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Human evolution: the next stages


Still Waters

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Judging from today's lifestyle, big eyes, big brain, small fat physique.

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With the advances in genetics,maybe for the first time in the History of planet Earth,Man has become the first Species capable of shaping it's own future evolution.

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i'm not sure it would be a waste Rolci, the human brain is the (to our knowledge) universe's crowning achievement, nothing else comes close for complexity & elegance of function, and so far, the human brain is the universe's best way of thinking about itself.....

;-)

Correct, and "so far" are the key words here. Saying the brain is the crowning achievement is like saying, before life existed, that uranium is the crowning achievement of the universe. Of course, when you cannot even conceive of the concept of life in a lifeless universe, that might seem so. And since the topic is evolution, the next question is, where do we go from here? Uranium compared to the human brain will be like the human brain compared to...

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We've evolved to the point where we're smart enough to be a danger to ourselves as a species, so hopefully the next step will take us out of that phase and make us truly intelligent. We need to change a lot of things about how we function as an overall society. Mindless consumption without regard to the future. Racism. Pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and by extension the food we eat. We definitely need a wake up call.

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Going on some of the people around where i live the human race is going backwards, the only thing changing is their body size it's getting bigger and bigger and so their offsprings

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There have been a number of speculations lately concerning the eventual form humankind will take, particularly with regards to the role technology plays in our lives and how this could reshape our physical and mental selves.

http://www.guardian....ion-next-stages

Good grief, what a lot of hogwash! While the writer claims to believe in evolution, he clearly has no clue how evolution actually works.

The paper should be embarrassed for publishing this blatantly ignorant babble. Then again, it is the Guardian...

Edited by Zaphod222
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Human evolution?

4f099df0fe7fad2fe6b50200.jpg

LOL, your cartoon is infinitely more intelligent than those 4 pages of Guardian babble. Thanks!

Edited by Zaphod222
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Creatures evolve to suit their habitat. I won't be surprised in a couple of thousand years if we look like the Asguard from Stargate.

No! You too completely misunderstand how evolution work. Geeze!

Well, I guess you could apply as science writer for the Guardian.

Or was that a joke?

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Obviously "THEY" are breeding a human race less susceptible to the environmental toxins that arise from industrial society, and more susceptible to the psychological manipulations of media and government by polluting the world and our minds. Also, they are thawing the arctic and and antarctic continents for future exploitation.

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Our evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years due to agricultural and industrial revolutions but it's not the technology that drives it, it is the resulting expansion of population. When there is a large population there is more diversity, more chances of genetic mutations, gene flow and opportunities for those successful alleles to be positively selected.

You could have the most incredible technologies but without a large population actual biological evolution won't accelerate much.

Edited by Dragonwind
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Our evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years due to agricultural and industrial revolutions but it's not the technology that drives it, it is the resulting expansion of population. When there is a large population there is more diversity, more chances of genetic mutations, gene flow and opportunities for those successful alleles to be positively selected.

You could have the most incredible technologies but without a large population actual biological evolution won't accelerate much.

I would have to disagree, a larger population may create more diversity, but it also makes the isolation factor less likely (not to mention the lack of survival of the fittest). Without a group being isolated, allowing a certain set of genes to mutate, evolution is unlikely to take place. Gene flow is just that, a flow of genes over geographic distances. It does not cause mutations to occur. More people = less chance of new mutations, and there is too many options for a particular set of alleles to be selected. There would be multiple successful alleles, meaning no one particular set would add up enough in the population to create mutations. Technology advancement does not equal biological evolution. Sorry if that explanation was kind of sloppy or over simplified, but its true in the general sense.

Edited by Glorfindel
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We've evolved to the point where we're smart enough to be a danger to ourselves as a species, so hopefully the next step will take us out of that phase and make us truly intelligent.

In order for that to happen, the truly intelligent would have to outbreed the truly stupid. But they don´t. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Wake up, pal. Evolution does not work by imagining something fancy, it works simply by reproduction.

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Our evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years

Hold it right there. Evolution does not "accelerate" or "slow down", it simply is. It is a concept. And it happens over a really, really, friggin long time. 10,000 years is really not much in evolutionary terms.

