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Next Step in Human Evolution
PrivateDonut writes "Where is evolution taking our species? MSNBC has up an article that examines where evolution could take the human race. The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups." From the article: "Such ideas may sound like little more than science-fiction plot lines. But trend-watchers point out that we're already wrestling with real-world aspects of future human development, ranging from stem-cell research to the implantation of biocompatible computer chips. The debates are likely to become increasingly divisive once all the scientific implications sink in." Class, please read Transmetropolitan for homework.
We all know that Human evolution is shorty to be off shored to Mars because martians are a dime a dozen and grow faster in the reduced gravity.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Human evolution has reached the point where other then learning to breathe in a low oxygen area (like underwater) or being able to fly we've pretty much at the peak we can be at.
Over the years we've evolved to use tools and tools have kept us up with the latest evolutionary fad. We're pretty much a stable mutation of a monkey (with other obvious mutations still happening once in a while). Other then learning to fly or breathing water we can't adapt any more to our planet.
When humans move to another world with more problems we will probably start evolving again. Untill then why risk evolving and screwing ourselvs over if we take the wrong path?
I like muppets.
"The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups." Well, if we are seperated into seperate environments that would probably have the same effect as being seperated into seperate groups. That probably means that we will evolve in space. It makes sense as well, we could still evolve to "work better" in microgravity... we could still evolve to run better on different air, maybe purer or less pure oxygen. And since we're in smaller gruops in space, according to this, we are going to have an even greater chance of evolution. So, is space travel going to bring on the next stage of human evolution?
Adamantium claws. Telepathy. Electromagnetism. Weather control. Yeah you read it right, they'll discover that there is a gene that controls weather.
And they'll dress in spandex and fight each other for survival and/or world supremecy.
I for one, will be very entertained by our new mutant overlords.
Pass the popcorn.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Why can't people EVER use the "Not Safe For Church" tag on these things?
From the summary: ...no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups.
:P
Evolution will continue as long as DNA continues to mutate. To say that human evolution is at a standstill is ridiculous. We have been mutating (and remaining mostly unchanged, too) for hundreds of thousands of years. We haven't changed all that much because we're already incredibly well-adapted to our environment. Just look at the population.
In addition, our race has lived in isolated groups for most of its existence. Isolation only leads to inbreeding, which is generally a Bad Thing for evolution, as it limits the availability of new genetic material.
Of course, I have yet to RTFA...
Reality is fluffy!
The gist of it is that no further evolution will occur unless humans can be separated into isolated groups
No, the gist is that we won't have two seperate species of humans without isolation. Evolution doesn't stop.
Not only is that a very basic and obvious concept, it says exactly that in TFA.
FTFA:
"Evolution is still at work. But instead of diverging, our gene pool has been converging for tens of thousands of years -- and Stuart Pimm, an expert on biodiversity at Duke University, says that trend may well be accelerating."
And at this point, not only do we have natural mutations that could be dominant, we also have the ability to alter evolution through our own means.
I highly doubt this: human intervention will outrun 'natural' changes in background radiation.
In general I have the impression that the article assumes human adaptation while engineering will probably be much more important: we unravel the DNA etc and cure diseases and make 'stronger' humans. Drawback of this: I don't want to sound like a Nazi, but I can imagine this counteracts 'natural selection'. If glasses wouldn't have been invented, everybody would have perfect eyesight etc...
To answer the question, one has to look at which genes are reproducing themselves, and which aren't.
It's pretty clear that the environment has been dysgenic for intelligence in the modern world for at least a century. The more intelligent you are, the better education you get, and the more education you get, the less children you have.
The most likely outcome of future human evolution might be something like Kornbluth's "Marching Morons." Over the next few centuries, the average IQ of the human race will drop to 60-70.
The Flynn effect might be raised as an objection, but the Flynn effect is not genetic, so it can't affect this.
There will be no further naturally occurring evolution of the human race. Since medical science can overcome just about any malady, disfigurement, or defect--allowing anyone to procreate--there is no opportunity for nature to weed out anything. For example, 5000 years ago a man who had a faulty liver would most likely die and his genetic line might die with him. Today, a man with a faulty liver spends a coule of days in a hospital and is able to continue his genetic line. So in essence, science has outsmarted evolution. Survival of the fittest doesn't apply when everyone survives.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Sadly, useless organs are not in quite the same hurry to go away as critical ones are to appear.
So the species will have to deal with having a pinky toe, hair in uncomfortable places and organs such as the appendix a while longer.
That sounds exactly like the plot in the anime Gundam Seed, followed by the plot in the game Total Annihilation.
God I need to get a life >_
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
Does that pinky toe hinder your ability to breed? If not, then why should 'evolution care'?
plugs and wires is the kind of crap you see in movies. we already have good wireless tech so why would we use horrible wires?
at the very most, the sign of an "enhanced" human would be an apple-shaped white LED just under the skin that pulsates when you're asleep.
