and the next stage in human evolution is....

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....whatever we want it to be, it looks like.

I was reading an article that talked about how humans were becoming to smart for their own good. Basically the premise was that modern medicene is saving too many people so bad genes get back into the gene pool.

What surpises me is how many people fail to understand how much control we have over our destiny. With tools such as genetic therapy and genetic engineering this is more obvious, but technology, science, and medicene in general have changed the very rules. We have better control over our abiotic environment than most other species. If anything, humans should not evolve at all - there is no need to when the environment adapts itself to fit the needs of the species (as opposed to vice versa, as is the case for most other species in the wild).

Of course, since humans are getting closer and closer to being able to control DNA (a few speculate that we may be able to use nanotechnology to directly edit our genes and chromosomes with better control than we can with viruses now) the possibilites are growing. Most of genetic therapy will be limited to medical uses of course (curing inherited dieases and such). Still, it does make one wonder....what could happen next?

"whatever we want it to be, it looks like."

Well, there's always the major asteroid strike before we get our defences up.
Back to bacteria and invertebrates for a while...

"What surpises me is how many people fail to understand how much control we have over our destiny."

That may well depend on who gets to be the "We".

Have you considered C S Lewis's argument in "The Abolition of Man"?
The tools are increasingly there, but they are applied to other human beings as much as the environment. He points out that with increasing technical ability and control, there can come the generation which decides what the next generation should be. And that generation will have less control. Its ancestors will have seen to that: it will be what *they* wanted.

"Most of genetic therapy will be limited to medical uses of course (curing inherited diseases and such)"

And what will be designated a disease, or an undesirable characteristic?
Are we assured that the determinators will be liberal and tolerant?

The development of technology I am reasonably certain of.
The universal benevolence of applied technology, a little less so.

You could be right but, looking down the trousers of time, can you see room for a dystopia as well as a utopia?

It sounds like a Eugenics movement wet dream

True.



Indeed.



But that generation can gain more control by freeing the next - and perhaps even develop technology to change themselves into something different.



I should have said, "At first, most of genetic therapy...." For the time being, I believe we are safe... strict controls on therapy and such, ethical review boards, millions of $$$ needed to get hands on such technology, etc.

It is possible for a dystopia to emerge of course. Just as it;s possible for an asteroid to strike and wipe us all out.

<<there can come the generation which decides what the next generation should be. And that generation will have less control. Its ancestors will have seen to that: it will be what *they* wanted.>>

"But that generation can gain more control by freeing the next - and perhaps even develop technology to change themselves into something different."

But how, if they have been sufficiently well primed, programmed, selected, manipulated and modified?
They will carry out their orders, surely? Their motive and instinct for freedom and heterodoxy will have been one of the things deemed undesirable, and edited out by that generation that become the triumphant masters of destiny.

(This is Brave New World territory as much as 1984)

"For the time being, I believe we are safe... strict controls on therapy and such, ethical review boards, millions of $$$ needed to get hands on such technology, etc."

For the time being, I grant you. The technology isn't that good or that universal yet.

As may well be clear, I don't have as much faith in the basic ethical goodness of humankind, or perhaps rather that differing definitions of "good" are sufficiently tolerant of each other. If homosexuality or myopia could be cured, or removed from the gene pool, would you deal with one, the other, or both?
(that's not especially an invite for debate, more an illustration)

If the gene pattern for religious faith is determined (there are hints that it may be there), should it be eliminated or spread?

Maybe I should be more laid-back and trusting. And read less P K Dick.
Repeat:
"the government knows what it's doing, the public knows what it's doing..."
"the government knows what it's doing, the public knows what it's doing..."
"Experts know what they're doing, the media know what they're doing..."
"Experts know what they're doing, the media know what they're doing..."

Hmm. Need to say it more, I don't quite have total belief yet!
If I go on like this, my line will get edited out of the gene pool as throwing up troublemakers.



(sorry, I mucked up the patten of quote blocks in editing down)

Yes, it will be very important to prevent these sorts of technologies from being used on people against their will.

Even with the technologies I've described we are still a really long away from being able to do that....



I think of it this way - if the parents don't like it in their baby they can have it removed. No one else has a say.

If the baby grows up and decides he wants the gene back, he can get it back.

If say conservatives passed laws requiring that homosexuality be screened for and "cured" in all babies though, I would find that a tad disturbing.... but imho they shouldn't have that sort of power in the first place.



Never thought of that one. But like I said I think it should be the choice of the parents, and later of the well informed child.

Yeah, right. Evolution doesn't "stop". It's never over until we're extinct. Evolution is in progress every time someone dies, reproduces, or triumphs over adversity. You can't run or hide form it, or say that we can control it. By enabling vastly more humans to survive than ever before and altering the environment we ARE altering ourselves for the future and evolving, however short-lived our next stage will turn out to be (I wager it won't last long).

What will happen next will be the destruction of the human race, not it's salvation. What will happen next will be people designing themselves and their offspring as they "ought" to be and not savoring our adaptability. What will happen next will be A Brave New World. We're talking less genetic variation among humans, less survivability, and an eventual deterioration of the species. Read the earlier sections of Dougla Dixon's Man After Man for details.

are species
will shrink till we are nothing

Actually, there exist cases in the wild of species not really evolving either. Literaelly speaking, they are under the process of natural selection, but that process has not changed them at all (they remained stable) so they have not really evolved. E.g. lungfish, coelacanth, I think nematodes also fit into this category but I don't remember... anyways what I was saying is that humans are so good at their environment, and so many (the gene pool is huge now at 6 billion plus) that it's unlike that humans will significantly change over time barring one of two things: an enormous change (e.g. a global disaster) or humans use their technology to change themselves.



I agree with you on the part about how altering outselves is causing us to evolve (but I still hold it's the only major factor). I do have a bit more optimisim though, I believe...



That is possible. But it isn't the only possibility. Humans could easily become more genetically diverse (by importing genes from other species or even designing our own from scratch). After all people are always going to want to get better abilites (night vision, etc).

Also the technology would enable fully grown adults to change their genes (and the protein and celluar structures to match). So if a diease came about that started killing people off, and one person was found to have a gene that made her immune, everyone could easily get that gene and become immune as well.

One interesting thing to note is that humans are pretty closely related to each other - 2 people from opposite sides of the world (even if different race and ethnicity) are about as closely related as a chimp and its tribal cousin are. Two chimps from different tribes would likely have more variation than two people from across the world. So we're already deteriorating anyways - the worst genetic engineering could do is to let that continue to happen.

Feathers. We're going to start developing feathers.

Hey, it could happen.

But only if you want to.

I say we start running up and down trees to get things started. Maybe even leaping off from tree to tree.

We'll need to work on the whole hollow bones thingy though... That'll take some thought.

*prays for asteroid strike before any of this can happen*

Well, it could come out that way but the idea that it's a matter of parental choice by informed parents is only one possible outcome of many, and there are current hard issues of where parental decisons clash with those preferred by the local or global society/state.

We have religious freedom?
Excellent!
Perhaps you'd like to come round on Saturday, I'm sacrificing my first-born to Moloch.
What's that?
We only have religious freedom for "reasonable religions"?

Our evolution will happen too slowly for us to notice.

We will notice the change in computers though.
In 30 years, computers will be so fast, I am partly frightened if they invent AI.
AI has the greatest chance of exterminating humankind.

I think our evolution will be less physical and more mental. Telekinesis