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Human Species May Split In Two
gEvil (beta) writes "According to an article at the BBC, an evolutionary theorist in London suggests that humanity may split into two sub-species within the next 100,000 years. From the article: 'The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.'" No missing link here, we already have the troll-like humans to prove it.
Half of us will be Swedish, and the other half will be British?
*Snort!* Ha ha ha ha ha ha....... heeeee ha ha ha ha ha! *sniff*.......
:-)
In all seriousness though, there is nothing new here as this certainly plays off any number of sci-fi subjects going back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. People have been obsessed with this sort of thing for years and in fact, was the basis of racial profiling, discrimination, murder and genocide by the Nazis in the 1930s through eugenics.
The funny thing though is that even though many folks are obsessed with image and "beauty", people will choose mates for a variety of different reasons, that sometimes boggle the mind in their complexity or pathology and as long as you have people that are..... less than attractive with large amounts of financial reserves, you will always have confounds in the system. Other confounds are simply human relationships. For instance, my wife and I decided to date and then marry only after we had been good friends for some period of time. The fact that she is physically attractive was only incidental which brings up a whole other category of people who meet and then fall in love over the Internet without ever having met in person.
Oh, and speaking of confounds, the increasing use of plastic surgery among those that 1) have real reason to use it (true disfigurement) and 2) are just vain enough to want it (lips, cheeks, chins, breasts) will have an effect on this as well, leading to a whole new aspect of relationships. What is false advertising when it comes to body modification? Breasts are pretty easy to detect, but what about that nose which might have been bobbed? Straightened? What about those cheekbones? Teeth? All of these mods and others will confound any selection pressure and likely will increase in their statistical impact the more important "beauty" becomes to societies.
But hey, you know..... The Clone Wars will take care of all of this sort of nonsense..... or will it be Skynet?
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Direct quotes from Dr. Curry's article: ;-)
Men: "... bigger penises"
Women: "... pert breasts" (and presumably larger/fuller too)
I gotta wonder how valid this "research" truly is - sounds like something Dr. Frankenstein or Homer Simpson would have written - D'OH!
Well done ScuttleMonkey with the "Missing Link" addition.
and ill be the intelligent, tall, slender, handsome man that I always been.
by chance?
But when the all clear sounds, which side would you want to be on?
Kind of an anti-Eloi/Mordock kind of thing, huh?
TFA seems to consist merely of speculation. Is there any actual scientific reason for believing all the claims in there?
Just take a look at professional athletes. They're bigger, stronger, and faster than even just two generations ago. We're starting to see more and more offspring of atheletes following in the footsteps of their parents. And to top it off, they make more money and have more prospects for reproducing.
Our genetic upper-class is already here.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
H. G. Wells seems to have thought of this over a hundred years ago...
SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
Something about this idea seems vaguely familiar...
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
First of all, I think that this whole article is flamebait, but aside from that...
Why just two? If you honestly think that there will be enough of a split in the social structure, why limit this to just two species?
It seems to me that we will either keep going as a single species, or there will be splits, in which case the number of splits should be regarded as N. (For the sake of argument, I'm assuming no extinction, which is the least interesting possibility for an evolutionary biologist.)
That he's got his use cases mixed. Intelligent, creative people are far less likely to pay attention to personal appearance, where beautiful people are far less likely to pay attention to mental pursuits.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I guess we should all be happy we came along now. Better to be dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures while it's still politically incorrect to call us such.
Wow, did someone watch Metropolis recently.
As a dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creature, I take offense to this!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
So... what kind of stats do the short goblin-like humans get? Want to make sure I don't inadvertadly lower any of my prime skills. ;P
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Mac users and PC users You work out which is which..
Great work science, continuing to postulate sciece fiction!
for slummin it... now you can find a hot white trash girl and in the future you'll REALLY be slummin it
Hey, it's only Fox New's fault if Republicans and Democrats entirely stop cross-breeding!
:p)
(You can't call it a troll if I don't say which one becomes the upper class
"He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo." Because I go to Bravo for all my evolutionary biology needs. This sounds like a joke, really. The guy in question got a cheque from a tabloid TV channel, nicked HG Well's idea, and laughed all the way to the bank. Nice work if you can get it.
"Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
What a load of Morlocks
Does he think no-one will notice he's rehashing H.G. Wells?
"However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology. Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals." I fail to see the similarities between relying on a human owner and using "gadgets designed to meet our every needs". Technology doesn't think for itself, but who knows where we'll be in such a long time? Apparently, we'll have less advertisements for penis enlargement.
I've actually been thinking about people who still live primitively on secluded islands in the Pacific or Indian Ocean that don't get much contact with those of us more technologically progressed. Wouldn't they likely be the first left behind in human evolution? We already treat them like another species, being allowed to show their "naughty bits" in the same way as animals on public access cable yet not the genitals of more civilized people.
welcome our tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative overlords!!!!
No, someone's just been reading the script of the next Dr. Who episode, when the Doctor has to save the human race from becoming 2 sub species. Oh, wait, that's Surviver... my mistake!
Oh come on people. We are already like that. We have fat ugly people and drop dead gorgeous people. This guy is just looking for a way to get his name in the history books. He can make all the claims he wants because no one will ever remember his name or anything about our era in 100,000 years.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
You do indeed see natural speciation through sexual selection. Predicting this for a global and intermingling population is absurd, especially in the next thousand years. More dramatic things would have to happen to divide the species than this researcher's supposed sexual hierarchy.
Now where the hell are those pesky facts in our past that would back this up..... oh wait, there are none since humanity has come to rely on technology for thousands of years yet has only shown improvement away from domesticated animals, rather than what he thinks.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
At what point can a person be classified as a different species? Is this somewhat arbitrary, like when the US officially declared someone to be the 300,000,000th American (the real 300,000,000th American should be highly offended by the way)? If saying that short "dim-witted" people indicate a separate species, we already have plenty of this new species running around - regardless of 'social class'.
... and class structures have always been in place. If his hypothesis were true, we'd have a group of 7 ft tall frail men and 6 ft tall women (with firm breasts I might add, yes - he actually predicts this to be widespread by 3000AD) running around today, all descendants of the royalty of the past.
I think this guys logic is pretty flawed though. For thousands of years, there have been the 'haves' and 'have nots'
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
The problem with this is that throughout history, the ruling class has changed many times. The rich and powerful tend to get beheaded from time-to-time, making way for a new rich and powerful set. Putin has little lineage from Catherine the Great, Chirac has little relation to Marie Antoinette...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A planet where apes evolved from men?
Nova was the perfect woman. Beautiful, Compliant, Mute.
This news is final confirmation of the Geek/Jock devide. ;)
squat and goblinlike describes my mother-in-law to a 'T.'
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Following his logic, we will all also grow cup holders out of our sides and men will develop urinals out of the end of their genitals.
It should be "I am a dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creature, you insensitive clod!"
the second low ass breed of course.
hope i get at least -3flamer over this
You know, the idea of there developing two more distinctive populations is acceptable, however, saying that one will find themselves repulsive and the other will find themselves beautiful is not anything near scientifically strong-- well, it's Slashdot. Animals that tend to mate with certain animals will, over time, develop a liking for those characteristics. Kind of like how mating with those women with bigger thighs leads to more healthy, reproducing offspring. Saying that the poor will hate their looks and be trolls is not an accurate prediction.
You may look at a foreigner and think, "You want me to sleep with that?" and that does not mean that every possible subjective interpretation of that person is negative.
Common Sauron!!! You said I'd have my Army in WEEKS!?!? Damnit!
Just another step towards the elimination of the middle class...
Ramen
The summary mentions Alphas and Epsilons, but glosses over the transitional Betas, Gammas and Deltas.
You can't take the sky from me...
Incidentally, George Pal's version of "Time Machine" had a young, red-haired James Doohan in a supporting role, chatting about satellites and war just as the sirens went off and the protagonist decided to move the lever forward and skip WW3 altogether (wise man).
I want to romp amongst the Eloi, myself. That Weena was hot!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Musicians are proof of how untrue this theory is because they show time and again that the hottest of ladies will sleep with the ugliest of guys as long as they can play a guitar, normalizing the gene pool.
In the next 50-100 years, with advances in biology, nanotechnology, and the like, our descendents will see far bigger leaps than 'pretty people/ugly people'. We will re-engineer ourselves utterly, down to our very molecules.
I've gone from tall, slim, attractive, creative and intelligent to my current state just in the last 10 years.
Turning 40 is the Mordock-Tipping-Point.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'd say in 100 years tops we should have the genetic manipulation capabilites shown in Gattaca. This guy is very off.
Come on... high five! Anybody?
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
which people took seriously even though both of the authors were completely, totally ignorant of even the most basic evolutionary theory (and fairly shoddy researchers and statisticians to boot). LOOKS LIKE A joke and/or flamebait by somebody that fancies himself a modern Jonathan Swift. Or perhaps Dr. Curry is really Tim Curry AKA Dr. Frankenfurter.
the article is a troll. don't feed the trolls.
With the current growth of the population, the pollution of our environment, the amount of mass destruction weapons and the tricks mother nature (and the universe) plays on us, I don't think that we have to worry much about what is happening in 100,000 years. Let's first survive the next hundred years, and do that a thousand times :-)
bash$
If you were looking at such things, you'd have to ask who they were sampling. Seems to me the European groups (including many Americans) are in decline, and other groups are increasing.
On a genetic level, race is pretty meaningless, however, from a scientific perspective.
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While I could see a genetic split between the upper and lower income classes occurring over that timeframe, and the "upper" class species would obviously follow about those genetic specifications... I don't see the lower class changing as described. What genetic advantage is their in being small, dim-witted, and ugly? How would ugly or stupid make you more likely to have kids? I'd assume that the "lower" class would "choose" the same traits as the upper class, and while the really smart or beautiful ones might get "pulled" into the upper class before the split happened (and even shortly after) once there was a genetic basis for split species, the "lower" class would start evolving to match the upper class. Or so it seems to me.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
I can't see how this works out, don't we all like a bit of rough now and again?
This is like being a futurist ... "I predict that mobile phones will be used for many things in the future" (actually stated by danish futurist). And that is okay, because nobody takes futurists seriously (at least not when they call themselves futurists - it is something else when it's sci-fi authors) ... but this evolutionary theorist title makes it sound like science ... which it is clearly not..... I'll have a go: "In 100.000 years we'll al be dead says scientist-guy" ... wuhuu shut up ..
In Soviet Russia my signature is reading YOU
I can't see how the Swedes would turn into troglodytes. Oh. That's the British. Ah. I always thought there was something odd with the people in Milton Keynes.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If the blatant rip off the Time Machine wasn't enough to make me completely lose any respect for this article, the reference to the ironing out of the races and the development of a "uniform race of coffee-coloured people" just put the last nail in that coffin.
Skin tone is not the result of blending in the sense that the article leads us to believe. This site explains it quite nicely. Dark skinned people can produce children with much lighter skin than either of the parents, just as light skinned people can produce children with much darker skin than either of the parents, because the genes for one skin tone can be masked in one person, but then get passed on and expressed in their child. No matter how much inter-racial breeding happens, humans will not all eventually converge on one "coffee-colored" skintone. And if the article can't even bother getting that right, what does that really say for the rest of it?
welcome our tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative overlords!!!!
I think you meant our short, squat, well developed and bigger-brained overlords.
Height tends to shorten one's lifespan.
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They're also the most likely to be able to afford birth control, abortions, and be too busy to bother raising a child.
Apparently, he's being "Interesting", not Funny or Insightful.
From the article: 'The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
Talk about a setup. I predict 90% of the comments on this article will be modded funny (regardless of whether they actually are).
it was the "ugly, squat goblin-like creatures" who were not "dim-witted", but intelligent and ran the world (not an underclass, but they did live underground). While the "tall, slim, healthy, attractive" ones were not at all "intelligent, and creative," but were utterly empty headed vapid frail cattle... literally. they were food. they were all vegetarians and they were regularly slaughtered for the meat eating underrulers
but why anyone would seek sustenance by eating a bag of antlers like lindsay lohan is beyond me. utter science fiction, on that point alone
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Of course, we all know that the cockroaches will rule by then..
I, for one, welcome them..
The "evolutionist" didn't even point out that natural evolution for humans is over. It ended when Fire was state-of-the-art. But I'll go out on a limb and say that there will be distinct species of human in 200 years. Not through natural evolution but through genetic engineering. Even if we didn't alter the selection pressures on humans for 100,000 years there would still be enough genetic drift that we wouldn't recognize our decendants. But I guess we'd instinctively look both ways before crossing the street by then....
Trollin' trollin' trollin' keep those Morlocks trollin'...
Shh.
* Quits: DickChaney (control@whitehouse.net) (hub.solarsystem.net lamers.earth.net) * Quits: GeorgeBush (monkeys@whitehouse.net) (hub.solarsystem.net lamers.earth.net) * Quits: StephenBallmer (bald@developers.microsoft.net) (hub.solarsystem.net lamers.earth.net) * Quits: DarlMcBride (suesuesue@justicedepartment.net) (hub.solarsystem.net lamers.earth.net) * Quits: KimJong-il (power@fire.ze.missiles.net) (hub.solarsystem.net lamers.earth.net)
Obligatory comment about the short fat Boss... Another about short fat mother-in-law!!! :o)
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
It assumes that rich people will stop having sex with poor people. Anybody see any logic flaws here?
Is there any evidence at all to support these predictions? I didn't see any in the article. His credentials (London School of Economics) hardly convince me that he's an "expert" in the field of... what? Super-futuristic anthropological speculation, I guess.