"Does that pinky toe hinder your ability to breed?"
running around screaming like a lunatic and punching walls doesn't usually put my girlfriend in the mood, so....
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
All of these technologies may work together, of course. It may be that human genetic engineering would help a person be more compatible with synthetic augmentations, for example. I also believe these are all good things. The core of what makes us us is our minds, and it seems tragic that so many people are restricted by the box their brain must travel in. I hope to be able to help make it so that losing limbs and getting paralyzed are simply no longer problems that need to be worried about beyond some inconvenience. I think that transferring to artificial bodies, or at least advanced gene therapy, will be important for future efforts to colonize space. It appears that in many ways, the primary threat is luddites shutting the research down. Fortunately, so far most of this has passed under their radar, so I am hopeful that will continue to be the case until actual products are ready to go. At that point, it will be too late to stop it. It is an exciting time to be alive though, and I encourage everyone to go and do some research on the subject, especially if you have access to a college or corporate net that has subscriptions to primary research engines, like ScienceDirect or JStor. Also, everyone can look at becoming a member of the AAAS, which will get you online access to Science.
Some links:
University of California Neuroelectric Research Group. Some interesting information, with PDFs available, on BCI.
Gene Delivery Systems. A free quick intro (from a lecture/course) on some of the different vector systems being studied for gene therapy, and desirable characteristics.
Those of you with access to journals can go read a very interesting study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(6):1022-1035. "Optimizing a Linear Algorithm for Real-Time Robotic Control using Chronic Cortical Ensemble Recordings in Monkeys," by Wessberg and Nicolelis.
Ah yes, the wild bushmen, left alone to live out simple lives... oh, and fight court battles with the government. So much for isolation.
http://www.wpherald.com/Africa/storyview.php?Story ID=20050420-094002-6437r
Evolution is driven by selection pressure. Selection occurs because some individuals die or otherwise fail to breed. Their heritable traits tend not to be found in the next generation.
So, ask yourself, what consistent selection pressures are acting on us now? Note that things that would have killed us in the past are now regularly taken care of by medical science. In just a couple of generations we have a significant subpopulation that can't breed at all without medical intervention. Some of these traits are heritable, such as difficulties in childbirth or needing IVF techniques to overcome fertility problems.
Other traits which seem to universally pop up in domestic animals are also showing up in humans. The modern urban environment is just as alien and stressful to us as modern farms are to the animals we keep there. So we are seeing hypersexuality, earlier and earlier puberty, obesity, and a lot of neurosis. THAT is the evolutionary future of the human race, and it's already well on its way.
The only way out of this situation is to start applying deliberate selective pressure. Given that this would essentially mean giving up the right of individuals to reproduce at will, I don't see it happening any time soon. Plus, I would imagine that a lot of effort would be thrown at hot-button traits like homosexuality or intelligence which probably aren't even heritable. (I know there are a lot of people who say otherwise; there are good reasons for doubting them, starting with their very eagerness.)
The world's population is already effectively split into two major groups, those who can afford radical medical intervention and those who can't. For another idea on how that might work out check out H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Some things are so basic that they're easier to call before you're well into the trend.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Yes.
Scenario 1 - Guy with pinky toe:
Hot woman: Hey there, wanna come over?
Guy: Hell yeah, let me walk ov... GOD DAMN IT I JUST STUBBED MY PINKY TOE... sweet mother of God this hurts. Make it go away!
Hot woman: Wuss.
Scenario 2 - Guy w/o pinky toe:
Hot woman: Hey there, wanna come over?
Guy: Hell yeah, let me walk over there.
Hot woman: WTF happened to your pinky toe?
Guy: I got rid of it. For you. It means more of my blood can now be used for a thicker, long lasting erection.
Hot woman: Nice.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I'll probably get flamed for this but I have to say it anyway...
Why does anyone still expect evolution in our society? With the social system and the way our economy works there is no reason for evolution anymore. If you take a pack of lions... The top is the strongest animal, then the second tier is the ones that are almost as strong and so on. Now I look at where I work - the richest and most powerful guy has his job cause he started almost at the top and had the right backing... The next level down are all his friends - most of them completly incompetent idiots. Evolution? No thanks!
Now the other side - and that's the really scary one - since when do we weed out bad genes? Today most people die a natural death, no matter if they were stupid, disabled or had any other issues. In the past, those would have been the first to get killed by lack of food, deciese or wild animals. That kept the gene pool cleaner. Today, they have kids just like everyone else - and that has severe negative impact on the human race.
I'm not saying that there is any ethical way of changing that or that it even should be changed, but if the topic of evolution comes up, most people just silently ignore these two facts most of the time...
Peter.
The most polymorphic genes in our (actually most any) genome are the MHC genes - genes that are central to the adaptive immune response. These genes are under extreme selective pressure, to the point that we can track how peoples migrated by monitoring how haplotype ratios changed or new ones emerged over time.
New diseases are emerging all the time - as a prime example, HIV is a brand new disease that made the species jump to humans less than 100 years ago. As an immunologist, I fully expect another 'Black Plague' to emerge and wipe out 25% of the world's population within my lifetime.
