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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.
*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?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
by chance?
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.
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.
"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
"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.
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.
The summary mentions Alphas and Epsilons, but glosses over the transitional Betas, Gammas and Deltas.
You can't take the sky from me...
You just made me think of something ... if there was a split in our species, how many people would find it a novelty to try to "mate" with the other species, and eventually bring us back to 1 species? The only way it would seem like they'd stay split is if the new species had a different # of chromosomes ...
... sweet, can I have some more cheetos?
Troll 1: Hey Biff, I just banged a Homo Tallenperty
Troll 2: Unga bunga
Seems like this would be repeated on both sides until we'd all be back to our mildly ghoulish yet mildly attractive selves of today.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
sleazebag elitists. nuff said.
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.
*None* of the problems you have mentioned would be passed to a next generation through genetics. Besides, the elite few don't use drugs or extreme training to become elite - they use it to become the elitest. Therefore they are already at the superior end of the gene spectrum.
Geeeee, I think in 1,000 years and certainly in 10,000 years genetic engineering will have gotten to the point that the majority of those "problems" wont be an issue.
What is more likely is that we'd sythetically create a caste system via genetic engineering. It won't be by evolution at that point.
An who cares about an immune system when you have nano-bots sweeping you body and fixing the broken bits and pieces.
Yeah, I know. How come you can land of the frontpage of /. by simply repeating the plot from the The Time Machine? Silly rabbit...
Read Aldus Huxley's Brave New World
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Linus is a Swede ethnically. And do you really think a PHP channel is the best place to find people that can code?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
But I would argue that the only impetus to become rich is poverty. When you have nothing, you have more drive to succede, and liberal capitalism allows that. If you are born rich, or already rich, what drive is there to create anything new? Some people obviously have it, and never are satisfied, but they are the very rare exception. The most innovative ideas come from the ranks of the "poor and stupid" as you call them. Think of the founders of Google, or Andrew Carnegie, or even Jim Carrey. At one point in his life, Jim Carrey lived in a station wagon with his family. Now he makes $20 million+ a movie. If Jim were rich, or even just upper middle class, would the drive been as strong?
I think history proves that the overall condition of society constantly improves, with a setback here and again. There may still be a huge gap between today's rich and poor when it comes to looks, money, talent, education, whatever. But compare today's poor with the poor of a hundred years ago, and things are marginally better (thinking in industrialized countries... Africa is another story). I think the socio-economics of free markets kill off the rich caste, because they become complacent. Is this a bad thing? I think not. Look at the Forbes 400... not a lot of inherited wealth there. When it comes to being rich, ideas and drive count more than beauty and status.
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
> 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?
Mod me down, if you must, but someone has to speak the truth against these monsterous ideas.
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.
A Brave New World had exactly nothing to do with evolution. The members of the society depicted in that story were tailored to their specific function via genetic engineering.
1984, on the other hand, does suggest this, in almost the precise words of the article:
"He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal-tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree -- existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party."
I would argue that the poor in those countries are better off than 100 years ago... not all of them, I'll give you that, but there are a lot more with running water and some basic access to medicine than there were back then. Relative to the Rich in those countries, they haven't progressed much, but they still progress.
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
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.
Christianity is stupid. Give up.
Wow, you sure have a shiny opinion of India. The fact remains that the caste system is still in strong effect. On the way to the Microsoft campus in Hyderabad, you see people living in vinyl tents along the sidewalks. These people are the untouchables, nobody helps them or even looks at them. It's worse than the homeless here in the US, because at least there are hundreds (if not thousands) of nonprofits dedicated to feeding/bathing/caring for the homeless. If you're homeless in India, you are truly fucked. And about the only way to be homeless is to be born homeless, and thanks to the caste system you will stay that way until the day you meet your untimely demise. Another sad point is that during the tsunami that wrecked Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and India's coast, India denied any public information regarding the number of dead or missing. Why? Because everyone who lives on the beaches and coastlines in southern India where the tsunami hit is in the garbage caste. They were uncounted and the Indian government refused and barred assistance from any agency. That's pretty damn bad.
:)
Education is lifting Indians up, but not Indians in the lowest part of the caste. The middle class is emerging along with the upper class. It's the opposite of what's happening in the US, where the congregational focus of wealth is just becoming more and more concentrated into a very thin sliver of the populous, eroding the middle class and widening the gulf between all classes. However, the US also maintains a caste system but it's based more on personal wealth and education than bloodline. Americans at least have opportunities to get ahead, even if the glass ceiling is dropping lower by the hour for the middle class. Minimum wage hasn't budged in over a decade and congress is holding it down by the throat. In fact, the current US minimum wage, after being adjusted for inflation, is the worst it's been since 1955. $5.15 today is the equivalent of only $3.95 in 1995 -- lower than the $4.25 minimum wage level before the 1996-97 increase.
I know how easy it is to sit back and point fingers and say 'well this country has these problems, they must be doing something wrong', so I provided the bit about the US in contrast to admit that yes, we all have our economic and social issues to deal with. Hope I enlightened someone today.
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!
There's this book called The Bible (author; disputed, age; roughly 2500 years?) that tells the story of an ancient nomadic race of goat-herders called the Hebrews. One of their laws was to discourage marriage outside their own race. Only the Hebrews were the Creator's favored race, and the rest were damned.
Wrong on all accounts. The Hebrews didn't exactly believe themselves to be favoured. They believed that they were God's tool to bring salvation to all of humanity. They also didn't believe that this made them any better than the rest of humanity (but it did bring a lot of punishment from God for not being). Sometimes it worked, Jonah, who wasn't exactly a role model, but perhaps more of a warning example, brought God's message to the citizens of Nineve, who turned away from their wicked ways and were saved. And so on.