No one alive today knows what the next 100,000 years hold for humanity. No one. It's just too complex a subject and too long a time period to make any reasonable predictions about. Heck, no one even knows what the next 10 or 100 years hold, let alone 100,000.
This is just a typical sensationalistic "news" story designed to attract eyeballs. It's not based in science or reality. You can make up your own long-term predictions with just as much authority.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
just a few generations down we should have ceo's (OWNERS) and then the general population.
.01% of the population 99.99% of the wealth, it will happen in two generations..
kill off the middle class, give
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Wasn't there a Dilbert series about this exact idea a few years back?
I for one won't become a troll so easily.
I plan to go cyborg, buying longer, stronger limbs, a cpu-augmented brain, and spinning eyes that hypnotise attractive women into letting my deprecated biology back into the gene pool.
Given that contraception is the real barrier to procreation these days, I guess women will evolve to be forgetful (namely in forgetting to their pill), and men will evolve to be impulsive or stupid (too impulsive to use a condom, or too stupid to use one properly).
Wait....
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Are short/fat smart people going to be eaten? There are an aweful lot of us and we have guns!
So, um... would the Morlocks be...
the Green Party?
How did the Linux users evolve? I assume they've already moved out to colonize other planets ...
They decided to swing both ways, since the whole Mac-Windows division of humanity meant little to them.
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Has anyone else ever wished that evolution would steer humanity into races that would correspond with the races Tolkien describes in his novels? If humans with elf-style ears, "refined" features, and grace bred only with each other, we could have elves in less than a millenium. I for one, would welcome our new Tolkien-based overlords!
... ugly, squat goblin-like creatures
Yet another dire consequence of too much time playing MMORPG's. As if the recent South Park wasn't warning enough.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Dang it - NOW they change it on me.
If you were quick-witted, you could have turned it into an "insensitive clod" cliche joke.
Also, athletic bodies are often damaged or disfigured with massive hormone imbalances and other severe (and occasionally fatal) problems. Gymnasts, for example, do not mature correctly and often suffer from muscle and bone disorders. Body builders, weight-lifters, etc, can disfigure their hearts - I would not expect life-expectency to be nearly so high. Rugby players - well, I can see them evolving into a whole new species that has less to do with class and more to do with causing sheer terror when barreling down the playing field. Soccer players can suffer damage to hearing or their pre-frontal lobes, from a mixture of heading and smashing into the ground at high speed. It's usually not lethal, but if you look at the various team managers for the England squad, it's clearly harmful to thought processes.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I will remain skeptical of this, and I encourage eveyone else to as well. Not only is this NOT published in a peer reviewd journal, none of his research is! In fact his publication history over at the Londong School of Economics are filled with mostly book reviews!
Plastic surgery?
I could see the argument that the rich and powerful (and those who are attractive have an easier time becoming rich and powerful) will propogate with those who are the same.. but with plastic surgery you are going to end up diluting the gene pool with gene of less attractive people who look attractive because of the work they have done...
Fake Breasts, nose jobs, etc...
Also power is attractive to some women who look for this quality in mates who might not be the most handsome but do have money/power.. Bill Gates is married... see?
One last thing, the definition of "beauty" truely is in the eye of the beholder.. there was a time when morbidly obese women was considered a big turn on.. and when you look at pictures of "hotties" in eras of old they just don't seem to look "attractive" anymore (at least imho) like look at pinup girls of the 40s and 50s, I believe very few of the could stand the test of time and still hit "People's" top 100 list or whatever...
What kind of idiocy is this "genetic theory" from Oliver Curry? Where is the evidence for humans abandoning at least hundreds of generations of "racial" mating exclusion in favor of thousands of generations of "class" inbreeding? Where's the selection criterion forcing that division of mating opportunity by work in much more extreme degree than the millenia-old class system that has failed to produce the results Curry predicts in the future?
Humans have been dependent on "technology" to reproduce for many thousands of generations. Tech is freeing us ever more from any selection criteria except infectious disease (just more unevenly). Current tech trends make genetics ever less important to using tech, which further decouples it from evolutionary mechanics.
Curry just wants smooth-skinned women with big eyes and "pert" breasts, who he thinks will prefer "graceful" nerds like him to the exclusion of the "robust" people who like tech less. So what? So he thinks HG Wells' The Time Machine is a prediction of our future more than a social satire on Wells' Victorian classist society. He should stick to hack SF rehashes, and leave the genetics to people who are realistic enough to actually get laid.
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make install -not war
psst.. read the writing at the bottom of that mirror. "objects in mirror are not as pretty as they appear"
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the scientific method and theories of Darwin as much as I can allow myself, however consider this:
Escimoes can mate with any Australian aborigin. In fact, there is only one "race" of humanity, despite appearances, length of time and distances.
Where do we come from? If speciation is so prevalent, why haven't it happened to us in tens of thousands of years?
There is a design to things. Some changes can happen suddenly, just over a few generations. And others never happen, not even when statistics dictates they "should". Superstition wants there to be a "will" to this design, but scientific investigation wants to find relationships to natural phenomena.
I'm not interested in quarreling about Intelligent Design, but their line of research sometimes makes sense. I think there may even be merit to investigate wether humans have ever been genetically manipulated in the past, interbred with other species etc. Why not? We have no idea where we come from, but we now have the technology to find out. Really. It's just a barrier of our mind preventing to explore _all_ avenues.
Where's the missing link? First step to new answers is to admit the current ones are not always right.
I sometimes have to chuckle when I see so-called scientists fight ID people, while having a hunch both camps are both right and wrong..
There are so many flaws with the thinking (or lack of thinking) here. If two different castes of humans were to develop, there would still be a strong selective pressure in the "lower" caste to be smarter, to be better looking, and to develop any other qualities which increase fitness. What the article proposes here is that somehow, the "lower" caste would gain fitness by becoming dumb and ugly. It makes no sense at all.
I won't even go into the nonsense that people will split off in the first place.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I'm sure I've read around the traps that
a) Blonde hair will be bread out of the gene pool in the next 100 to 200 years
b) Asians have the most dominant genes of the gene pool, so I would assume our traits over time to become more along those lines
c) That while females are slowly over time breeding better looks and traits, males are actually getting uglier, albeit stronger and taller and with more heavy set features...
I do agree that there will be a split of species... anyone from melbourne, australia will agree with me that it's already happening when I mention the town Collingwood (read aussie white trash town)
Swedes love their bastu, it is us Finns that love SAUNA. Sweden is practically the only western country that wants to use their own word for sauna, bastu.
I just HAD to clarify this, since I love sauna and I am Finnish. And I am not even sure swedes love their bastu.
Other than that, yaaar!
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
I think the species will probably split, but not in the way he thinks. (Assuming we don't wipe ourselves out of existance which is highly likley, but that is another thread)
Humans will evolve to live in the sea, and with the pressure and gravity difference of other worlds. We will adapt and evolve as our environments dictate, and if technology eventually permits we will actually rewrite our own genetic code to suit our whims.
My rights don't need management.
And IIRC, some of them (her) wasn't ugly at all!
Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Each new race might find themselves quite attractive.
(Slashdot Rule #17: Any post mentioning Star Trek the original series is to automatically be modded Insightful.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
sleazebag elitists. nuff said.
Once we master genetic engineering, our species is going to split in at least a thousand different ways, and I'm probably being too conservative by several orders of magnitude. Eventually they'll be more species of humans than species of beetles.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It was called "The Time Machine", or something like it.
Some would argue that this has already happened.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
The human body will be obsolete well under 100,000 years. We'll be on to bigger and better things, no longer chained to mortal flesh and organs that can too easily break down.
George Bush Jr's grandfather Prescott Bush was a eugenicist, consistent with his work funding Hitler's Nazis. Prescott's law partner Tighe was the Connecticut (Bush family home state) director of the eugenics "Birth Control League". Prescott's boss Averell Harriman was one of the main promoters of American eugenics.
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make install -not war
How would the article explain the success of Steve Ballmer??? :-o
I'm sure he's got a point to prove it somehow, but even if it's true, it's not going to happen. We're only decades away from engineering our own children and it's gonna come sooner or later, whether we want it or not. It's a big what-if today, but a lot of things can happen in a thousand years. Opinions change all the time and the temptation of creating the perfect child is not going anywhere.
Secondly, communications have helped us making the world just a little bit smaller. Obviously, black people can now impregnate a white woman, or a Swedish guy impregnating an Asian female. Races have become mixed now that our neighbors can be of the same race or something totally different. Point is, we're setting our differences aside and see that we're all of the same kind. No matter if you're tall, short, bald, hairy, black, white, asian, ugly or beautiful, there's always someone tall, bald and ugly black guy mating with a short, hairy, white and beautiful woman (no pun intended).
Flame me if you want, but if anyone can prove me wrong on this one, I'd welcome all kinds of opinions, because this is a very interesting subject indeed!
Full Tilt
In the "modern" system in the USA, economics imposes a different sort of evolution. As people become richer, they have fewer children. As people become poorer, they have more children. Those with the wits to become rich essentially become extinct, leaving a nation of teaming poor people.
In short, the socio-economics of free markets kills of the smart people by voluntary extinction.
That's a long time. We should have trancended into pure energy beings by then, or at least superintelligent shades of the colour blue.
I can't wait to see the report tailored for G4, where the small, troll-like species is the intellectually superior master race that breeds pretty people in vats purely for sexual pleasure, spare parts and delicious brightly-colored food cubes.
You know, when I see stuff like this, I wonder why we of the Rest of the World make fun of Americans for undermining public confidence in science (via intelligent design).
This is pure science fiction: no evolutionary biologist would ever, ever endorse this sort of hyper-speculative racist bullshit. And you won't see dear Dr. Curry publishing any academic papers on his little "theory" either.
The totality of the human species is interbreeding now at historically unprecedented rates; no evidence of any sort of impermeable castes exists, and in any case there is no obvious reason why these hypothetical castes would take the forms proposed, and definitely not in the last thousand years. Natural selection hasn't exactly been dormant for the last millenium, yet except for non-genetic nutritional differences we don't look so different from our ancestors of 1006 AD.
A special shout-out for the fact that the tall fellow is, except for his black hair and weak chin, more our less a nice gracile Nordic Superman, while the squat dwarfish one is obviously Asiatic. She might as well be wearing a friggin' straw hat, for God's sake.
What the hell is wrong with BBC here? Biology and anthropology overcame the ridiculous racist characterizations of the intelligence-testers and craniometricians decades ago. Why do they let this guy spout off like this, and why does it only happen in these fields? If another "scientist" attempted to publicize his disproof of relativity, would they gave him the time of day?
that the human race will continue to evolve naturally. My bet is that within a hundred years nearly every parent will have their offspring genetically engineered to meet their personal image of perfection. It will be difficult to distinguish between the 2 billion Angelinas and Brads. The few unenhanced kids will probably form a commune in some isolated place and work on open source.
This could only happen if hot chics suddenly stopped marrying incredibly ugly rich guys. Not to mention the good looking guys that bang anything thrown their way.
Seriously how many times have you seen some beautiful woman pushing a stroller through the mall arm in arm with an australopithecus. Does natural selection even work for humans anymore. The logic would be that breeding pairs looking for the best traits to pass on to their offspring. However, humans are kind of hit or miss with that concept and choose a mate based on far more criteria (and some times far fewer).
I just don't see it happening.
I really don't see this happening. Normally geography will cause evolution. With Rich and Poor people living fairly close in todays standards, as well it is possible for poor people to not be poor, it take more work then rich people true, but it possible, and it happens in free society. Also as generations go wht rich and poor families can often switch over time. The Poor family will learn to save and not take things for granted, so after generation of teaching these values the family becomes richer. As well the rich families who are so use to spending and taking over time the values of money leave from them and they become poor.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For all of the references to H.G.Wells, it seems to me that something more like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is much more likely. In Huxley's pre-Watson-and-Crick world, the creation of the sub-classes was done by environmental rather than genetic manipulation, something that seems fairly common today in the form of in utero damage to embryos by drugs and alcohol. We also have post partum physical and mental damage by many environmental factors such as lead paint, radiation, pesticides, chemical wastes, television, and Wayne Newton's "music." If you want to find today's Deltas and Epsilons, you need look no farther than the bad neighborhoods of the nearest medium to large city.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I, for one, miss our knuckle-dragging forbears. I bet they were fun at parties.
Seriously, the problem is that natural selection (the non-inteligent kind, anyway) doesn't choose the best of breed, it just mindlessly selects from whatever organisms survive. It's a stochastic process not a deterministic one.
See: Stick insect wings come and go.
Rocket Scientist + Brain Surgeon = Rocket Surgeon! (Let's get this O.R. in orbit!)
We'll, first of all, human life on earth will not last that long, we might return, but we'll have left. But, without death, the weak with live and mate with the weak. I've allways beleived it. The income gap will always grow. It has to by the very nature of progression. This isn't new.
I thought the new genetically advanced ruling class would have:
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Sorry for the typo. I've had a hard day.
Is it just me, or does this idea sound familiar? Oh yeah, I thought I read it somewhere: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
THINK! It's not illegal...yet.
Because you obviously did not RTFA
Inquiring minds want to know
Time goes by so fast.