Evolution by disease clearly isn't as flashy as evolving wings or gills, but it's evolution none the less.
Yeah, or scenario 3 - Guy with pinky toe:
Guy: How was it for you, babe?
Girl: What did you use, your pinky toe?
Guy: Mumbles with embarrassment.
Scenario 4 - Guy with pinky toe:
Guy: How was it for you?
Girl: What did you use, your pinky toe?
Guy (Confidently): No way, babe!
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
You misunderstand evolution if you think it's not working.
The current situation, where everyone survives, works in favor of evolution. It means when the next catastrophe occurs (whether it be killer allergies, poison canaries, pollution, parasitic ants, whatever), we will have a hundredfold more diverse genetic pool than if we were thinned out because less people survived.
To put it succinctly, we are currently in a phase where the geneline is being enriched.
GPL Deconstructed
Isolation is required for speciation (the creation of a new species distinct from the original species) it is not required for evolution to change an existing species.
Evolution is driven by the environment and selective pressures. If the environment changes, the species must adapt or die out.
In the abstract, each species inhabits a 'fitness landscape', think of it as a mountainous landscape - those poorly adapted inhabit the low lands, those well adapted inhabit the summits.
A particular species is ever changing, exploring other peaks, and sometimes getting lost in the valleys. The landscape can change as well, thrusting up the lowlands and making previously ill-adapted specimins quite well adapted (think of the tiny little rodents that did so well after the climate change that killed off the dynosaurs).
So, to the people who claim that human evolution has ended because of our technology's ability to compensate for suboptimal genetic mutations and variation - you couldn't be more wrong. Techonology has merely become integrated into our fitness landscape, like fire and tools have been for millenia.
There are many examples of where technology has massively altered the fitness landscape. The valley of near-sightedness is no longer so deep, and the summit of intelligence has lost a couple thousand feet. This dramatically changing fitness itself will drive evolution. The nature of the changes doesn't matter. Evolution isn't 'trying' to make us smarter. It isn't trying to make us stronger, faster, or more attractive.
Think about it this way. Yes, technology allows women who have narrow hips or large babies to give birth, when in the past they would have died in child birth. The result, there is less selective pressure on the width of hips in women and the size of babies. We can expect to see more variation in hip with, more narrow hips, and larger babies. In the future it might be exceedingly rare for women to give brth without a C-section.
Is this good or bad? Who knows, it allows our genome to explore previously unexplored territory - women with smaller hips, or who have larger babies in utero. What will be the result? Who knows. Perhaps there is some hidden adaptive benefit in these traits. Perhaps not. Maybe the genes that cause mutations or disease that used to kill before reproductive age have hidden benefits that are revealed when techology allows these people to survive and reproduce. Or perhaps they just open the path to a different peak in the fitness landscape.
As for those who point to the developed world's most successful reproducers, the poor, as evidence of our devolution - I ask you why you assume these people to be inferior? Sure, many are not self-supporting, but many are - raising large families on their own incomes. Seems these people are quite successful at making and raising babies. Their genes will have proportionally higher representation in the coming generations than will those of us who choose to have one or two children.
Don't fall into the trap of assuming that just because these people are poor they are somehow less intelligent or in some way inferior. Less educated certainly. But less intelligent? Remember that current human intelligence evolved in pre-literate societies.
Even the worst of the trailer trash functions at a relatively high level compared to our neolithic progenitors. Jim Bob knows how to operate a complex machine called a pick-up truck, even at high speeds. He can read, has a vocabulary well north of 5,000 words, can do basic math, and is mostly likely required to have highly developed hand-eye coordination in whatever work he does (if it is manual labor). These tax human intelligence far beyond the selective pressures that lead to the evolution of our current level of intelligence. Even the poorest among us need all our vaunted human intelligence just to survive.
The next logical stage of human evolution is for women's eye to migrate to their breasts so they can maintain eye contact with men.
something that the article lightly hits on: there's also a big underground movement about something called "the singularity" which is also a theory that more involves the next step in human evolution rather than evolution itself.
:)
From the http://singinst.org/Singularity Institute: "What is the Singularity? Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of surpassing the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence, perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole - just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is the product of cognition, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs - the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds." There's a singularity group at Stanford as well. Pretty important stuff because it can have many possible outcomes, anywhere from some Matrix-like effect to becoming transhuman -- so there's a big underground movement that's trying to ensure a positive outcome. Anyways, it's pretty interesting stuff if you've never checked it out. A good place to start is google
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
I don't want any taste or smell organs on my hands thank you very much. I still have to wipe my ass when I take a shit.
Nice Marmot
No, birds can stay in the air because they are lightweight.
No, the other fish just died.
The ones without fur, also, died.
The one Really Big Thing about evolution is that there is no purpose. The fittest do not survive, it is just that the least fit die off.
Similarly us humans can only wonder at our own complexity because we are so complex that we are capable of wondering.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!