What is the next step in human evolution?

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Lactose-intolerance is hardly an advantage. Maybe your evolutionary biologists have been hitting the bong.

well, we lost our tails... that couldn't have helped any.

yabut, we used to have prehensile tails like monkeys. We lost them over time. I think we could still use them just as we could still use the ability to digest lactose.

I thought it was lactose TOLERANCE which had evolved, not intolerance (I may be wrong I haven't checked this out, but this is what I vaguely remember from some popular science artlcle, maybe New Scientist). This makes more sense, as people who were able to support lactose would have had a survival advantage after farming began, able to use a new source of protein and nutrients - namely cows milk. The mutation allowing lactose tolerance has not (yet?) spread throughout the population due to its relative novelty, and that's why there are still so many people who are intolerant. Now we don't have much selection pressure on us its unlikely it will spread any further - there is sufficient of other food sources that there is no survival disadvantage in not eating lactose.

Most people in our society try to avoid having children until they are "ready", i.e. older. The older they are, the harder it is to have children. People also try to limit the number of children they have, generally speaking.

When you try to do something, the smarter you are, the more likely you are to succeed. Conversely, the stupider you are, the less likely you are to succeed.

Put those two facts together, and it becomes inevitable that to the extent that intelligence is determined by genes and the environment (because stupid parents are probably going to provide a stupid environment), each generation is going to be less intelligent that the one before.

So the next evolutionary step, sadly, is going to be that humanity is going to get a lot less smart.

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Diagnosed but unconvinced... I reckon I'm just a rude and arrogant wierdo

Actually, I'm an idiot, because that's only western society I'm talking about. I have no idea what selection pressures apply in the rest of the world, or indeed in the cultures that retain seperate customs while living alongside western society. I could take a guess, but it would be uninformed and probably racist (sneak preview - in Darfur, they're getting slower, because the fast women outrun the rapist militiamen).

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Diagnosed but unconvinced... I reckon I'm just a rude and arrogant wierdo

ask yourselves this:

1. why should there be a next step?

2. what "causes" evolution?

3. are we submitted to #2?

in my opinion, the answers go as following:

1. no reason.

2. a drastic change of environment, demanding adaptation or extinction.

3. not anymore. we dont adapt to environment, environment adapts to us.

i dont think we are going to evolve anymore, before we ultimately die out.