# Is "transhumanism" bonkers?



## Ray McCarthy (Sep 6, 2015)

Probably Iain M. Banks and most S.F. (and the idea of so called Singularity) about A.I. and "backing up" a person for "resurrection" in a cloned or other body is total fantasy. But Genetic Engineering isn't fantasy, eventually we can change the biological nature of the next generation. Is doing other than healing a definite genetic based disease bonkers (Perhaps haemophilia and some other 100% genetic diseases that could be fatal before adulthood etc, but not if it changes something else?).

See
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34151049


> Humans are not intelligent enough to be capable of designing superior versions of themselves. If they acquire the power to remake themselves, the result will be a proliferation of the types of human being that are currently fashionable - today, the super-smart and the preternaturally thin. As Lewis predicted, one generation will be exercising power over future generations by modelling them according to the dictates of ephemeral fads.



Have parents the right to choose physical sex, skin colour, hair type and colour, eye colour, height and body type of their next child?

Or even abolish the male sex? With "test tube" (really Petri dish) engineering a girl could be potentially made from two women and carried by one.

Do we have the right or wisdom to replace homo sapiens with an artificial construct?

EDIT
Elsewhere I've expressed my opinion that Ray Kurzweil was brilliant at the the original OCR software success (in 1970s & 1980s). But his writing on A.I. and Transhumanism, from a expert computer programing perspective are somewhere between Iain M. Banks, E.E. "Doc" Smith and L. Ron Hubbard. They are wishful thinking with no scientific basis. I've been programming nearly as long as Ray Kurzweil and researched "A.I." since 1972 as well as one University module.

EDIT 2:
See also http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/04/cognitive_computing_humans_hal/ and comments.

We shouldn't confuse fun entertainment with reality or assume SF in general is any sort of useful blueprint for the future, mostly it's fun and/or a warning.


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## Mirannan (Sep 6, 2015)

Assuming that the human brain is Turing-complete (remembering it has been proved that a linear processor can simulate a parallel processing array) then a sufficiently complex machine ought to be able to simulate the human brain.

Incidentally, many people calling themselves transhumanists are talking about perfectly normal humans with bolt-on additions. A crude version of this might be an umpteenth generation of Google Glass with receptors for subvocalized input. Currently available software is capable of virtually real-time translation of text in the field of a phone camera, and doing the same for speech is well on the way.

I think that someone who can make himself understood in any one of a large number of languages and has most of human knowledge on tap is at least the beginning of transhuman. And powered exoskeletons are already working, as prototypes at least.

Lastly - I'm not sure about human gene engineering. However, editing out obvious defects from the population is fairly easy to imagine. IIRC, haemophilia is a point mutation; fortunately, it's a recessive one. Testing of early embryos for that particular gene and simply not implanting the ones with the haemophilia gene is possible. Whether we should do it is a moral/religious issue, not a technical one.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 6, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> Assuming that the human brain is Turing-complete


We might as well assume frogs can be turned to princes by a princess's kiss, there is as much evidence!

We have no idea at all how human cognition or processing works, or even if it's remotely like a Turing machine (programmable computer). We do know how computers and programs work. We have even less idea about animals as none can discus what they are thinking.



Mirannan said:


> Whether we should do it is a moral/religious issue, not a technical one.


*For things we can ACTUALLY do, rather than hypothetically fantasize about, it's ALWAYS entirely a moral issue. Not technical.*



Mirannan said:


> many people calling themselves transhumanists are talking about perfectly normal humans with bolt-on additions


That's daft. That's just an extension of glasses (made popular by invention of printing press), hearing aids (Electric ones since Victorian era), portable two way radio (since WWII), Mobile phones, PDAs etc.  The Google Glass wasn't even a new concept, only a Google version, it's just a gadget. Captain Cyborg is on the bleeding edge of publicity stunts and nonsense in this area. He's read too much fantasy SF and confused it with reality. His latest stunt was a hyped  badly described  1980s chatbot in a badly designed so called "Touring Test" (which was never intended in current form by Touring as a real A. I. test, but a kind of musing on the subject).



Mirannan said:


> software is capable of virtually real-time translation of text in the field of a phone camera,* and doing the same for speech is well on the way*


Not real time. Always latency. Because for any decent translation you need enough of a phrase. This is an area I know something about, and with Google Translate we went backwards as it practically abandons attempts at context, parsing and grammar, but matches using a "rosetta stone" approach (They used the many simultaneous languages EU documents as the start of the database and added OCR'd Translated books. Any non-English pair is "translated" (except it isn't) via English. However it's useful for translation to your own language, especially technical documents and specs where you are an expert and can weed out the nonsense. The *nearly* "real-time translation of text in the field of a phone camera" is much poorer than actual copy/pasted text, which is pretty poor, but useful.