From TFA:
/eyeroll
/ j.1467-6494.1995.tb00799.x). In fact, I think there are even some studies showing the opposite, i.e. that attractive people sometimes tend to be less intelligent, presumably because they can literally "get by on their looks" more often. Second, less intelligent people tend to be poor; poor people have more children than rich people; the more children you have, the greater the chances one of them will be a freak genius, or just incredibly. The sheer number of "rags to riches" stories out there, "I was the youngest child in a family of 12, and I became a millionaire!", etc., should tell you that genetics is only part of the story. And once you're rich, there's a pretty strong tendency for people to turn a blind eye to that fact that you're a hideous abomination. Just look at Donald Trump!
"He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo."
Because when you're airing reruns of Xena: Warrior Princess, Knight Rider and Starsky & Hutch, you're emminently qualified to commission someone to peer ten thousand years into the future.
Two painfully obvious facts reveal this article for the utter crock it is. First, studies have shown that there is no correlation between attractiveness and intelligence (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111
Go to a Latin club Saturday night to see this theory playing out in real time.
A whole club filled with middle aged gardeners and housekeepers. And they almost all looked equally ugly.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoy a fine latina as much as the next guy, but they aren't as plentiful in the lower classes as they in the upper classes. Some of the most beautiful women I have met are upper class hispanics.
This makes sense really. It's just natural selection. I want to marry an attractive woman. I am attractive and have money. I will not marry an ugly girl. Period. This disqualifies affore mentioned Ogres. No need to be sad for them though. They will find someone as attractive and successful as they are and produce kids that will likely not be too attractive. Then the cycle starts over again.
Money of course helps overcome natural selection, so if you feel like you are going to end up on the bad side of this equation I suggest you make alot of money.
I'm a dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creature.
God Be Gone
Those who understand binary and those who don't.
:P
:)
*ahem*
Anyway, aren't there already 2... males and females... might as well be completely different species sometimes
Or, to take the controversial line, perhaps the two will be natives and immigrants
Most The Time Machine comparisons are wrong on toast.
There's still variation. Even if all the people were what we consider now to be the 99th percentile of beauty, nobody would date the people with less-than-perfect skin.
Also, Star Trek the original series existed. Take that, Rule 17!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Anyone else hoping it's less like Morlocks and more like M*ur*locks? Grrrrrgggggllll!
Was that your GNAA post?
what i'm referring to is the fact that no matter how good you look as a man, you can't successfully ask a woman out if you are serving her french fries. however, a man, of any socioeconomic standing, will date the mcdonald's cashier if she looks good. and not all men like to date bags of antlers, which for some reason is assumed to be equated with beauty... in women's magazines. in men's magazines, there's certain strategic fatty deposits which make a man interested.
what this all means is is that the various socioeconomic classes can never be isolated genetically. it's impossible. you can label male philandering however you like in negative terms, but an indisputable plus side to male philandering is that by dependably and constantly sowing his seeds outside of his socioeconomic class, he preserves humanity as a single species, with all genes mobile across all socioeconomic classes, and all races as well
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
hungering for the flesh of Cate Blanchett.
How is this any different from today?
Wow. I actually had a rational rebuttal to all this planned out in my head, but the hell with it, that whole article was absolute garbage. This "expert" has apparently zero training in anything related to biology, anthropology or even his chosen field of economics. I don't know which is sadder; BBC giving him the space on their website or someone actually granting him a degree.
in 100,000 years, humans will have found a way to genetically engineer the bad traits out of the gene pool that, or we will all be cavern trolls with 3 eyes and 7 arms due to all the radiation from WW3
Oliver Curry seems to be reaching beyond his grasp.
His doctorate is in economics. I suppose that somehow gives him the ability to forsee physical characteristics of future humans.
His research interests are: "Evolutionary explanations of behaviour; the evolved psychology of moral and political thought and behaviour."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the evolution of behavior and moral and political thought don't seem to have anything to do with how much hair women will have on their skin or the size of men's penises in the future.
Unless Mr. Curry has credentials (that aren't so easy to find) that may make him an authority in this field, he should be ashamed of himself for making such predictions under the title "Doctor".
Simply amazing concept. I wonder where on Earth this Oliver Curry could have found the idea for such a breakthrough theory.
I certainly hope he got a lot of research grants for this one.
Sad movie.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
"No one alive today knows what the next 100,000 years hold for humanity."
How many hurricanes and just how many "strong" hurricanes were forecast for this year just last spring? Was it, like, 15 and 7?
And how many did we have? Like zero? And some economist in the former british empire wants to tell us about genetics in 100,000 years?
How many tall, slim, healthy, and attractive rocket scientists do you know? I'd say zero. These types are usually the jocks and prom queens. They tend to mate with one another.
How many intelligent, creative, ugly, squat goblin-like people do you know? Probably a lot. These are the geeks and nerds. They often end up alone.
More than likely, there are going to be a lot of attractive, dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers people and a handful of brilliant trolls.
But here's something to consider: census data show that the vast majority of highly intelligent and educated couples have two or fewer children whereas couples with little or no education have three or more. IMHO, that's equivalent to the thinning of the gene pool. So, if you're a geek, date a geek and have lots of kids because that's the only way we're going to keep the world from going further down the drain.
Looks, larger penis's and perky breasts may be selected by some people, but the mind and the brain may be selected by others. We already live in a society with women and men like what the scientists describes so this is nothing mind blowing in terms of evolutionary science
Hmmm. Has history shown us anything about this topic?
When the European Monarchy (upper-class) did only breed amongst themselves what did it bring them? Hemophilia. Oops.
I can report that that is a fact. I have been there and seen it, as my Friend H.G. Wells reported in his report on my adventures - http://www.bartleby.com/1000/
Whatever genetics there are (if it is indeed genetic) to pre-dispose people towards successfull careers is being selected against (on average). If there are genes for collecting the dole and having lots of kids (or marrying multiple times and having 2 kids with each marriage) then these genes going to succeed.
I really hope this article is the result of paraphrasing by the journalist and not an accurate representation of Dr Curry's beliefs
Found on some "what's new" notes for a product I was rolling out
"Optimised query by using where instead of joins"
So which subspecies will descendants of Ted Kennedy fall into?
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Are these exclusive qualities of these two subsets of humanity?
I fail to see how the "unhealthy", "underclass" subset of humanity will pass the fitness threshold for natural selection.
---k--
</stupid>
...humans will evolve into super salamanders with 2 hearts.
As DNA testing has enjoyed wider use, we're starting to see proof that there's even less genetic isolation than hypothesized by the "McDonalds Effect". The Economist reported the results of recent studies (on college-age adults, naturally) showing that many women were - it seems - acting on a drive to capture an alpha male's DNA, and then make a stable bread-winner male raise his spawn.
Charming, until Mr. Stable gets the labs results and kicks Ms. Primal Nature and her kids to the street.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Obviously the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon were at one time related but the Neanderthal died out and Cro-Magnon become homosapiens (oog oog uugh!). At one point there must have been a split. The question is, was the split driven due to geography or social reasons (e.g. one group left/kicked out the other for being bastards).
Any anthropologist will tell you that the direction of evolution has always been and will continue to be, larger brained and more intelligent. There is no reason or need for us to get "dimwitted" as this guy suggests. It's not beneficial to us in any way.
This is just another stab at the old Platonic philosophy of the elites ruling over the commons. The only difference here is the guy is basing his claims on a genetic level rather than a philosophic level. He's doing it poorly at that.
This really isn't news worthy.
> don't worry, the red states are dying anyways.
.com millionaires, second generation rich, entertainers and sports figures, etc.
Actually the red states gain Congressional seats after every census. San Fran closes a few more schools every term.
But it isn't enough to turn the balance on the question of saving our civilization. Even in the Red states the unfit are out breeding the fit, the only difference is we have a net population gain while some of the Blue ones actually have negative growth in actual numbers of boots on the ground. Especially scary when one considers a majority of the immigration is happening in Blue states which partially masks the depth of the problem with Democrats breeding.
First off though, we have to seperate the two classes of Democrats out. Clients of the welfare state have no problems breeding. Good solid votes, at least for now, but little potential for leaders out of that group. The rest of this post will concern itself with that second group, the cadre where leaders can be recruited. Those educated beyond their intelligence at elite universities, arts snobs,
Face it, if a Democrat manages to grow up hetro they have no problems with attracting MOTOS and 'hooking up', the problem is they are much more likely to opt for birth control (including wiping out millions of potential new Democrats annually through abortion) and postponing starting a family. And even when you get Democrats to mate (with a member of the opposite sex), they have trouble breeding, producing fewer less fit young than the virile young stock out in Red America.
While the fairly small difference between Red and Blue America won't directly solve the bigger problem, hopefully it will serve to illuminate it, perhaps enough to convince people to act. But I'm not betting on it happening in time. By the time the Democratic Party loses enough numbers to fall out of power I'm afraid things will be too far advanced to fix. Tha barbarians will sack Europe within 20-30 years, then it will be just US against the horde. Unless we could somehow ally ourselves with China for the final war..... but then their program of widescale infanticide has pretty much screwed them longterm as well and they will be up shit creek just about the time we would really need em.
Democrat delenda est
But which will be which?
Even low-IQ low-quality women will be able to get DNA from high-IQ genetically superior males. 18 year old girls can be quite attractive and able to get sperm, even if they are dumb, or they won't look so good when they're 30. This factor will prevent the human race from bifurcating. There are plenty of smart guys who would donate sperm (one way or another) as long as they aren't burdened by child support costs. They may be very selective in who they marry, and which children they support, but they may be not so selective in where their genes go. In the past, it took two people to raise a child to adulthood, so an inferior woman was better off accepting genes and support from a man who was her equal, than trying to get superior genes and go it alone. This is no longer true. It's not that hard to be a single mom these days, even in the developing world, so a woman has a choice: get the best genes, but no dad who sticks around, or get a dad who will stick around, but has inferior genes. Right now, the rational thing to do is to go for the best genes. And yes, even low-IQ people are quite coldly rational in making decisions at this level.
Speciation happens when there is some kind of barrier or isolation of a group. If some group of humans went off to Mars and started a colony there and there was little commerce back and forth, that MIGHT be able to cause speciation. But even then I doubt it. There would probably be sperm samples sent. Exotic outsider / stranger men are attractive because isolated groups do need some fresh genetic input.
I predict that in 100,000 years eggs will be green. Ham will too. Monkeys will make a home in what's left of my assal bones and regularly fly out in the morning times for feeding.
Seriously what's the use of making 100,000 year predictions? Nostradamus didn't even do that.
...do Slashdotters fall?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Gee, I thought all that penis enlargment and breast improvement spam was aimed at people with inferiorty complexes, but now I learn it's really foreshadowing the next evolutionary phase of mankind. Hmm, and lighter skin is the direction of evolution? Not the first time the label of "evolutionary science" has been used for racist drivel. Mr. Curry's article does demonstrate that getting a PHD certainly is not guarantee of intellignece. Mr. Curry seems to have read too many Playboys and watched to many grade-b Hollywood films. For a much more interesting vision of the future, try the robot stories by Stanislaw Lem. I've heard leading robotics scholars say we might get to the singularity (when robots are more intelligent than people) as soon as 20 or 30 years from now (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singula rity), at which point the size of one's penis or the perkiness of one's breasts or the lightness of one's skin are surely going to be the least of our worries. That is, in the increasingly unlikely event that we're still around in a hundred years, having evolved to survive global warming and whatever other environmental disasters we might cook up by then!
"slim, attractive, intelligent and creative sauna loving meatball munching copyright infringing swashbuckling pirate blonde overlords"
i already have wet myself in boundless extacy.
Read radical news here
The article, and my reply, are about human evolution. Microbes etc have nothing to do with this.
Aren't we just as likely to split into two species, one which has wings and one which has hooves and horns?
Most people believe they're above average drivers, too.
Wouldn't the evolution vary from country to country; isolated gene pools would present different results?
..I have. More BBW's than you can swing a roast turkey leg at....and that's after your 16th mug 0 meade....
It doesn't seem convincing that he intentionally funded the Nazis based on the article you linked to. The author of the article certainly doesn't seemed convinced.
Mod Parent up!
Yes, despite all the previous posts relating this to Time Machine, no one seemed to have observed that the article summary is actually the opposite of what happens in T.M.
Oh well, the article itself seems to contradict itself in this sense. It says the "better" class will grow more intelligent, but also warns of becoming more stupid due to dependence on technology. I'll bet on the latter.
As a tall, intelligent, orc like creature I have to wonder what the author of the article looks like: tall and waiflike or small and troll like? Big eyes and pert tits are fine and dandy until the eyes start sagging and the tits follow you around the room...
I thought the rules were pale people in the north areas or places people wear a lot of clothes, dark people in the south or places people don't wear much clothes. Tall people in carnivor communities. Short people in vegetarian communities. Hairless people in coastal areas. Hairy people in inland areas. Big noses in mountain regions. Small noses in low-altitude areas. Intelligence is an abberration.
Of course, all of the rules do not apply to France. Where the tall, blonde, nordic people were killed off during the Napoleanic wars because he liked to put them in the front....
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
The film is apparently difficult to get a hold of because Fox hasn't promoted the movie at all for unknown reasons.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative... Democrats
the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures. Republicans
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This whole thing is assuming that we have the same type of political structure and lifestyle that we do now for the next 100,000 years. Yeah right.
...into a myriad fragments as we take control of our own DNA and do with it what we will. This will happen over the next couple of centuries. In 100,000 years humans won't be recognisable, apart from maybe a handful of people synthesised from the archived DNA of 'original' humans and maybe also some weird luddites.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
fade into extinction since none of them breed.
i'm coming dodo!
It assumes that rich people are more intellegent.
Quack, quack.
