physical aspect of homo-sapiens evolved in coordination, eventually the body will evolve to create new aspects to deal with the situations that threaten the survival of the homosapien species while coordinating the evolution of the mental aspects and the physical aspects of our current abilities in order to ensure the chances of evolving into a species with increased abilities. We must as a species realise that the mind and the body evolve in different paths, in order to ensure equality in the chain of the evolution of the homosapien species we must consider the following options, decrease the chance of survival based on physical ability to reach a level equal to the chance of survival based on mental ability, and keep a happy medium throughout the world with every race, or remove all variables that promote survival based on mental ability, let homosapiens evolve into more physically adept people, with possibly evolution leading to another factor to balance as well as the chances of survival based on physical and mental abilities. With whatever decision homosapiens make I hope DNA is preserved so that evolution can be steered in another direction if any mistakes are made.

Mijin
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Posted 01/04/05 - 05:08 AM:	#2
I'm not sure I exactly follow your argument. If you're talking biological evolution (and I assume you are because you've used the word "survival" many times), then I would say your proposal is misguided. Biological evolution is slow at the best of times, and in the case of the human race where we constantly adapt our environment to suit our own needs it is practically at a standstill. You and I are genetically virtually identical to the first homo sapiens to ever walk the earth. It is not at all true that humans will obviously evolve higher intelligence, and I doubt this will ever take place. On the other hand, technology is rapidly reaching the point where cybernetics, genetic engineering and maybe ever nanotechnology could radically change human physiology. With this kind of evolution there are definitely ethical considerations about what sort of modifications should be acceptable. But I would say that ensuring the physical body 'keeps up with' the evolution of the mind is not really one of them. After all, for our mass human beings are wimps already, it's not causing us any problems though, we can still push thousands of tons of metal around, see atoms and create temperatures hotter than on the sun.

sensabile
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Posted 01/04/05 - 02:45 PM:	#3
Talking of evolution in terms of "survival value" is dated. Survival is no longer a problem to the modern-day human being. One must now jump straight to what survival used to promote: reproduction. What promotes reproduction today is not survival, since that is common ground, but free time. The trends today are that younger people, both male and female, are more ambitious and these people tend to be the more intelligent; this has led to a decrease in reproduction for these people and a normal increase in less intelligent people - but the gap has been widened. This means that instead of people becoming more intelligent, it's more likely - although I am not affirming it - that people are becoming less intelligent.
For the winner there was a big three-legged cauldron to stand over a fire - it was worth a dozen oxen by the Greek's reckoning - and for the loser he brought forward a woman thoroughly trained in domestic work whom they valued at four oxen. -Homer's The Illiad Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? -Mark 9:50

flat6
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Posted 01/04/05 - 03:30 PM:	#4
sensabile wrote: The trends today are that younger people, both male and female, are more ambitious and these people tend to be the more intelligent; this has led to a decrease in reproduction for these people and a normal increase in less intelligent people - but the gap has been widened. This means that instead of people becoming more intelligent, it's more likely - although I am not affirming it - that people are becoming less intelligent. That would follow if intelligence arose solely from reproduction. It doesn't. If you agree with that, then don't read the rest of this, it merely fleshes out the above. I can grant you that being raised by intelligent people helps, but that still doesn't make your ('not affirmed' ) argument logical. As a concise counter-argument, I'll say that intelligent people are worth more than stupid people when considering the grand arithmetic total of the "humanity's intelligence". Having a small portion of smart people can make up for a large portion of stupid people, eventually creating technology and services to raise those people out of their stupidity. (More precisely, and more fairly, I should reterm 'intelligent' as educated and 'stupid' as deprived of the possibility of an education). If we were talking about two closed systems, one in which educated people had a birth rate < 2.0, and one in which people had a birth rate of say 10.0, then yes, the world would be getting stupider (assuming the closed system does not allow for any change in level of education). But the world is not a closed system: there is an exchange of education and opportunity between the (proportionally) diminishing educated people and the growing uneducated people. I think you'll agree that 100 years down the road, the world will be smarter, despite stupid people reproducing faster. At the very least, our science and technology will have progressed. Essentially, we need a few great minds, not many educated by untalented ones. These will do the work needed to help the rest of us out. Eventually it'll spread to the entire populace of humanity. smarter does not imply smart **save for annihilation or greed on a systematic, mind-boggling scale
wulffmorgenthaler