Somehow I get the feeling that while most people do believe in evolution, a lot of them have are bit confused about what evolution actually means...

Edited by Zaphod222
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they forgot to mention an option i think is much more likely: we will just "become one" with machines. Self-induced evolutionary process, if you will....

I think we will create machines smarter than us then die out ourselves. These machines will be our next step of evolution. They will be able to travel the stars and will look back at their existence and see us as their ancestors who came before them.

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In order for that to happen, the truly intelligent would have to outbreed the truly stupid. But they don´t. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Wake up, pal. Evolution does not work by imagining something fancy, it works simply by reproduction.

Oh yeah, I'm well aware of that. I personally don't have much hope for humans. The next stage of our evolution is likely to come about because of a screw up, maybe the pollution I mentioned, that forces us to adapt to new conditions.

The movie Idiocracy seems more prophetic every year, especially the beginning where it talks about the stupid breeding much faster.

Edited by MysticStrummer
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It would seem that the writer of that article doesn't really get how evolution works. Selective pressures only occur and take hold if it effects how many sexually mature children you have. I'm sure there are others, but the selective pressures I see are moderate intelligent people opting to have less children. These moderate intelligent traits are an evolutionary dead end. People that don't seem to have any planning capabilities or are whimsical in disregard to consequences seem to have more kids. Another pressure I can see is that female fertility will become more erratic and Maybe even resistant to hormonal birth control. In other ways it may have a balancing effect. I see so many families now that have trouble having kids but fertility drugs and treatments allow them to. These tendencies will inevitably creep into our gene pool and fertility treatments will become more and more necessary. Now... Only the middle class and wealthy can afford fertility treatments. So this is another pressure against intelligence and productivity.

It also seems that the tendency to maintain religious ties and traditions has a positive selection. I have not look up any statistics, but I'd bet a monkeys butt that people that are more religious have more children on average. The Mormons have a built mechanism in their religion to ensure their movement into the future. This social selection could possibly make us all mostly Mormon some day.

I find it so very ironic that atheists and secular society that 'knows' about natural selection and evolution for the most part advocate having less kids to conserve resources on the planet and avoid overpopulation, birth control, and other genetically restrictive factors, while the highly religious who do not believe in evolution have more kids, avoid birth control, and have built in mechanisms that ensure their survival.

If you want to see where humans are going genetically simply look at who has the most kids as a group. Inventing a bunch of speculation is has nothing to do with evolution. Just because I use my thumb on my iPhone most likely isn't going to give me more kids, but not caring about stds, fidelity, and not caring much about consequences will.

As for technology... I think we are in a race. if we do not use technology to consciously evolve ourselves, then eventually I think we will loose the ability to do so and nature has its own remedies and equilibriums to deal with over populations. I'm glad ill be dead by then .

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I think we will create machines smarter than us then die out ourselves. These machines will be our next step of evolution. They will be able to travel the stars and will look back at their existence and see us as their ancestors who came before them.

possible....! that is SO Nietzsche-like: humanity transforms itself into super-humanity, and in the end, the creation overcomes the creator! :D

still sounds more plausible than humans turning into color-changers, though.....;)

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It also seems that the tendency to maintain religious ties and traditions has a positive selection. I have not look up any statistics, but I'd bet a monkeys butt that people that are more religious have more children on average.

Some religions, absolutely! But it totally depends on the religion. On the other end of the extreme was the "Heaven`s Gate" religion, which was against sex to such a degree that many male members actually castrated themselves. They were certainly not going to outbreed the atheists or the Mormons.

The Mormons have a built mechanism in their religion to ensure their movement into the future. This social selection could possibly make us all mostly Mormon some day.

But the Mormons don´t even hold a candle to islam. All of Shariah laws are designed to assure demographic superiority. And they work.

I find it so very ironic that atheists and secular society that 'knows' about natural selection and evolution for the most part advocate having less kids to conserve resources on the planet and avoid overpopulation, birth control, and other genetically restrictive factors, while the highly religious who do not believe in evolution have more kids, avoid birth control, and have built in mechanisms that ensure their survival.

Yes, it is bizarre, isn`t it!

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