And here's why: humans didn't pop into existence at the beginning of the twentieth century. We've been around more-or-less in our modern form for at least a hundred thousand years. In the past there were multiple species (or sub-species) of hominids existing at the same time. They developed independently because they were isolated (by desert, glaciers, water, etc.) But when the climate allowed for population movements, these other (sub)species either died out or interbred with modern humans to give one species: Homo sapiens sapiens. Even populations that were isolated for thousands of years (American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, etc.) managed to remain the same species. So how are we to believe that modern humans, who can travel to the opposite end of the globe in a day, can actually become segregated enough to evolve into multiple species? This is completely contrary to human history and our current understanding of evolution. It's certainly a provocative idea that grabs a lot of media attention, but I don't see much scientific basis for it.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Dammit, can we just lay to rest the whole "vi vs. emacs" thing already? :-D
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
re:"Human Species May Split In Two"
I keep recalling MST3K's Crow's riff:
"Into WHAT?!"
Because guns are going to go ... where?
Even a seven-foot-tall professional athlete starts looking a little sorry when you poke a bunch of holes in his lungs or brain with supersonic lead pieces.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
FTA:
"Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics (...) carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo."
Need I say more, this is popular science run amok. These subjects are very complicated, and anyone saying he knows the future should not be trusted. I really cant believe this piece of bullhonkey got on here. Just read this:
"Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology. Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals. (...) Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams."
Bas
This is going to be the best Michael Moore movie yet.
What about all the fat, yet intelligent and creative people, or the gorgeous stupid people? What about good-looking people who are attracted to power and mate with the fat and ugly, yet rich and powerful? Is everyone all of a sudden going to start mating with people who only look somewhat like themselves? It's an amazingly short-sighted theory.
"I forgot my mantra."
Dr Curry previously performed under the name "Frankenfurter" back in the 70s.
...after a little gene specific biological warfare. Which I think is probable to happen now that gene splicing and whatnot is becoming rather advanced science. All advanced tech has a military/political power and control application aspect to it, and the more exotic and promising, the more cash and interest gets thrown at it.
Eugenics has never gone away, it went more or less underground after ww2, but you have to remember, it had a *lot* of global big money and big people involved with it, and they just get more cunning as time goes on to keep working at it.
Here's a for instance where you can see some eugenics at work most likely: there's been some pretty suspicious "help" going on with vaccinations in africa, vaccines for one thing but that "accidently" had some birth control chemicals mixed in. Google tetanus, birth control, africa for some hits.
There is no way that was an "accident", and there are more recent historical times "accidental incidents" like that. And I just don't believe in those sorts of coincidences.
So say the eugenecists first bump off--all but half a billion or so humans with specific gene targeted biologicals. Once that is out of the way and the population of their choice is left, they get to on purposeful selective breeding using gene combination and manipulation. Like beyond the boys in brazil, real stuff they can do now. You could have widely different artificially created races with custom tailored genes-even totally new artificial chimeric species-within 20 years, with just the tech they admit-to now in public. And you know there has to be some serious black budget research going on, for things like supersoldiers, etc.. What would it be worth to some group/regime to have guys who could all bench 500 lbs, run 50miles, or all do 10 second hundred meters, and go for a week with no sleep or food if necessary? Stuff like that. I'd bet a year's pay that that sort of research is going on right now, and probably in several places.
My Norwegian is rather rusty and limited, but I knew a guy whose name was Odd Even.
Also, a girl invited me to her family's 'Lust House'.
And apparently they store 'Lager' in janitor's closets.
And 'Sengetøy' took awhile to figure out: WTF are 'bed toys' and why does each family has a dedicated closet for those.
Was a fun holiday, no kidding.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Wilt Chamberlain,
howmany kids must he have? Oh, you wanted 'good atheletes'.. ok nevermind.
The brilliant film Gattaca has been there, done that, and shows the early stages of the two "races" separating genetically. But part of the central story also shows how impossible it would be to keep the two human populations separate and avoid constant interbreeding. And who wouldn't interbreed with Uma Thurman anyways?
Dr. Curry's theory is also doomed by the tenacity of egalitarian and socialist tendancies in human societies. As more & more of the world's populations become more affluent and able to afford more health care, for example, they will insist on universal genetic health coverage too. Controlling genetic diseases in the zygote before they occur will be the first step towards large-scale mental & physical abilities.
It sounds to me like he's expecting the current fashion (which is changing as we speak) which details skinny women and men as the ideal of beauty to persist over the next 10k years. Go back to the 60s and you find Marylin Monroe - hips, boobs, not skinny. Then further back, in the 20's, the boyish look is in. It's cyclical. To expect it to be definitive in the development of the species is just... silly.
Thinking outside my Head
I really don't see how this going to work with all our races. Could some intelligent person please explain it to me or am I to assume that it will happen to all races? So tall Japanese and short ones? Or are the Japanese just part of the short crowd? I may be wrong here but this looks more like some kind of deeply prejudicial "prediction" based on arrogance than anything else. Nothing worse than a stuck up "scientist". Does he Hiel Hitler too?
Mod me down, if you must, but someone has to speak the truth against these monsterous ideas.
Worst Joke ever.
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
"Human Species May Split In Two"
Yeah, those who think the author of the article is a nutjob, and those who don't; However, the majority will be with the former.
...but that does mean that you Americans will be extinct!
Apparently I was the only one (so far) who was sure from reading the summary that this was a Roland Piquepaille submission! What gives?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Odd Even, good name but i can see the problem for english people :-). I have a grandpa whose name was German, and i have a mate called Bent. As for the house, it was a lysthus, lYst house, different vowel mate :-) Lyst in norwegian is not as sexually loaded as it is in english but can be used as a sexual word as well, but it is then a lot more clinical. Also, they don't store lager in a janitor's closet, lager just means 'storage place'. That is in fact where the word lager as in beer comes from, something that has been stored. Sengetøy, well, tøy is norwegian for cloth, so the actual word is bed cloth in this case. Other than that, your knowledge of norwegian is above par for a /.er.
Rest in peace Malin "looxn" Kristiansen. We miss you...
Yes, humans may become distinct species - but I doubt very much whether it will occur as predicted. Far more likely in fact, is that at some point in the future (say 50 years) a large portion of humanity will adopt a "neo-luddite" way of life: accepting a given level of technology and staying at that level in perpetuity - while the remainder of the human race continues to adopt, use (and abuse!) technology to alter themselves and their lives as they see fit.
This will blur the line between Human and animal/machine fairly rapidly, so that what constitutes "being human" will, by necessity, become fairly ambiguous. Will humans who are 90% machine be any less human than AIs who are 10% biological? Will humans who choose to inhabit android human (or android animal) bodies be any less human for it?
The use/abuse of technology by humans will be forced upon us as the Singularity approaches, and once it arrives, it will allow humans to completely abandon biology all together. After all, biology was simply a tool of Evolution (capital "E" as opposed to human evolution - small "e") in its quest for complexity. Now that biology has produced technology, the torch of evolution will be passed to the next paradigm: technology and hardware.
This will allow the pace of evolutionary development to continue at a pace unimaginable by unenhanced human minds. I suggest that these creatures will be "human" in every sense of the word, regardless of whether they are humans moving "upwards" or AIs moving "sideways".
From that point on, it can only be a matter of centuries before technology gives way to pure energy, and godhood.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Okay, first of all, he's an evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics. I simply can't believe the BBC is printing such garbage. I mean, I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but this is pure fantasy.
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Well, first of all, in 1000 years, humans won't evolve to be a foot taller. Even if we were to evolve to those average heights, it'd take a lot longer than 1000 years. I would think anyone knowledgeable about evolution and genetic would know that. Second of all, 120 years? Shit, in the next 1000 years, if the past 100 have been any indication, we'll either have wiped ourselves out, or we'll have virtually unlimited lifespans because of medical advances. Natural lifespan will be completely irrelevant.
Finally, his entire theory hinges on an upper and lower class being maintained and still existing 1000 years from now. I'm not saying 1000 years from now there won't be classes, but look who was in power 1000 years ago. You think their descendents are still in power?
This guy's living in a fantasy world and for the BBC to publish this as anything but fiction is simply wreckless.
Who's to say we'll still be around in 100000 years? I mean, I think we will, but I don't know if I'd want to put money on it.
In TFA, they mention technology and genitic manipulation as two of the precursors for a divergence, kind of like a hangover. Question is, if we have genetic manipulation and the technology to cheaply implement it, wouldn't that prevent short ugly little dumb brutes running around like that?
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
i'm tall, thin, healthy and ugly. take that mister scientist!
If everyone *reproduces*, then evolution stops. Or if there is nothing to determine whether one is more likely to reproduce, then evolution stops.
yours,
kbs
How many times have we seen rich bored housewives make rendevouz with the gardener, or repairman?
Its just in our nature. We are like animals - and will go after darned near anything that moves. Especially if alcohol is involved.
Nah, I don't think its in our willpower to selectively breed ourselves. We will only be able to do that in the sterile emotionless setting of a DNA lab.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
It's getting a bit tiresome listening to these kinds of things. X will happen some mindbogglingly long time from now and "oh my god the horror". Every single one of the models of prediction seem to completely ignore the possibility of what humans will learn and do in such a massive time frame.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that even a thousand years from now (let alone 100,000) we will probably be to the point where parents wouldn't dare let their precious children be born stupid and ugly. Even tossing aside the touchy issue of genetics a lot of normal medical science will probably fix a lot of genetic "problems" that people have by anticipating the problems cause and altering it somehow. Plastic surgeons will probably advance their craft so far that the form of a human will have almost nothing to do with his genetic code anymore.
This article is just begging for racial segregation. I wonder what kind of "tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative" people Mr. Curry had in mind... Conversely, I wonder what kind of "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures" he had in mind...
Evolution-supported racial discrimination is nothing new. Its right in line with Charles Darwin's book given its full title: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"
...What do you think Darwin meant by that?
Unless the intelligent line takes pity on the dumb line... I'd bet the dumb ones will eventually kill themselves off... unless the intelligent ones pull off a "Time Machine" stunt.
Then the human species will not split even if the frequency of breeding between the haves and the have nots decreases significantly. If his hypothesis were correct, then Africans and Asians and Caucasians would already be classified as different species, but low and behold, Thomas Jefferson had no problem fathering children with his house slave of African descent, and thousands, perhaps millions of caucasian men from North America and Europe have no problem in fathering illegitimate children with the mothers of prostitutes from south east asian countries like Thailand. And then there are the modern Latin American nations which are a mix in varying degrees of African, Native American, and Caucasian descent.
Divergence of the species will never happen unless:
(A) There is a major nuclear war, worldwide natural disaster, or other calamity that depopulates the planet so much that human civilization is split up into distinct areas of the world where people have no ability to migrate at all. This of course is unlikely since our big brains allow us to creatively come up with the idea of boats for the purpose of island hopping, as well as the fact that human beings can survive in just about any climate on earth, which all means that humanity has very little chance of being geographically isolated from each other for a long enough period of time for new species of humans to occur.
(B) Human beings start colonizing other planets where travel between those planets becomes more and more disconnected. Think Vulcans and Romulans in this context. If there is even a small amount of interbreeding between planetary people's, then a new species of humans will simply not occur.
(C) A new species of humans is created artificially. Highly unlikely for a variety of reasons, because even though we have the technology to tinker with genes, being able to program entire genes, chromosomes, and lifeforms is something that medical science is so far away from that I doubt it will happen anytime in the next 1000 years. The sheer amount of information encoded in human DNA is just so vast that I doubt any one human being could ever master it in a way to reliably play god. Perhaps some tinkering might go on in the meantime, but these new "upgraded" genes, will undoubtedly be passed onto the general population unless they mutate the DNA so much that the human being containing them will become infertile. Kinda like when you combine a lion and a tiger to create a liger, or combining a horse and a donkey to create a mule, except in this case you are not cross breeding different species to create totally new DNA, but rather you are manipulating the genes in a fundamental way which may cause infertility and therefore an evolutionary dead end for this newly created human species.
Also, it is important to point out that human social behaviour has safeguards against the Morlock and Eloi scenario that the author alludes to. In just about every culture on the planet, women marry up and men marry down. The more intelligent and more educated a woman happens to be, the less desirable she becomes to MOST MEN (certainly not true of myself). The opposite is true for men, where the more intelligent and more educated a man happens to be, the more attractive he is to MOST WOMEN. This means that if a man and woman have two children named Adam and Eve, then the odds are that Adam will end up marrying a woman less intelligent than himself and Eve will end up marrying a man more intelligent than herself if they marry at all. If Adam is a lout, then he probably won't make much money and probably won't be attractive to most women (of course there are exceptions to this rule in some subcultures of America were drug dealing thugs are the ideal mates to the women in those communities). If Eve is really smart and makes more money than all of the guys in her peer group, these men will likely shy away from bothering with her because most men do not feel comfortable with a woman being the dominant person in a relationship.
If smart men were pick
3 generations at most. We will end up killing ourselves (war or environmental) or virus will wipe us out.
The BBC article makes for good reading the same way a National Enquirer piece about bat boys does, but other than that: forget it. Evolutionary biology is what I taught at universities for decades, and my first thought on reading that was: this is going to require the invention of a new gene for male choosiness. Then there's going to have to be plenty of selective pressure to strengthen it. In other words, men who are choosy about who they'll have sex with have more reproductive success than the other kind. Biologists define reproductive success as having offspring that themselves reach reproductive age.