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Posted 01/04/05 - 04:36 PM:	#5
Mijin wrote: I'm not sure I exactly follow your argument. If you're talking biological evolution (and I assume you are because you've used the word "survival" many times), then I would say your proposal is misguided. Biological evolution is slow at the best of times, and in the case of the human race where we constantly adapt our environment to suit our own needs it is practically at a standstill. You and I are genetically virtually identical to the first homo sapiens to ever walk the earth. It is not at all true that humans will obviously evolve higher intelligence, and I doubt this will ever take place. On the other hand, technology is rapidly reaching the point where cybernetics, genetic engineering and maybe ever nanotechnology could radically change human physiology. With this kind of evolution there are definitely ethical considerations about what sort of modifications should be acceptable. But I would say that ensuring the physical body 'keeps up with' the evolution of the mind is not really one of them. After all, for our mass human beings are wimps already, it's not causing us any problems though, we can still push thousands of tons of metal around, see atoms and create temperatures hotter than on the sun. I've mulled over it for a long time and I still can't see any evidence that technology is doing us any good evolutionarily. I agree that humans are not getting more intellegent--i would hold that they are going the other way--so what we would need is some random enlargement of our brain chemistry ("streamlined" if you will) to ever grow in the mental area. So what we've got is a physical issue. The issue is certainly one that we are not helping through technollogy. *Every step forward in technology is an equal and opposite step in evolution.* since we are no longer changing in relation to the environment but we are, yes indeed, changing the environment to suit us. We are getting more lazy and stupid with each passing day. Look at it from a medical stand point. If you get chicken pox, you fight it off and your body adapts (adaptation being evolution on a very small scale) and then you don't get chicken pox any more. But let's say Sir X. devolops the cure for chiken pox, then we don't have to put up with it anymore. (massive joy and song) But then lets say that because it is now something that the body does not deal with, we devolve--or unevolve-- so that chicken pox becomes deadly if contracted. The fact is that if we make something else to do something for us then we will be less capable at doing it in the future.
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rabeldin
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Posted 01/04/05 - 06:42 PM:	#6
Every step forward in technology is an equal and opposite step in evolution. Evolution may be progressive as you suggest. But evolution may be regressive as well. If we were to have a nuclear war, for example, and destroy large parts of our material technology, our standards of living would certainly deteriorate. That too would be evolution. Taking the word "evolution" in its most general sense and applying it to the human species, we consider two kinds of evolution: biological evolution (which is slow, as has been noted) and "cultural evolution" which is rather faster. Neither is inherently progressive. If one is a nature-loving soul, you could curse our cultural evoltion, considering it destructive. You can see that the cultural artefacts left behind the humans of the 19th and 20th centuries are rather different. We usually consider man's interaction with his environment as part of his cultural evolution. Thus, one of the artefacts of the 20th century is the hole in the ozone layer over the south pole. Other such artefacts are the many explanations for that artefact. Technology is part of our evolution, not an external factor. The fact is that if we make something else to do something for us then we will be less capable at doing it in the future. This is more likely when dealing with cultural evolution since we can indeed fail to pass on to subsequent generations the skills we have learned. Biological evolution would simply allow unused capabilities to lie dormant. There is no mechanism that would strip them out of the human genome.
Leave no assumption unquestioned.

sensabile
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Posted 01/05/05 - 08:49 AM:	#7
flat6 wrote: (More precisely, and more fairly, I should reterm 'intelligent' as educated and 'stupid' as deprived of the possibility of an education). Not that I disagree with the rest of what you have said, which as it happens I do, but the above comment is false. There are a great many people who are educated yet stupid, and yet another great many people who are intelligent yet uneducated. Education has nothing to do with intelligence, it just happens to be the favoured past-time of the intelligent. That would follow if intelligence arose solely from reproduction. It doesn't. I never said it "logically followed" or any other such deductive nonsense. I, more than most people, realise the sensitivity of such predictions that are based on trends. Furthermore, it would not be necessary for intelligence to arise "solely" from reproduction for it to be likely - as I stated. Many aspects of intelligence can be, and are, considered behaviours; which therefore means, your parents being your (most likely) first attachment figures, that you will likely be somewhat as intelligent as they are.
For the winner there was a big three-legged cauldron to stand over a fire - it was worth a dozen oxen by the Greek's reckoning - and for the loser he brought forward a woman thoroughly trained in domestic work whom they valued at four oxen. -Homer's The Illiad Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? -Mark 9:50

SimplyPlatonic
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Posted 01/05/05 - 12:27 PM:	#8
flat6 wrote: (More precisely, and more fairly, I should reterm 'intelligent' as educated and 'stupid' as deprived of the possibility of an education). Terming intellegent people as educated people is a mistake. Education as it exists today has certainly little if anything to do with intellegence. If someone was very poor and "deprived of the possibility of an education" they are not nessesarily non-intellegent. Education and intellegence are very very different things and the loss of this distinction is one of the major contributors to the poor quality of mental people today.
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SimplyPlatonic
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Posted 01/05/05 - 03:25 PM:	#9
rabeldin wrote: Evolution may be progressive as you suggest. But evolution may be regressive as well. If we were to have a nuclear war, for example, and destroy large parts of our material technology, our standards of living would certainly deteriorate. That too would be evolution. Taking the word "evolution" in its most general sense and applying it to the human species, we consider two kinds of evolution: biological evolution (which is slow, as has been noted) and "cultural evolution" which is rather faster. Neither is inherently progressive. If one is a nature-loving soul, you could curse our cultural evoltion, considering it destructive. You can see that the cultural artefacts left behind the humans of the 19th and 20th centuries are rather different. We usually consider man's interaction with his environment as part of his cultural evolution... Technology is part of our evolution, not an external factor. I would submit that technological evolution should definately be considered as a seperate branch of evolution all together, (as opposed to part of "cultural evolution"). That would obviously bring the count up to a solid three; Biological, Technological, and Socio-cultural evolutions. Each evolution is of course effected by changes in any of the others and the path that it may have taken would be re-directed from the course it would have held if the other(s) would not have changed. What I propose here is that of one of the relationships between the evolutions, that of the relationship of technological and biological. And that relationship is again- Each action in technological evolution has an equal and opposite reaction in biological (Newton for evolution).
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rabeldin
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Posted 01/05/05 - 03:55 PM:	#10
Changing the emphasis might indeed have some benefits.
Leave no assumption unquestioned.

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