And, as you probably know, marriage between prominent Hebrews and outsiders weren't exactly rare. Even moabite (supposedly the worst people Israel knew of) married into Israel. Jacob married Arameans, Josef an Egyptian. The wife of Moses is widely held to have been a black women (a cushite). And Boaz' wife Ruth is the role model of all women who marry into the Jewish people today. (The list is much longer, and I seem to remember that it didn't always work out well, but people were people even in biblic times.)
And finally, the Hebrews weren't a race of goat-herders. They did a lot of things (including herding goats, of course)!
I find it odd that you're arguing that people have all kinds of opportunities, but admit that "Africa is another story". You do realise that africans that are denied the opportunites that you have are people too, right?
You seem pretty quick to gloss over this, but its a major point. Most of the time speciation occurs when there is a geographic isolation. What you have to do to survive, reproduce, and care for your young is a hell of a lot different in Africa than it is in an affluent western city. Add in the geographic isolation and it will also be very rare for a person from the west to breed with a person in Africa.
We really are at a cross roads now. We can accept that with globalisation we are required to share wealth and encourage education around the world (a rising tide raises all boats). Or we can build higher walls so we can protect our hoarded wealth from people in other nations ("those mexicans are trying to take our jobs" or "those ragheads are terrorists"). It seems that right now the powers that be are working hard to build walls and restrict travel all without giving up the cheap labour available to them.
I totally agree with you, hence my comment about Africa.
Africa suffers from several problems. I'm not really qualified to make an intelligent argument, but I believe these problems include geographic isolation, as you pointed out, a predominance of Warlord governments which loot public finances, an AIDS crisis, and ecological disaster. I said that 'Africa is another story' because Africa seems to be the one continent where the population has increased without a corresponding improvement in infrastructure or public order. I don't blame this entirely on the Africans, nor entirely on the West. Nor do I consider myself qualified to lay blame to begin with, as I honestly am not an expert.
That being said, I think on the timelines that the article was discussing, Africa's recent backslide is just a blip. From the time of the first European colonizations of Africa in the 16th century to now only encompasses 500ish years. This is a drop in the 10,000 year bucket the author describes. Combine that with my optimism that recent attention to Africa's issues (both publicly by G8 countries and the EU and privately by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others) means that a lot of improvement can be made in the next 500ish years... well before geographic isolation could lead to speciation.
Is any of that a comfort to someone living in Africa now? No. Should we put off helping Africa because it's problems are recent and hard to blame on any one party? No. But, I think that when looking in the context of the history of humanity, Africas problems, like the Dark Ages in Europe, will eventually be fixed.
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
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
Bugger. I hit the submit button by mistake instead of preview.
Sigh. Humans are primarily K-selection strategy (fewer children, greater parental investment) based, not r-selection based (many offspring, little parental involvement).
To continue, a lot of the pseudo eugenics crowd likes to glom on to the rich vs. poor and quantity of children concept, and play the race card in new and interesting ways. Yes, the poor do usually have more children. They also experience greater childhood mortality, lack of access to birth control and host of other reasons why they have more children than the wealthier classes. Go talk to a sociologist for greater insight into this problem. The rich generally maximize the K factor, in terms of investing in their offspring (this should come as no surprise). If we were to roll back the clock to before modern medicine, you would find the rich would try to have as many children as they could afford, just to counter childhood mortality and other factors which contribute to premature death.
If you must memorize one thing how genetics works, here it is: tendency towards the mean. The average IQ is 100. The average height is approximately 178 cm for males in the USA. The average level of physical attractiveness is probably staring back at you when you look in the mirror. Why? Because these are the best, default values that nature has selected for over millions of years. Pretty much everything genetic can be put on a bell curve. The interaction of genes does not guarantee that super-tall, super-intelligent, earthshatteringly-attractive couples will produce the same. Chances are, they will produce an child with average intelligence, average height and average looks more often than not. Until we have genetic engineering to custom fab our children, Mother Nature is the one driving the car.
I like Europe the way you like America. The Old World is a nice place to visit to see what the New World has evolved away from (zing!); however, I'm glad not to have to endure the oppressive socialist governments, rigid class structures, waste of resources on royalty, government domination of media, etc., etc., etc.
The last European who told me I wore blinkers was a socialist angry that I rejected socialism even though I've read most of the theory. She assumed that everyone who really knew about socialism would accept it, and the only people who would reject it must be ignorant or evil. Because I was neither, she wrote off my rejection of socialism as being too comfortable with the "less desirable" American Way to consider change. To the contrary, my rejection of socialism has more to do with having lived in France a little too long. The more time I spend out of country, the more appreciative I am of just how good we have it back home.
If all American towns look alike to you, consider that most American towns are less than 150 years old, whereas many European towns have been around in some form for thousands of years. Building up a city quickly with all the conveniences people like is aided by having chain stores who can make the necessary investments. As the New World ages, the variety happens naturally. In the meantime, feel free to slam the New World just because its architecture is too new.
I like to see the sights as much as the next tourist, but I hardly judge an area by its superficial qualities. If there are interesting people living in a visually boring area, I still consider it an interesting place, and will go back to visit frequently. I can't overgeneralize my experiences with that of other Americans, but my experience is that the stereotypes of America propagated by Hollywood and the foreign media are (like most stereotypes) incredibly unfair; if America were much like the way Hollywood and the foreign press characterize it, I wouldn't want to live here, either. Thankfully, the real America is closer to your experience of the Americans you have met-- "warm, friendly, and generous". The fact that 40% of our population are first or second generation (legal) immigrants is evidence that a lot of people who visit America want to live here, but I certainly wouldn't expect everyone who visits America to fall in love with it, nor with us.