Obviously, once people were separated into trolls and Greek gods, the two species wouldn't have a thing to say to each other. But to reach that point, very small differences have to be enough to stop people from having sex. Even women don't seem to be choosy enough to prevent plenty of genetic mixing everywhere on the planet.
I don't know about you, but I think we'll be having faster than light travel long before people swear off sex with everyone who doesn't make the grade. What do you think?
I saw this article a few days ago and I've been waiting to see if it's submitted to /.
I don't understand why people believe this utter tripe...
"chins will be reduced due to less use"
Oh come on, mendel debunked this stupid thinking over 100 years ago... there will only be change if there is evolutionary pressure for it... and the concept of what is regarded as healthy and beautiful has changed in merely the last 100 years... making predictions about 1,000-10,000 years time is just nonsense.
Why the fuck does Social Darwinism still get air-time? This is usually trotted out by some economist about once every couple of years, and the idea is that because some people are rich, they are "better-adapted" and more intelligent than the poor.
This is utter and complete bullshit. Rich people are rich often because the money is hereditary, or because they are ruthless enough to exploit others. This has little-to-nothing to do with actual evolution, as wealth rarely lasts beyond a few generations, but the genetics do.
This also assumes that the poor are unintelligent, rather than just uneducated. The education system in the United States is set up such that poor people receive a lesser education than those in rich neighborhoods. The poor stay poor (in general) because the system is stacked against them, and they have a lot more to overcome, not because they are genetically-deficient in some way.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Except the US is not a free market, but rather is corporatism masquerading as a free market. Get your facts straight.
the human family.
You might think that a horse has a really big penis. But look at a horses penis sometime. Really *look* at it.
Now look at the horse.
Now look at your own penis. *Just* look.
Compare the proportions of the horse to its penis.
Now compare the proportions of your (Joe Average Human) penis.
Sure the horse has a large penis.
But if you -- a human being -- were the size of a horse, your penis would be the size of a *human*being*!
Humans have about the largest penis in proportion to body size in the mammal world. Its only reasonable to suppose that the trends which led to this will only continue, with or without our daily diet of spam.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I think its along the lines of a split into K and r selected sub-species.
r-selected species reproduce rapidly with little care for offspring.
K-selected species reproduce slowly and invest heavily in their offspring.
It sounds reasonable to extrapolate this from the behavior of educated vs uneducated humans.
The educated breed less but spend more on childcare.
The uneducated breed more and don't spend so much on childcare.
We almost get this trend 'for free'.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
According to an article at the BBC, an evolutionary theorist in London suggests that humanity may split into two sub-species within the next 100,000 years.
The way we're going, it's unlikely we'll even survive the next 100,000 years.
Seriously, though: this theme has been explored in science fiction stories multiple times. These kinds of futurists apparently are simply scifi writers that can't write.
To have two distinguishable species, the breeding needs to be controlled. And as I see it, its an NP-Hard problem :)
Also, there is the issue with midget porno. Children born of such encounters will be somewhere in-between the Good and the Ugly. As long as sex is uncontrolled, there will always be a gradual distinction between the species of humans as there is today (you have American Chinks and you have Asian (pure) Chinks. Just like you have the blacks and the browns). Even 10000 years is too short a period for absolutely distinct species to evolve.
People have a hard enough time trying to predict what's going to happen in tomorrow's stock market, let alone the genetic fluctuations of an entire species 10 to 100 thousand years from now.
This article is mindless, hypothetical sci-fi fiction for a slow news day.
It is the beautiful people that are the smart ones, and it is that very same smartness that makes them rich.
"When I wake up in the morning I piss cryptographic excellence." - Bruce Schneier
Sure, it will.
Upper class + Upper class = Mostly upper class (common)
Underclass + Underclass = Mostly underclass (common)
Upper class + Underclass = upper class / underclass (rare)
Underclass + Upper class = underclass / upper class (rare)
I'm i the only one who thinks that, 100 000 years from now humans will be either:
a) Suficiently advanced as to choose their own physical apparence and bodly composition or...
b) Extinct.
those are my theories.
But... the future refused to change.
Are you kidding me?
India has seen the end of a caste system and has moved into a knowledge-based economy. Their poor are becoming literate, and taking "our" IT jobs. The prospects for the average Indian are getting better as the days go on.
Ditto for China. The front page article of the Oct. 17 Investor's Business Daily is "Chinese Wage Growth Surging, But Hasn't Fueled Higher Prices." Although the focus of the article is on urban China (where unskilled/semiskilled workers have been seeing wage increases between 5 and 20 percent each year since 2000), it also mentions how efforts to "exploit" rural farmers for labor have also driven up their wages.
Although the "Cultural Revolution" was definitely a setback for the Chinese economy, things have been going wonderfully for them since. Consider that in the 80s, Proctor and Gamble researched expanding into the Chinese shampoo market - only to realize that there wasn't any. The average peasant could only afford a bottle the size you find complimentary with your hotel room; and even then, only once a year, for a special occaision. McDonalds and other fast food places ha da little more success, but mostly with the wealthy and tourists - as in Russia, peasants would make pilgrimages of sorts to a fast-food restaurant that they could only afford to eat at once a year.
Now, the standard of living in China is rising rapidly - people can not only feed themselves, but they have cars and consumer electronics! They have computers and internet - remember that big firewall China has? Their standard of living is rapidly approaching western standards - a far cry from when Mao Zedung encouraged peasants to smelt steel in their backyards.
DATABASE WOW WOW
1. Brag about hot wife on Slashdot
2. Link to pic of hot wife on Slashdot
3. Receive call from divorce lawyer over millions of nerds whacking off to hot wife's pic
I say no.
This type of split would have already happened in the human race. Current trends aren't all that special, considering a few hundred years ago when Monarch still ruled and only mated with other royalty. The result was inbreeding. All of the European affluent ended up related and the human race ended up with a less than ideal ruling class, which resulted in them being pushed up against the wall and shot.
I predict a cycle. When the species seems like it'll be branching, the lesser species will take over the "greater" through sheer numbers, since the affluent get a lot more choosey and have less kids overall.
The story mentioned human jaws becoming smaller due to no need for chewing, but evolution does not exactly work that way. If someone does not chew, that does not change that persons DNA and pass on genes for a smaller jaw. They pass on genes for whatever sized jaw they happen to have encoded in their genes since birth. Now how would easier to chew foods favor the reproduction in humans with any specifically sized jaws? Large and small jaws would both chew mush just fine and I don't think that effects our ability to servive or sexual selection all that much. Well, maybe women who look like Jay Leno might find it hard to find a date. But seriously, can someone clear this up for me?
is it me or does it sound like he's describing morlocs? h.g. wells had the same idea 110 years ago.
People probably aren't going to like being weak, unhealthy, and underpowered in the future. Biotech will definitely keep the genepool free of defects in the rich, and probably will in the poor at some point (via retroviral engineering in their food?). Of course, what's more likely to happen, is that people will want to modify themselves in ways inconsistent with our current version of humanity (like extra limbs ,more cones in your eyes, a more efficient brain, or perhaps a redundant heart).
This is exactly the argument that geeks will eventually evolve into cyclopcies with many hands. Technology changes, and those changes eventually will remove the problems either intentionally or unintentionally.
the wording of this article clearly indicates that the author believes himself to be on the track of the tall, skinny, intelligent class. After species split in two, does one species still believe the other to be more attractive, or are they more attracted to their own? The "ugly, squat" creatures will actually find their own characteristics more beautiful. You don't see sparrows and woodchucks trying to chase down Swedes do you? Beauty is SUBJECTIVE. This is all bullshit anyway, as genetic engineering will interfere and specialize the human classes far sooner than any naturally occuring dualistic split.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Acheivement in the Biological Sciences Goes to....TFA!
Odd Even, good name but i can see the problem for english people
I'll give you even odds they woldn't even notice.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
My 2 year old son has been bitten by other humans 10 times in the last 12 weeks. This would indicate he is Eloi, yet, I am far to unattractive to be anything other than a Morlok. Can Morloks produce Eloi offspring? Or do the Morloks get eaten too, and Wells forgot to mention that?
The Chinese will survive us all without any doubt.
I like Chinese, yes I like Chinese.
gEvil (beta) writes "According to an article at the BBC, an evolutionary theorist in London suggests that humanity may split into two sub-species within the next 100,000 years. From the article: 'The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.'" No missing link here, we already have the troll-like humans to prove it. Do they say if the middle class is going to rise or fall victom to the ugly "underclass"?
Long Live Linux!
I have long thought that we might look at eveolution through not just human genetics, but also human behavior. A humane being would be one who did not think of themselves first, but thought of the needs of others. A humane being would be one who considered the impact of their existence on the rest of the world. A humane being would be self-limiting.
In about 20 years desktop computers will have more power than the human brain. I suspect we will finally figure out AI within 50 years, and education will no longer be an economic necessity. If you don't figure it out on our own, we will figure it out by scanning human brains. Thus it is nearly innevitable.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah, I saw that film. If I remember correctly, the recessive species was butt-ugly, had glowing eyes white hair, looked like Star Trek TOS aliens, and lived in underground caves. The other human species was beautiful and stupid. And there was this thing that looked like a cross between a sled and a set piece from "The Price is Right" that was supposed to travel through time. Very silly. You Slashdot wienies ought to stop watching so much television, particularly reruns.
HMMmmmmmm.... That depends on whether I interpret your reference
to "short people", as meaning "people lacking in height/stature"
or "people lacking intelligence". The first one of those makes it a
TWO variable equation, with associated preferences, and the second one created a ONE variable equasion, with preferences to associate with people of similar status (resulting in divergance/polarazation and fewer "average" people in the middle over time). Well, As-Far-As-I-Know:
If the smart people stop reproducing with the short people,
Then you will just wind up with progressively fewer tall short people.
(providing that those are the ONLY parameters you define)
If on the other hand, the "smart" people DO reproduce, but only with
the "tall" people, then...
-- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero
mac and pc users are belonging to the same group the other group of people are the people that build there own OS. They even give it away for free, but still become rich out of it! That is what I call smart, tall and beautiful!
Excuse me, but I have a patent pending on the idea of a superior human sub-species. You and Huxley may both remit the appropriate licensing fees as enumerated in my forthcoming invoice.
Pi Ran Out
It seems that we have reached an evolutionary plateau that may put the human race in jeapordy.
... Great.
Our caveman ancestors (along with countless other species) evolved in order to hunt their prey, and avoid being hunted by their predators. Now we no longer have any natural predators, and thanks to domestication, no longer have natural prey. From that standpoint, there is no need to evolve further.
I do agree with the negative impact of our overall dependance on technology, which may slow down our intellectual evolution, that for the past few millenia has been going from strength to strength.
So out physical stagnation may be coupled with an dumbing down of society
That may wind up putting us a few notches down the foodchain, though it may eventually force an evolutionary spurt when super intelligent apes start hunting us for sport.
Two, there is evolutionary pressure, caused by partner selection. This is the basis of TFA! Good looking people tend to find good looking partners and make good looking children, ditto for the not-good-looking. I would add to this the element of wealth, I think it's quite important: I grew up in a very rich suburb where my schoolmates were uncommonly pretty. I realized that the people rich enough to live in that neighborhood attracted uncommonly pretty partners. No mystery why, and no surprise that the children turned out pretty. Now when you consider how little class-mixing there is in the US, and how little social mobility there is (that's right, look it up!) This means that money, and the extra attractiveness it brings, stays in families. Families with money will typically marry pretty people - most likely from other rich/pretty families, but possibly someone from a lower class who happened to look good. This means the upper classes poach the best lookers from below, making themselves even prettier. Because in each generation, the best looking people marry out of their lower class, this leaves the people of lower class with a increasingly uglier partner pool (on average, of course).
As this trend advances, the increasingly pretty rich will find fewer eligible partners among the increasingly ugly lower classes. Now that you have two non-interbreeding groups, each with different selection pressures, it's not hard to imagine a further divergence. It's not a pleasant thing to picture, but it's not really so crazy!
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative
As someone who has caddied for this upper class in the past, I take umbrage with the thought that the descendents of the upper class are anything but people like you or I who start out with more monopoly money than most.
Besides, it also assumes that commoners never get rich - a poor assumption indeed. I would place the theory that in the future all rich people will be geeks and thus descendants predisposed to play World of Wracraft far over this theory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is.
Rich people will continue having sex with bitchs, that will still become pregnant with that people. So If rich people are tall and beaty, poor bitches will have tall and beaty poor childrens.
-Woof woof woof!
Don't want to spam this article, but I remembered a joke that I'd like to share:
There were three men at a bar, an architect, a lawyer, and an economist. After a few drinks, they got into a debate over who had the oldest profession:
"Of course my profession is the oldest," said the architect. "It says right in the Bible that Joseph was a carpenter."
The lawyer interrupted, "But if you look in Genesis, you will see that my profession is the oldest because the first act ever detailed was how God brought law and order to the universe--before that it was just confusion!"
The economist chuckled wryly and said, "Where do you think the confusion came from?"
Here is the defition of teaming. Here is the defition of teeming. Your opinions are plenty reasonable, but your lack of understanding of homophones in English is ridiculous. Mistakes like these make your good post worse than that of a misinformed poster who has mastered writing in English.
if technology eventually permits we will actually rewrite our own genetic code to suit our whims.
But that's exactly the point: at one point in the future gene technology will enable paying (read: rich) people to modify the genetic code of their children before they are born. The genes responsible for "stupidity", small stature or any other sort of perceived "deficiency" will be deactivated or replaced. And why would this new cast of Eloi want to inbreed with the less attractive Morlocks whose gene pool was not subjected to the "tweaking"? Additionally these rich Eloi will obviously also have superior technology and will be able to keep the Morlocks far away. It sounds plausible to me.