No doubt cochlea implants. retinal implants, artificial hands and limbs etc will improve as false teeth and heart pacemakers have. But eventually these rather poor electromechanical devices will be replaced by superior biological replacements grown from your own cells. Similarly eventually transplants will be replaced by your own cells. Much progress has been made, it's one of the few useful applications of 3D printing.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 6, 2015)

Anyway the original post isn't about AI, but "editing" the species. Is it moral or sensible? It's obviously going to be possible, much is in theory already possible such as abandoning the male sex, only girls being born with the genes of 2 or 3 people.


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## Vertigo (Sep 6, 2015)

My take on this is that it is irrelevant whether it is right/ethical/legal to do the sort of genetic manipulation you speak of... it will happen regardless. The fact is that as it becomes possible to give your future offspring greater intelligence, strength, beauty, etc. people will inevitably do it. There will always be somewhere in the world where it will be legal; the more places it is illegal the more potential revenue a country will make by making it legal. Even if everywhere makes it illegal there will simply be a huge black market trade. There will always be people with money who will pay to have children better than everyone else's.

Consequently it seems to me far more important to figure out how to manage such genetic engineering rather than having any illusions that banning it is even possible.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 6, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> rather than having any illusions that banning it is even possible.



So Homo Sapiens is doomed. We are going to be replaced by fashion fads?


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## Vertigo (Sep 6, 2015)

Well I wouldn't go so far as to say doomed but, yes, I suspect fashion will end up having almost as much to do with future use of genetic manipulation as health. I'm not saying I necessarily approve but I do think that is a highly probable future.

You could also argue that with the effective removal of survival of the fittest (at least in the developed countries) and therefore the removal of 'natural' evolution it is only logical that we continue with evolution by design.

Another possibility is that if we ever do start colonising other planets I think it is also highly likely that we will manipulate the colonists' genetic makeup to better fit the new environment: gravity, radiation, temperature etc.


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## Ursa major (Sep 6, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> Consequently it seems to me far more important to figure out how to manage such genetic engineering


Managing it will inevitably mean rules, which will inevitably mean that some will break the rules and others will call for those breaking them to suffer consequences of their behaviour. This may or may not involve the creation of laws (where strict legality and illegality would become issues), but it for all practical purposes, the state, or one or more bodies sanctioned (or tolerated) by the state, would be involved in deterring rule breaking.

And if not, there will be no consistent and enforceable management.


(In the UK, and probably elsewhere, we seem to like the genie to be out of the bottle before we do anything, the existence and use of private drones being a recent example of where no-one will do anything until there's an accident or a big news story involving the invasion of the privacy of someone who, or something which, will have the influence to get things changed.)


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## Vertigo (Sep 6, 2015)

I agree, and once that genie is out it's unlikely to ever go back in. And you are right that as soon as there are rules people will find some one who will break them or somewhere they don't exist. I think a fair comparison is the current state of play on voluntary euthanasia or abortion; if you want to do it you 'just' go to a country where it is legal. I'm making no moral judgement here; just observing that these kind of laws have a tendency to become redundant.


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## Mirannan (Sep 6, 2015)

Ray - How many bolt-on goodies can be added to a human before they start becoming something different? Also bear in mind that the stuff might well eventually be wired into the nervous system rather than having to wear it. Which, combined with advances in storage tech, brings forward the possibility of having literally everything you have ever seen stored somewhere other than in the brain. Of course, data retrieval would be a problem there.


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## Michael Colton (Sep 7, 2015)

Yes, transhumanism is bonkers. But it can be fun bonkers for fiction.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 7, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> possibility of having literally everything you have ever seen stored somewhere other than in the brain


The gadgets already are using the so called Cloud. It will be deliberately awkward to use local storage (which could be snatched). 
Anyone remember Plays For Sure?  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/07/ms_farewells_more_of_nokias_legacy/

The security will be rubbish.  (Anyone here got Fiat Chrysler Jeep*?, or the UK  DAB radio in car that a cleverly crafted DAB broadcast (duplicating existing station) can make all the cars receiving it put on the brakes?).  
If the gadgets use implanted storage, thieves will cut you to steal it.  Even if the security works, and you don't get a literal "BOSD**", Google/Apple/Microsoft/IBM/Lenovo/Samsung/Oracle will know everything you see and hear.

If you get new retina grown from your own cells, it will work and suffer only the known issues. If you get the implanted Google Goggle Version 15 to optic nerve, you go blind when the firmware upgrade fails, or the cloud connection is hacked.

"Cyber" SF either paints a rosy picture of implants, or is dystopian. Both underestimate the disaster of modern software development, DDOS, Malware, Trojans, bugs, remote access vulnerabilities etc.  A biological system is self repairing (even has built in Anti-Virus) and can last 100+ years. You are lucky to get 3 years out of physical electronics.  You'll also be on an expensive upgrades treadmill. 

Integrated gadgets to people is a worse disaster than the IOT (Internet of Things: Almost all fail on security and functionality compared to traditional products).

Reliability, core functionality and security of programmed systems is getting worse.

Lots of things that are fun in an SF novel are inherently things you never want in real life. 

[*Not only is the original vulnerability bonkers, but the response is crazy.] 
[** Infamous NT Blue Screen of Death]


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 7, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> My take on this is that it is irrelevant whether it is right/ethical/legal to do the sort of genetic manipulation you speak of... it will happen regardless. The fact is that as it becomes possible to give your future offspring greater intelligence, strength, beauty, etc. people will inevitably do it...
> 
> Consequently it seems to me far more important to figure out how to manage such genetic engineering rather than having any illusions that banning it is even possible.



Seems to me that such a future world will have lawyers rubbing their hands with glee - parents utterly unimpressed by the 'improvements' they were promised by companies and the children themselves having reason for their problems: 'I was supposed to be beautiful but I find myself totally ugly by current standards. It's my parents fault as they deliberately gave the permission to alter me so I should sue them for my continuing mental stress...', or 'My parents knew I had a genetic basis for my peanut allergy, but they did absolutely nothing to correct it before my birth' 

Maybe huge lawyers bills and millions of broken families will be the managing factor!

No doubt the manipulation of the next generation by the current one will itself be a fad, with some generations deciding to go 'natural' because of all the problems that they have suffered, perceived or not. 

Personally I find it, at the very least, a bit distasteful to project my views onto the body and mind of another individual - even if it was done in the spirit of, as you say, of trying to give my children greater intelligence, strength or beauty. There is no right answer to any changes that you could decide to make - you'd need a time machine to pop into the future to find out if it really will work. However correction of serious defects and disease, I would agree that genetics and 'transhumanism' should solve. (However, this also raises the question of those individuals who want to go 'the other way' - what if you the parent wanted a sickly, weak child so that you could care for him/her for the whole of their lives? Some sort of deliberate 'Münchhausen syndrome by proxy')

@Ray McCarthy - interesting that you put the extinction of the male as a possibility - in large parts of the world I would have thought that there is more pressure to go the other way and not produce females, in some cases we already have some sickening examples of mass killings and abortions of girls - as documented in parts of India.


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## Vertigo (Sep 7, 2015)

I think, you're right VB, but then for some time now we have been steadily moving into a world filled with ever more litigation. So I guess that will just be going with the flow  I also agree that I personally find it distasteful but, to be brutally honest, what I feel is already obsolete. Look at privacy; most in my generation are horrified at the steady loss of privacy; most of today's youth simply expect life to be like that now, don't understand our problem with it and, indeed, seem to want it to go ever further.

I think one of the problems with predicting the future is that it is very hard to imagine it in isolation from our own culture and prejudices, which, of course, are very much of their day. And they, by definition are now in the past.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 7, 2015)

I'm glad to see it's not just me who thinks Kurzweil is the master of wishful thinking!


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 7, 2015)

Venusian Broon said:


> in large parts of the world I would have thought that there is more pressure to go the other way and not produce females,


That is self limiting stupidity 
A female is the only way to grow an egg to a child. Even if an "artificial womb" was possible (which is pure SF) I think humans would be cheaper. The point is they already know how to fertilise an egg with genetic material from another female rather than a male's sperm. Some women like having babies (there was a 65 YO recently that already had 13 children).


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## Mirannan (Sep 7, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> That is self limiting stupidity
> A female is the only way to grow an egg to a child. Even if an "artificial womb" was possible (which is pure SF) I think humans would be cheaper. The point is they already know how to fertilise an egg with genetic material from another female rather than a male's sperm. Some women like having babies (there was a 65 YO recently that already had 13 children).



Even more so, it is conceivable (pun not intended) that the genetic material from two eggs could be merged into a zygote artificially; it is not conceivable that the same could be done with sperm. It might be possible to create an egg from non-reproductive body tissue, but it's bound to be more complicated than harvesting an egg. So females will be needed for human reproduction a lot longer than males will. And such an egg would, for the foreseeable future at least, still need a uterus to grow in.

I think the latest variant, that of a zygote with three parents (more like 2 and a bit, actually) is even more ethically dubious. The reason given for doing it is that some inherited disorders are actually carried in mitochondrial DNA, which is perhaps 1% of the total DNA of any cell. For those who don't already know, the idea here is to take a healthy egg with properly working mitochondria, remove the nucleus, put the nucleus from an egg with defective mitochondria into it, then use the hybrid egg for IVF. Thus cleaning up the mitochondrial DNA at the cost of introducing DNA from a third party.


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## J Riff (Sep 7, 2015)

Welcome to da clone zone. And enough already with these 'super-smart' types, they tend to think for themselves. Let's just keep growing dim and dimmer people, who will buy our stuff no matter what. Like the clothing you see round here... no way is it possible to sell this stuff to normal humans.


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## hopewrites (Sep 8, 2015)

I personally think it will go cosmetic before anything else.

Elvin ears, cat tails, furry, scaly, pupal size/shape... there is more money and less ethical debate over what people do to their own bodies. You can already get horns installed... 

The question that I come to is why do transhumanists believe they are/must be better/different from the rest of humanity? Where are we loosing touch with each other that there is a voluntary subdividing of the human family?


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## J Riff (Sep 8, 2015)

Tattooed babies w/cellphone brain implants. Direct link to the shopping channel at all times. Clear plastic pants. I can see it now.


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## Ursa major (Sep 8, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> That is self limiting stupidity


As an aside....

I recall reading an article in The Economist that suggested** that one cause -- or, perhaps more accurately, enabler -- of civil/political unrest is a large imbalance in the population between the numbers of men and women. I think they associated this imbalance with one of the big rebellions in China in the past and wondered whether the seeds for a repeat were being planted in that country (because a one-child policy combined with a preference for male children seems designed to create that sort of imbalance).

The thinking behind the suggestion was that a situation where a large number of young and youngish men who know they have limited prospects of having a family life (in the circumstances in which they find themselves***) provide particularly fertile ground**** for those who wish to change the circumstances (in their case, who is running things) of the society.


** - I can't recall if it was based on any academic research (although I'd tend to assume that, being The Economist (and not the Daily Mail or the Grauniad), it wasn't just a thought that had passed, briefly, through the mind of the writer).

*** - One assumes this includes poor economic prospects, so those with little or nothing to lose (and so people who _might_ be more easily persuaded to take up arms) are preferentially selected by this process.

**** - For all sorts of reasons, including, one would have thought, the "availability" of women in times of war and civil disruption (for those interested in only 'certain aspects' of family life) and the thought that the more other men they kill, the more women become available through being widowed.


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## Mirannan (Sep 8, 2015)

Ursa Major - Another way of producing a large number of young men with limited prospects of a "family life" (nice euphemism that!) is to prescribe multiple wives for rich and/or powerful men, combined with draconian penalties for extramarital sex except with female slaves captured in battle. Now which ancient political/religious leader arranged that? Hmmm...


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## Droflet (Sep 8, 2015)

Ah, the inevitability of the slippery slope.


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## hopewrites (Sep 8, 2015)

So civil unrest is the source of subgenre-humanity? Because it's hard to justify killing other humans and so the enemy or the self must be dehumanized one way or another? And what better way than by augmenting oneself into a clearly superior position as well as classification?

Not the belief that one should have been born a cat or fox or wolf and splicing in or in some other way augmenting the body one was 'mistakenly' born with to amend the situation?


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## Ursa major (Sep 8, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> a "family life" (nice euphemism that!)


Actually, I wasn't using a euphemism (although anyone is free to read it that way) but merely reporting what I recalled from the article, which I suspect wasn't using the euphemism either (but again, may have accepted that some would read it as such). To some people, knowing that they're the last of their line -- which again will be a bigger issue (pun*s* not intended, but what the hell) where a single-child policy is or has been in operation -- is not at all a good prospect**.


** - While it doesn't particularly bother me, I do mourn for a future world, one that won't contain any of my descendants....


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## