What is the next step in human evolution?

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Sand
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18 Feb 2009, 2:56 pm

ZEGH8578 wrote:

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.

You are, of course, entitled to have your opinion. This was much agreed upon by the dinosaurs.

ZEGH8578
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18 Feb 2009, 3:09 pm

Sand wrote:

ZEGH8578 wrote:

You are, of course, entitled to have your opinion. This was much agreed upon by the dinosaurs.

indeed it was

evolution isnt "planned", it doesnt have a "goal". when dinosaurs evolved feathers, none of them went "awesome, a few million years to go, and we're IN FLIGHT!"
it happened cus it had to.

Sand
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18 Feb 2009, 3:46 pm

ZEGH8578 wrote:

Sand wrote:

ZEGH8578 wrote:

You are, of course, entitled to have your opinion. This was much agreed upon by the dinosaurs.

indeed it was

evolution isnt "planned", it doesnt have a "goal". when dinosaurs evolved feathers, none of them went "awesome, a few million years to go, and we're IN FLIGHT!"
it happened cus it had to.

Absolutely right. We demanded global warming and, by George, the environment complied.

slowmutant
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18 Feb 2009, 5:22 pm

cman_yall wrote:

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.

That would be a step backward. Evolution moves forward.

ruveyn
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18 Feb 2009, 6:37 pm

slowmutant wrote:

That would be a step backward. Evolution moves forward.

Evolution driven by random mutation and natural selection is not progressive. It is a slow motion random walk.

ruveyn

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18 Feb 2009, 6:53 pm

ruveyn wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

That would be a step backward. Evolution moves forward.

Evolution driven by random mutation and natural selection is not progressive. It is a slow motion random walk.

ruveyn

Natural selection in modern human society is certainly not progressive. The weak, defective, or other undesirable are allowed to live because modern society makes a point of caring for them. These individuals are valued not for genetic worth alone.

Wild animals don't do this.

Primitive humans didn't do this.

Back in the days of the nomadic hunter-gatherers, people like us would have been too burdensome for the tribe to keep. Which is why I'm lucky to have been born in the 20th century.

twoshots
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18 Feb 2009, 7:29 pm

ruveyn wrote:

cman_yall wrote:

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

ruveyn

Right, but IQ and income correlate negatively with behbehs. While we can expect the Flynn Effect to go so far, we can't expect it necessarily to continue indefinitely (and some intelligence researchers, who are quite controversial, have suggested that it is into the decline and may actually be reversed through "dysgenic fertility" in some countries)

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twoshots
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18 Feb 2009, 9:59 pm

digger1 wrote:

Do you know that evolutionary biologists think that the latest leap we have taken is developing an intolerance to lactose?

What the devil are you talking about? Lactose intolerance is merely the lack of a mutation which occurred relatively recently in the history of humanity (the mutation probably occurred within the last 5K years, hence why it hasn't spread to everywhere). On the contrary, becoming tolerant of lactose into adulthood is the innovation.

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slowmutant
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18 Feb 2009, 10:18 pm

That's an interesting sig you've got there, twoshots.

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18 Feb 2009, 10:26 pm

I got it from last weekend's Wall Street Journal. There was an article about the usage of loud music to "torture" detainees, and an actual army interrogator apparently described the efficacy of heavy metal in that way. I'm not sure what's funnier: that people are calling prolonged exposure to AC/DC "torture" ...

Or that it actually works. :lol:

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18 Feb 2009, 10:33 pm

When it comes to cruel and unusual punishment, I'd be more concerned about the unusual.

IdahoAspie
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19 Feb 2009, 12:10 am

We all turn into women

cman_yall
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19 Feb 2009, 9:38 pm

slowmutant wrote:

That would be a step backward. Evolution moves forward.

No, evolution moves in whatever direction causes rate of breeding to increase. If intelligence continues to decrease breeding rate, then evolution will move us away from intelligence.

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ThatRedHairedGrrl
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20 Feb 2009, 8:43 am

IdahoAspie, I gather that's a distinct possibility, given the amount of artificial estrogens being released into the environment these days. There's speculation that it could be to blame for a falling sperm count, and not just in human males.

I wouldn't have a clue what the next development might be, because it wil either be down to a) some unexpected disaster setting new conditions for survival and reproduction, b) we ourselves developing the technology to fiddle with our own genes and send things off in totally new directions, or c) a bit of both.

I have a book by Dougal Dixon, Man after Man: An Anthropology of the Future, which is about a combination of both situations: a high-tech society engineering new human strains and then buggering off and leaving the planet when things get bad, coupled with the teeming hordes down in the gutter forming a 'natural' breeding stock which is more adaptable to change...the book follows the next 5 million years, and you get some quite interesting and bizarre creatures. There's a (not particularly well written) Wikipedia entry on the book that describes some of them, but you really need to see the illustrations.

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20 Feb 2009, 10:25 am

EXTINCTION :skull:

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20 Feb 2009, 12:49 pm

Homer Simpson

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