Maybe a bit later in time the Eloi will split in the way that you describe, creating Waterworld-Kevin-Costners and the like, but the Morlock gene pool will remain virtually unchanged.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
This article was stupid.
LoL --> H.G. Wells....lol....the short people will move underground and kill the tall people for food!
Wait a minute! Isn't it the case that most deaths due to cancer are after procreation and therefore the defective genes are already passed on the to next generation. In other words, the human species are already passing on these genes no mather how good we become in keeping people with cancer alive. So the question is: how do we preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer by preventing deaths?
This is the official explanation. But the cast system is alive and well in India. Just not officially. I just had to look at the mariage of our outsourcing coworker, where they explained us who can marry whom, and why one could not marry another. They never mentionned cast, only stutbornly said "no he can't marry her, because of what he is and what she is." If this not caste, well that smell and looks like it. Taste like it too.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
To split, there would need to be isolation between two groups. Even then a split is unlikely unless the conditions are different and at least one of the populations gets really small.
How it could happen: we manage to get a self-sustaining Mars colony, then we lose contact as Earth goes through World War III.
mmm,... I can't help it to notice that this sound a little like the things that where told in Germany during World War II.
One part of humanity should be tall, blond, smart,... etc.. The other part is stupid, ugly, evil,....
I think this guy would be loved in the Germany back then.
Regards, Johan Louwers.
According to me, this has already happened before. The super-humans quickly became extinct, however.
Many people are not satisfied unless they are better off than those around them. It is not enough to have all the toys that other people have, even if everyone has lots of toys. These people want to be better than their neighbors.
This explains much of the cruelty and waste.
Especially in men, it is explained by an evolution-driven need to be the most impressive. Status requires conspicuous consumption.
THANKS to technology.
And beer, don't forget the beer.
I've heard of things being out in left field but, you folks are not even to the ballpark yet. First of all, humans are the apex of evolution. This means we will not evolve further. The genetic evolutionary machinery is in place that denies this event from occurring. If this bio-machinery breaks down, we de-evolve and die. Remember, this is evolution. There are only winners or losers. From the posts I see here, I can't see how we have won. Think about what your writing
that someone has read too much H.G. Wells, or just discovered it, or maybe that "evolutionary theorist in London" is HG Wells, after all...
DON'T PANIC
the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures
Sounds just like the town I live in now.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Honestly I think that we will replace natural evolution in our species with direct genetic engineering once the technology catches up and we get past the taboo associated with messing with some random deities work.
It will start with eliminating genetic diseases, metabolism and tendancies for mental disorders. Then we will pick and choose which traits are inherited from which parent. Eventually having a kid will involve a multiple choice, fill in the bubble form that allows you to define enough parameters so that it is difficult to notice if the source DNA came from the right parents.
Future advertisments could read, "Why spend two month's salary on an engagment ring when it can never say forever like spending one month's on your first child." (of course once you're in there, they'll try to upsell you on the extra incubation service so that she'll never even have to deal with that whole pregnency thing)
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
By far, the #1 evolutionary pressure is birth control. Survival of the fittest now means survival of those who can overcome birth control.
Maybe that makes people dumb and horny. Maybe that makes people be super-religeous. (probably Roman Catholic or Islamic) Maybe that makes people just WANT to have lots of little babies. Probably it will be all these things!
Seriously, I can't believe anyone would take this seriously. Changes can take place over just 3000 years but only subtle. Evolution for the human species at this point is so up in the air. And this sad attempt to predict it is laughable.
People that should live are living so we are polluting our gene pools in ways we don't know yet. diseases are treated and people with these disease that normally wouldn't are having children. People that can't have kids.. are because of certain expensive invitro procedures..
Look at how similar we are as specicies from asia, canada, europe, us. Why haven't we changed this drastically over the previous 10K years? I think this guy should change his day job to something like, library story teller for children in the mornings.
All i can say is this prediction is just stupid.. go back to the drawing board. Thanks for ammusing us and I would be embarrased if I were the one that came out with this information.
Who said anything about 100,000 years? It seems to me that it's already in an accelerated process of doing so. We have those who can read, write, obey laws, work for a living and who are generally net contributors to society and the species, and then we have those who CAN'T BE FUCKED WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE.
Our dominant economic system, capitalism, simply isn't sustainable because its predicated on maximizing growth which is devastating our finite habitat and again its concentrating ever more wealth in ever fewer hands and that probably isn't sustainable, before there is revolt.
Economic growth does not imply depleting natural resources. Mostly it means making more with less (less time, less raw material). Look around, many systems and stuff are a lot more energy efficient today and use less material to build than they were, say, twenty years ago. More mileage out of cars per gallon, lighter aircrafts, thinner plastic bags etc etc, more free time with sustained or improved living standards. All because of capitalism!
Actually, he's right that a divergence is taking place, but it's a multitude of divergences, and not all of them are visible. One of the most potentially species-splitting of all, autistic traits (which have been kicking around in the gene pool for millenia), are virtually completely invisible to the eye (unless you count Fragile X syndrome perhaps). In spite of that invisibility, those traits promise - or threaten - to completely rewrite the way that Homo something-or-other thinks and perceives and interacts with each other and the environment. Autistic traits are a LOT more prevalent than commonly recognized... if you know an engineer (or at least someone who thinks like one), then you likely know someone with at least some autistic traits.
The author of the article is a publicity-seeking entrepreneur, not someone able to objectively predict the future evolution of the species.
Death is not the only way to reduce the fitness of an individual. Delaying reproduction is almost as effective, so is interfering with raising children and grandchildren.
Do the math. How many more descendents will an individual have after 5 generations, assuming 3 offspring starting age 20 than assuming 3 offspring starting age 25 or 30 for each generation? Or compare that to 2 offspring or to 1.5 per generation, or a combination of lower litter sizes and longer generations. Quite a difference, isn't it?
A lot of evolutionary pressure is going on since industrialization. Hard work gets you and ulcer and an early grave, more than it gets you better chances for your descendents. Being healthy and at least average smarts gets you military service, which these days includes more than physical and psychological stress. Exposure to toxic materials (strange vaccines, industrial pollutants like DU and asbestos, etc.) is now part of the plan. Being above average smarts means more education, which can push reproduction back a decade or more.
It's the same principle behind investments and compound interest. Evolutionary pressure is still there, if you choose to look.
Education and culture have roles, too, since their resulting behaviors, while negligable for an individual can affect a population. Some studies have found that smoking, for example, lowers IQ by 2 points or something like that. Skipping the arguments about IQ relevance, such a small change is irrelevant to any individual, but when it affects a population, the effects are very pronounced. Chicken and biscuits, for another example, are made with lard and fried in lard and served with a lard gravy -- if they are to be tasty -- shorten the average life span of their proponents, losing the 'inclusive fitness' value of that even older individuals contribute. Or whale blubber, which was once nourishing and full of vitamins and needed for an extremely active way life, is now full of PCBs, dioxins and other poison in addition to providing too many calories and too much saturated fat for a highly sedentary lifestyle. Or cultures where women have sex with anyone they meet whom they happen to like did well from the increased genetic diversity, until the advent of interstates, air travel and bonuses like chlamydia and AIDS.
Pre-industrial societies had a lot of negative factors, but on average seemed to work out what was best for the population as a whole, given the technolgies and rate of travel. Post-industrial society could take an active lead in advancing at least intelligence and health in the population rather than suppressing it.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Natural selection
Perhaps the most radical claim of the theory of evolution through natural selection is that "elaborately constructed forms, so different from each
other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner"
'Rich' people without 'Poor' people are just people.
'Poor' people without 'Rich' people are just people.
People are dependent on each other in a complex manner.
So we will finally have 'ubermenschen' and 'untermenschen'? And the men will have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises, while the women will have lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features? And everybody will be sort of coffee-coloured?
I don't think so. First off, this seems to assume that everybody thinks those features are attractive. Not all women are attracted to men that look like a gay bodybuilder's dream; and not all men prefer women with 'hairless skin and large eyes'. I, for example, find women with body hair very sexy - but that is an aside. Survival in an evolutionary sense is not just a question of superficial features like looks - these things tend to be overruled by more basic traits like ability to adapt to the changing environment. I think the way an animal looks only evolves to an extreme when the environment is sufficiently stable; being very tall and having a huge dick may be an advantage when it comes to impressing others, but a big body needs more energy and is more vulnerable (eg. if a mouse falls down 6 feet if will probably just walk away; if an elephant falls the same distance, it will probably die). Also, a big penis will be more likely to get caught in uncomfortable ways...
Secondly, speciation requires isolation in one way or another. If society becomes more technologically advanced etc, then we will get less isolated, not more, which is why he assumes we'll all be coffee-coloured - this is BTW another false conclusion: skincolour is very variable, and it seems likely that people who live in areas with strong sun all year will tend to develop dark skin, whereas people in the far north and south will tend to be paler. My guess is that there will always be 'black' people and 'white' people, which in my opinion is a very good thing; diversity is good.
I strongly suspect that Oliver Curry is simply living in an ivory tower, dreaming about what he thinks is the ideal human. He seems to have started with the conclusion and deducted the arguments for why it will have to be that way.
Oliver Curry, judging by his list of publications (see http://homepage.mac.com/scottukgb/EMPG/members.htm l#oc) is not an active scientist (the singular Nature publication is a book review) and calling him "evolutionist" is not really correct. Actually, I assume he is one of those hand-waving social psychologists who do not understand even the basic principles of population genetics or molecular evolution, yet are loud enough to get on BBC with their speculative, pseudo-scientific theories.
j.
The Caste system still exists but really only concerns Hindus (and not all of India's population are Hindu). On a wider scale, discrimination still exists in India as it does in all societies. I have a friend who is a Sikh, by birth if not in practice, and I asked him how his parents would react if he went back to India with a variety of spouses.
If he went back with a pretty blonde Swedish girl he would be regarded as very lucky. Pretty Swedish girlfriends are status symbols in any nation I suppose.
If he returned with any Indian/Pakistani girl of any religion his parents would be supportive and accepting.
If he returned with a black girl his parents would think him crazy.
If he returned with a MAN he would never be allowed in the house again.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
The tall ones are called Eloi, and the short ones are called Molochs. [Spelling may differ fromt he HG Wells book, because I can't be bothered looking it up!] :-)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
LOL!
There's an old saying, ``The world would be a better place if ignorance and stupidity were not mere contagious, but also fatal diseases.'' A bit more than painful though....
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I read the article, and it just seems to be a great deal of pointless guessing. "Men will have bigger penises! Women will have pert breasts! Everyone will be beautiful except for those dumb little troll humans!" Whatever...Incidentally as life spans increase the speed of evolution generally decreases.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
No news here, this is a copy paste from H. G. Wells "Time Machine", being the elite class the Eloi and the underclass the Morlocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine.
Time Machine was publiched in 1895.
Sorry to have to start a new subject but I felt compelled only because the original article wasn't the usual quality stuff Slashdot links to. Luckily, many people responded with jokes.
It's possible that the original research is sound, but the BBC journalist screwed up in relaying the content. Let's assume that's not true, and see the article.
Tall & skinny vs. short & squat? In humans this has usually varied with climate, hotter vs. colder respectively, due to surface area -to- volume ratio. Not just 'cause, or because some people are smart or rich, ha ha.
Choosier about their sexual partners? Increased sexual selection (think peacock tailfeathers)... ? Why? No reason is given, but this would presumably lead to increased sexual dimorphism, i.e. differnces in appearance between males and females. Women would become more hairless and not men? Why? If it's natural selection at play, what's causing hairy women to have less offspring? If it's sexual selection, he could presumably point to studies of some sort of consisten mate choice among humans globally to that effect (forget local marketing fads).
This was hilarious: In 10000 years, people "...People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams." Ha, ha, he must be disagreeing with people who publish in academic journals that the ability to perform in teams won't vanish (due to genetics!) in 30000 years. What an academic debate that is!
And this: "Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer." What percentage of cancer deaths occur in individuals before they reach reproductive age?
I ran out of time for this post. Other topics include disease-and-livestock vs. disease-and-technology, why his claim that being uniformly coffee-coloured means racial differences will have been ironed out if West Africans are still going to be more resistant to malaria than Southern Africans or Europeans, etc. etc. etc. Slashdot's topics are smart so often that the odd error like this one stands out.
There will be a ruling class of Borg, in less than fifty years. That famous bulge on George's back, is his outboard processing unit. The real question is: What happens afterwards, when lower primates become cheaper than human workers. Mass sterilization? Soylent Green?
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
Humans and mutants, and here come the X-Men :-)
Are BBC people crazy ?
The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have evolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi - their flocks - docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
No missing link here, we already have the troll-like humans to prove it.
Yes, we do and collectively they're known as "Congress" here in the United States. No need to take a page from their book.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
With all the news on North Korea, I think this "evolution" isn't going to have time to happen. World War III sparked by nuclear North Korea is going to change the whole of human history with the 3rd nuclear bomb dropped in anger.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
I remember reading a science fiction novella titled something like "Marching Morons" that covered this topic.
100,000 years? We will have nuked ourselves into oblivion well before then.
... welcom our "descendants of GWB" overlords.
Now... which group is he in again?
The US population reached 300 million individuals today!
Couldn't have said it better if he had been a British upper-crust eugenics buff in the Victorian era. In other words, the sort of belief system at the robber baron culmination of the _first_ industrial revolution that H.G. Wells was exploring. Quite the opposite to this guy's vision, I have heard a scientist at a sci fi con speculate that future people would be designed as midgets (little green men?) for the efficiency in space travel and residence.
Seriously though, how do these people get gigs as "futurists" without reading science fiction? Or perhaps I should say science fiction that isn't 100 years old? Bruce Sterling's Schizmatrix was a far more profound vision. If speciation arises from isolation and adaptation, even human-directed evolution may arise the same way as we spread over the solar system and choose among various adaptation choices to various conditions.
I guess that's my core beef with the occasional stories in this thread: why are "futurists" so often so lame?
That was quite the response. My only point had been that evolution doesn't stop because everyone survives -- look at differences between ethnic groups. Tall/short, smart/dumb variables could become like ethnic preferences -- you try to marry people like yourself.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
... I think it'll be suckers, er, Republican voters, and the rest of us. The former, of course, being a mostly non-viable species.
mark
The word is around 500 years old
Didn't you read TFA? Get with the times or pass into extinction!! Sauna is the word for you now, learn to love it.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
The Mismeasure of Man, anyone?
Alarm bells went off in my mind when I read the words "genetic upper class". Can we be sure that this is scientific and not another case of racial delusions?
People who live in Hull, and the people who dont
Speaking in evolutionary terms, doesn't the survival rate of a species increase with rapid, frequent, and earlier reproduction?
In a massive die-off, it will be the offspring of the poor who are better suited for survival. They have a more diverse gene pool, and they have sheer volume on thier side.
Except the rich people control where the tanks, missiles, and bombs go.
..don't panic
Since when is the opinion of some crackpot deemed to be a scientific theory? The whole basis of his theory is that people will become "choosier about their sexual partners". He is totally clueless about of the psychology of the human male.
It's amazing how many of these there have been recently.
... then maybe we'll see a divergence, but ultimately the few humans left would likely eliminate them because thats just human nature and the more technologically advanced species is almost certainly going to win over a genetically stupid adversary.
Cmon, goblin like creatures. This guy must not even want to me taken seriously. I'm pretty sure mankind isn't going to start to de-evolve. I think the article also fails to seriously consider that ugly people are statistically dim witted. So while a goblin is fun analogy, the idea that with all the educational facilities in place and the standard of living going up that humans will magically start to lose intelligence is a joke.
Whats the stimulus thats causing goblinism ? I think these ideas stem from the misconception that evolution is happening anymore and thats just total bs. Sure we aren't getting eaten by saber tooth lions, but plenty of factor weight on the lives of the common individual that mold them and their lives. Depression is a major problem throughout the world and beyond causing an overall lack of productivity it will also shorten your lifespan. America's obesity problem is a great example of natural selection. People who cannot control their behaviors enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle are being eliminated faster and their children in many cases are prone to the same problems. Those few healthy American's however lead fuller and longer lives as do their children.
In a world so based on image and culture there is almost no chance a sub-species would be anything more than a tiny demographics or a freak show mutant. They certainly aren't going to be popular in the reproduction field. You have to consider that evolution start with a single mutation, not mass mutations.
If the goblinism theory had any validity then why haven't the mentally handicapped formed into a new sub-species? Mutations on a grand scale have been going on for all the primate stages. If the divergance of a species was so probable it would have happened several times. What does happen is we have a mutation or an isolated species that develops oddly, but almost always dies out rather than become a permanent divergence of the species. Otherwise we'd have massive populations of randomly mutated sub species.
It's a lot like Stephen Hawkings theory on why time travel must not be possible, because if it was we'd be swamped with visitors from the future.
If species divergence was so simple it would have already happened several times by now. In todays world divergence is less likely because reproducing isn't as simple as chasing down your date and humping her into submission.
If man evolves into a goblin form then that man simply isn't going to get enough action to create a true divergence. Unless this goblin form comes with super reproduction abilities or some other major advantage over man there is no reason to think it would be sucessful enough to be anything other than a handful of freaks. For goblin man to happen there would have to be a reason, like a great disaster that sends man underground and goblin man then has the advantage. Otherwise he will be shunned by the masses and certainly rejected by the majority of woman and even if he 'got some' there would be a good chance his kids would be normal and if they weren't just imagine how bad their lives would be. They would never fit in, they would never get laid, they would have vastly higher chances of commiting suicide or have other behavioral problems that would almost certainly doom the chance of their mutation rapidly spreading.
And cmon 100,000 years. Why even waste your time predicting whats going to happen to the human DNA in 100,000 years. Even if a being a goblin was the coolest thing to do in 100,000 years they would have a 'cure' to the genetic condition and since the authors concept of a species divergence was all negatives then there is little chance that most people affected wouldn't seek treatment.
So, yea if the earth gets hit my a meteor and the atmosphere burns all life on the surface beside the goblin people
Doesn't this entire plot seemly oddly similar to that movie Time Machine ?
Ok, so assuming that all this 100,000 year stuff is true and the ugly get ugly and the sexy become sexy. But don't ya think that alcohol is really the compensating control of allowing this to happen? :)
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. In 50 years, through GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) we won't be dealing with natural evolution.
People would simply use gene therapy to make themselves more attractive or just do away with the human body all together and sit inside a robot like Ghost in the Shell.
Most people see evolutionary trends as something that will be the same tomorrow as it will be in 1,000 years. As technology and the standards of living has shown us, evolution is getting throw out their door for (dare I say it) intelligent design by man himself (no God involved here!)
As the plastic surgery and weight loss industries will tell you... There is a market for changing ones body. Technology advances will only amplify this.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
That would be cool. Of course, they will have to be destroyed, but only after they have played their part in the Golden Path.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
The Human Race as we know it has existed for approximately 100,000 years (Homo sapiens sapiens, and in a more robust form Homo sapiens, for about 300,000 years. It took countless MILLIONS of years of to produce those two species. Natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, gene flow - these are the methods by which ALL species evolve into other species, at least that we can offer support for. Our good doctor seems to want to add cultural evolution as a means of biological evolution. I doubt there are many outside the science fiction world - especially scientists - that would buy into this. After all science is based on observation and evidence. What has this guy observed that would allow him to extrapolate the trajectory of human evolution thousands of years down the line? In all likelihood we will pretty much look the same in a thousand years as we do today. There is no reason to suggest that evolution will distill all the diversity in our genes today into 2 phenotypes in a thousands years. Rubbish.
Shades of H. G. Wells....
Mike Judge would probably disagree with this assertion.
Anyone seen Idiocracy? In this, his latest film, he supposes that the "tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative" folk will lose out, simply because they were, ironically, too stupid to breed enough offspring to keep up with the "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures".
Yikes!
The other stuff you said doesn't seem right, but this is something I know you pulled from your ass, because it's just false. Nice fantasy!
I take your point that many very rich families today were not rich three generations ago. Still, all that you need for differentiation (I think) is that they were significantly richer than average (which I'd bet is true) and that lived in a climate where wealth was significantly correlated with the good appearance of a partner. This is enough, I think, so that every generation of wealthy people gets a progressively higher concentration of prettiness genes. Some will fall out of the upper class (disproportionately, it will be the less pretty - since they are less likely to be rescued from class demotion through finding a rich partner) and some will rise into the upper class (disproportionately the pretty, since they are far more likely to be "promoted" by finding an already-rich partner). Now imagine repeating this over many generations and the end result seems clear.
Of course, some things might prevent this mechanism. For example, if the upper classes just stop having children, then there will not be a population separation. It would mean, though, that we will all get uglier as a society, because our most attractive people would be the least effectively fertile. Maybe this is happening.
Also, if it becomes a widespread fad among the rich and beautiful to adopt children, it could prevent separation. On the other hand, there is now a trend of rich single women shopping around for sperm, and they only seem to consider beautiful donors. This obviously accelerates the importation of prettiness into the upper classes.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it just me or are "hybrid" kids usually much better looking (or is it much more interesting looking). This would point me to believe that through selection of "prettier" people, you are actually working toward a world of mixed races with fewer defects. This is backed by the thought of inbreading and the socially restrictive places in the world where you only ever see the offspring of a few genetic makeups. You don't have the genetic experimentation that a more social community has, but you get kids with more genetic defects (ie: webbed toes). So theoretically, if you inbred humans, you may actually produce far more interesting species.
It goes back to the evolutionary theory. If you have a pond full of tadpoles and they never mate outside that pool, your going to get mutation that may or may not result in a "better" line. You might develop a leg to push you out of the pond per say.
By only mating with those of your same line, you are promoting a change in the species, but never perfecting it.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
A proposal about human speciation may be more believable to a country that has had a class system. America has financial classes, but for the most part they are very fluid (e.g. new dot.com zillionaires). British scifi authors like H.G. Wells and A. Huxley have written novels about human species. You see less of this by American scifi authors.
I do concede the British class system has mostly disappeared by the 21st century. It is mostly titles and schools, and not much about money and priveledge any more.
This is hardly news. H.G.Wells postulated this in his short story, "The Time Machine", in 1895.
If you want to see how speciation can take place on an isolated island, theres a great book called _The Beak of the Finch_. The basic idea is that the different groups of finches adopt to different sized beaks based on the type of food they eat. It wouldn't help a finch that eats a big nut to mate with a finch that eats a small seed because the resulting finch would have an intermediate sized beak that couldn't break the big nut open, and an unnecessary larger body is less efficient surviving on small seeds in a drought. (Note. The actual story is much more nuanced)
Applying similar reasoning to humans, its possible we could have speciation based on narrow survivability criteria. Our society has several markedly different job niches. Engineers are (supposed to be) good at math and critical thinking. Business men are (supposed to be) good at taking input and leading the people to a unified goal. Artistically creative types are (supposed to be) good at sympathy, empathy, and playing to our emotions. Yes there is overlap, but bear with me.
When we were all in tribes, every tribe needed these different personalities and the gene pool where traits could be exchanged was smaller. A tribe was too small to have a specialized "critical thinker" class or "leadership" class. But now we essentially have one gene pool; one tribe. There are enough people in the tribe that each subgroup can specialize. Put another way who do you see everyday? I meet engineers. Business people meet business people. Artists meet artists. You see where this is going. My wife is an engineer. I'm an engineer. Our kids will be good at science and math. They're likely to go in to technical fields and meet others that are like them. If this sort of thing happens for many generations, we'll see speciation.
This will only happen if the environmental pressures that exist today stay the same - and I doubt they will - but its an interesting thought experiment. Some interesting implications:
- These specializations are symbiotic. Not to say that there won't be conflict (after all, there is today), but what interest would "leaders" have in eating their "critical thinkers" or vice versa? (If we all ate the artists, it would bring a whole new meaning to "dinner and a show.")
- These aren't based on race as we think of it today. Indeed, my wife brings the traits of a Filipino "tribe's" critical thinkers while I bring the traits of a Euromut "tribe's" critical thinkers.
I already know a few Morlocks...I wonder if they'll evolve brains with only a right(wing) lobe and Budweiser ports as well? :)
So I went and read the article you sited, and found:
Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain's low, and declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong and increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment.
For these children, additional opportunities to stay in education at age 16 and age 18 disproportionately benefited those from better off backgrounds. For a more recent cohort born in the early 1980s the gap between those staying on in education at age 16 narrowed, but inequality of access to higher education has widened further: while the proportion of people from the poorest fifth of families obtaining a degree has increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, the graduation rates for the richest fifth have risen from 20 per cent to 47 per cent.
So basically, poor people are less likely to go to college, and not going to college hurts your long-term prospects in life.
Can I get a big "duh"?
The real question is, why are poor people less likely to go to college? The fact of the matter is, college is available to just about anyone, provided you have the drive and talent to get it. The bulk of my college education has been free. I took advantage of tuition reimbursement programs offered by various employers over the years until I finished my BS. It took me much longer than a usual 4-year program, but I stuck with it. There are many other programs that people can take advantage of - scholarships, grants, military - you just have to go after it.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Wow, brilliant theory, did he *just* read the Time Machine by HG Wells? How is this even news? :P
Interesting, but absolutely absurd. I've seen some really beautiful and intelligent children born from some really ugly parents. Also I've known many intelligent people that just weren't very good looking. Since when does being ugly equate with being stupid? Or intelligence with beauty? Most here have experienced quite the opposite.
Copulation does not mean Conception! Sung in tune of correlation does not mean causation...
Some people will believe anything.
Yeah, like the 'upper' class really are naturally tall, with good skin, and perky breasts. It could not POSSIBLY be that they eat better, receive human growth hormone when young, and get plastic surgery.
And apparently, no one has paid any attention to athletes. They must all be from rich families, none of them from poor ones, despite being tall and in good shape.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
> SOMEONE TELL ME BALLMER IS HOT -- I DARE YOU.
Ballmer is hot hot hot!!!
Signed,
Any one of hundreds of thousands of gloriously beatiful gold-diggers who would sleep with anyone on Earth if there were a reasonable chance of, say, a $500 million payout in just three years, after the divorce.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
I love these articles that speculate on possible genetic long-term trends in humanity. They completely fly in the face of molecular genetics as we know it.
The assumption that the rich will trend towards the tallest, most physically attractive, etc. in the long-term based solely on morphological traits alone is ludicrous. The attainment of wealth can be achieved through various means, and yes, if you are exceptionally good looking in our society, you can use that as an avenue to wealth. But it is not the only path. Non-morphological traits also play a large part. You may be an Adonis or Aphrodite in terms of looks, but if you lack ambition, drive and other neccessary psychological traits for wealth accumulation, you may very well be relegated to being no more than a Chippendale's dancer or Hooters employee. I know a number of non-execeptionally attractive people that have amassed staggering wealth, and their spouses and children are likewise non-impressive in regards to attractiveness. But they have more wealth than I will ever see in a lifetime.
Disclaimer: I am taller, better looking and more intelligent than average. I also earn in the top quartile of salaries for North America. My wife is also damn hot.
Similarly, a number of other people have stated that the rich trend towards having fewer children, while the poor do not. While this smacks at an amateur attempt to water down r-K selection theory for the unwashed, human beings are predominantly by design, r-selection strategy based.
Just imagine, an eco-terrorist opposed to economic globalization who devises a machine that (get this!) goes UNDER water!
No. Seriously. On PURPOSE! And it can come back up and do it again! And it can really move too, like go, oh, 20,000 leagues. Yeah, they're sort of like miles.
Dude! Cool, huh?
And he uses it to ram the ships that cause pollution and allow countries of the industrialized world to exploit the rest.
And he has an under-water base! And these suits that allow people to get out of this "sub-marine" while it's actually under the water, and not drown.
No, no, he's not the hero, he's seen as the villain, but he's actually the protagonist. Great story, huh?
There is a movie out at this very moment that most people will not hear about, nor see, that is based on this very premise.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Unfortunately Mike Judge had a tiff with the Studio, so it didn't get the love it really needed. Still a pretty funny movie with a good vehicle for their gags, though.
The human race will be split into "intellignet supermodels" and "descendants of W and Cheney"?
But seriously... how often do "attractive" and "intelligent" go together? I'm not seeing very many supermodels winning Nobel prizes, and I'm not seeing many doctors or physicists winning (or even entering) beauty pageants. There are some cases of overlap, of course, but it's hardly any proof of an emerging subspecies.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I would rather make it gossip.slashdot.org
how comes a scientist calls one species "elite" and the other "underclass"? is that scientific?
It is always interesting to read theories that project a current trend thousands of years into the future as if no events will alter it during that time. This is like a T.V. traffic announcer stating that "based on current levels, by 5pm, every car in California will be parked on the 405."
Looking for something to do? http://www.grinion.com
I would leave my wife for Bill Gates in a heartbeat.
If you look at the pic from the article it's clear the master species has no need for a penis:g /_42207552_evolution4.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42207000/jp
This is unbelievably ridiculous. I can't believe it's not a joke. How did this crankery get to be news. I would at least expect better from the BBC, like some basic journalism - perhaps a quote from another evolutionary theorist. I do notice that the article says nothing about him publishing his silliness in a scientific journal.
The split has already happened. It's just hard to see right now because the two branches are not sufficiently differenciated ,and nobody cares. It will become obvious in 100,000 years or a lot less (more like 10,000 or so). Those alive at the time would not care and it will be too late to do anything about it. It's a bit sad that we can speculate about it but there is no proof.
I can't imagine how this sort of nonsense got published. Natural and sexual selection only matter if they impact (a) the likelihood of death before reproducing (b) the likelihood of having offspring or (c) the average number of offspring.
In a modern society with contraception and a welfare state, nobody is going to die before reaching adulthood because they're less fit than others, and nor does being intelligent or attractive increase the probable number of children. If anything, those who are successful and attractive have fewer children, because they spend more time focussing on their careers, their appearances and ensuring the children they do have are given a good start in life.
This ridiculous article isn't even consistent with itself! It claims sexual selection will lead to exaggeration of various traits considered to be attractive, but then claims that skin colour will even out, blending into a 'coffee' colour, despite the fact that light skin colour itself almost certainly developed through sexual selection (i.e. because it's generally considered more attractive than dark skin). Why would one 'attractive' trait disappear, whilst others become more pronounced? It's patently absurd.
While that article is pretty outrageous, we forget some of the social issues right here that contribute to swelling of the lower class. The biggest problem, in the US anyway, is that the US government pays unwed mothers to have children. If you are a single woman with no job, just have up to 4 kids and the government will provide you a home and pay you a set amount each month for each child. They will throw in food stamps on top of that! Whatever you do, do not marry anyone because then they will reduce your monthly payment or take it away completely. Same thing about work. The more you work, the less your government check will be so why waste your time with a job? Maybe you live in poverty, but poverty in the US means you get a place to live, car, cell phone, television, 3 squares/day. Is that so bad? Ask the guys in India sleeping on the sidewalk. ~AR
The controversial field of Sociobiology (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology) posits that social and economic phenomena at least partly explain biological phenomena such as evolution. The field uses tools such as linear programming models that maximize utility functions of such creatures as the slimewort subject to physical and "social" constraints in the environment. Sociobiology originated in the 1970s, so the thinking exhibited in the article is not exactly new. Although most biologists believe that Sociobiology is a bunch of poppycock, most also believe that it is highly amusing.
Our future is not as H. G. Wells described it in The Time Machine. Unfortunately, it will be more as Cyril M. Kornbluth wrote in 1951 in his short story The Marching Morons. From his Wikipedia page: "The Marching Morons" was one of Kornbluth's most famous short stories; it is a satirical look at a far future in which the world's population consists of a few million geniuses and five billion idiots, the precarious minority of the "elite" working desperately to keep things running behind the scenes. Part of its appeal is that readers identify with the beleaguered geniuses (which is entirely compatible with science fiction fans' broadly held opinion of their relationship with the mundane majority).
-- The best way to accelerate a computer running Windows is at 9.8 m/s^2.
"Evolutionary theorist" from a College of Economics?
Huh? It really does amaze me what passes for science and journalism in the UK.
Ever read or seen H.G. Wells' "Time Machine"? It predicts this as well...
Think about it again.
This reads like utter jibbersish. We all know the bird flu is going to wipe out 33% of the worlds population.
Mostly in Asia and India. Then there's going to be a world war, we go into a deep nuclear winter, humans mutate and
either live underground and worship the last remaining nuclear doomsday device, or live above ground like animals while
apes evolve as the superior species. then some dude is going to travel in time from the 70's and piss the undeground dwellers
off and totally anhilliate the world. THE END.
recipe:
1 old science fiction book
1 idea taken from the book
Add BS
Profit.
The Time Machine
hg wells
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Are you one of those crazy euro tpes who claims the standard of living is higher in you little country? BAH! The usa will always have a ton of good looking happy people who reproduce. YEP
it's just you.
but let them eat cake!
1st Corinthians 1:21- For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn't know God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. 1st Corinthians 1:27- but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise.
What happens when ugly men make a lot of money and start banging hot chicks? Men and women are attracted to different things, ya know.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
In my own experence, "hybrid" kids are much better looking if the parents are from more dissimilar races. They also seem to be exceptionally bright children. The majority of the "hybrids" I've known that came from more similar races don't turn out quite as attractive, nor quite as intelligent, as the dissimilar hybrids. There doesn't seem to be much of a differentiation from the average for similar hybrids, so it's not like they turn out bad; just not as good as the dissimilar hybrids. There appears to be a skewing towards the exceptionally good for the dissimilar hybrids.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Life expectancy has nothing to do with reproductive success. As long as you reach the age of sexual maturity and successfully produce fertile offspring, your job is done as far as passing your genes on to the next generation is concerned.
But your offspring will have a much greater chance of reaching sexual maturity if you survive long enough to provide for and nurture them during their childhood.
So wouldn't that disprove (in what little information we have) the master race theory?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sounds like this "evolutionary biologist" read some H. G. Wells and knocked off around 9:30 for an early, early lunch.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
That's exactly how I see it! It seems to illustrate that there is greater benefit in the mixing of races than in isolating any particular group.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Sorry I'm late to the party, but I brought an MP3...
http://www.songcity.co.uk/WeAreNotAlone.htm
Tag lost or not installed.
Animal and plant breeders have a phrase "hybrid vigor". Google for it.
The theoretical explanation seems a bit weak so far. It's mostly based on the observation that dominant traits tend to be adaptive, while recessive traits tend to be maladaptive. This isn't always true, of course; it's just a statistical pattern. But it would explain why first-generation crosses between distantly-related strains tend to produce vigorous offspring.
"Further research is needed."
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Curry's work is nothing less than hate speech. Letting height determine superiority is not a new phenomenon among hatemongers. In the 18th century, the Dutch (the world's tallest people according to a 2006-09-17 WN article) decided to divide Rwandans into two social castes based on height. They called the shorter ones Hutus and the taller ones Tutsis. If you have seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, you have seen a glimpse of the aftermath of stature-based discrimination. Although we called it "genocide", the genetic component of the Rwandan massacres were based more on height than ancestry or any traditional notion of race.
Therefore, I try not to take dominant-submissive speciation theories too seriously when they come from people who favor radical political viewpoints. Although he refreshingly claims not to be a National Socialst (Nazi), Dr. Curry speaks in excessively glowing terms of radical leftists and totalitarian communists:
From Curry's Evolutionary psychology: "fashionable ideology" or "new foundation"?
Now, there's a distinction without a difference. Scientists shouldn't let politics guide science, but should first determine their politics and then use their science to support their political views? Be politically motivated at all times except while you're performing your experiments so you can more convincingly feign moral outrage when someone accuses your politics of guiding your science? Too many of us seem to buy into Curry's fantasy of the leftist scientist who can turn off her political motives where science is concerned. If you want to get into science, kids, be prepared to ditch political biases altogether, or no one except people with radical political viewpoints will
Also, the previously clean rivers and streams that provided water in the past are now completely polluted. The fact that those water sources have not been 100% replaced by running water is a considerable step down for the poor. And medicine? Are you kidding me? How can the poor afford modern medicine? Don't kid yourself, the poor are much worse off today than they were at any time in human history -- and there are many more of them. More poor people living today than not just a hundred years ago, but than all humans born in the entire history of our planet before one hundred years ago. It is disgraceful and could be corrected if we diverted some of the money used to kill each other and protect corporate profits to education and social services for our fellow man.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Genetically expensive features like good vision will just *go away*? And what is the principal of anti-selection that will accomplish this? Are people with worse vision less fertile or more sexually attractive? While I agree that excellent vision may no longer be of extreme consequence to the survivability of a modern human, it in no way is an anti-indicator of selection and frankly, I don't understand how you consider it genetically expensive.
First point, agreed. Health and beauty attract health and beauty. No argument there.
Second point, wealth and beauty, mostly disagree. Generally, people born into wealth marry and bare children with others born into wealth and tend to scorn lower classes even at the expense of genetic advantages that might exist in the much vaster genepool of the lower classes. This is called *breeding* by the wealthy castes of the world, but the results are hardly impressive. You do not find many supermodels or extraordinary representations of beauty in the well *bread* old money society circles of the world. The reverse is generally true as they tend to share a smaller genepool and scorn new entrants to their *society*.
Meanwhile, the churning mass of genetic variation in the lower classes continually produces incredible specimens of atheticism, beauty, intelligence and other prodigeous characteristics mostly by virtue of the statistical variations that occur in those genepools. However, extraordinary ability does tend to provide extraordinary opportunity and is therefore a good indicator of probable financial success in life. But this is upper-middle class success and that success is not neccessarily passed on from one generation to the next. The truly upper class (read: big inheritence) is generally untouchable.
It may be, in an analysis of socio-economic natural selection, that the more accurate hypothesis is that prodigeous characteristics tend to recombine and be passed on from generation to generation maximally in the middle and upper-middle class, but often orginate from the much larger genepool of the lower class.
As a counter-point, truly anti-selective genetic traits fall out of the genepool even in the lower class. The lower class has no lack of high fitness in any category and because of the larger numbers, a much faster rate of mate attraction and reproduction. Those who are truly ugly or have severe abnormalities are shunned as much by the other poor as they are by higher classes. And another important point is that it generally takes higher intelligence and higher fitness to survive as a poor individual than it does to survive with money. The lower class would tend to be somewhat more robust than the higher classes in terms of basic survival skills.
We can take this even further by exploring aggression and morality. Instead of doing that now, I will just throw out the assertion that disdain for human life is a trait that will naturally result in escalation of class (as killing and stealing will quickly produce large amounts of money if done without getting caught). This ultimately leads to the upper class being much less moral than the lower class (given enough time for t
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
It is more accurate to say that "soon be reaching a point where the traits you are marrying into will no longer be genetically transferable" unless you are marrying someone who is poor and couldn't afford such augmentation.
This one factor could actually flip this argument 180 degrees, essentially ensuring that the underclasses will perpetually genetically outperform the upperclasses. If we also assume less access to intelligence augmentation (let your mind wander about this), then true intelligence and true beauty may radically surpass the upperclass in the lower-classes without anyone even realizing it. This would be a result of the lower-classes having to compete in both intelligence and beauty with artificially augmented upper-classes, leading to a situation where the perception is that there is parity (or more likely that the upperclass is both more handsome and intelligent) where in actuallity, the genetic intelligence and beauty of the lower class is somewhat or even significantly greater (provided enough time for this to work itself out).
Interesting food for thought indeed.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
- On one hand, my kids get to do all sorts of stuff.
- Son with healing powers would resolve any instances of scraped knees. (Just don't let him sign up for the Canadian military.)
- Sexy blue shape shifter running around town naked = Daddy like. (I am such a perv.)
- Forget Iceman, how about Ice-cold-beer-man.
- Hot women with mutant powers + black latex jumpsuits + fighting = A war that everyone wouldn't mind watching on Television.
Cons:The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.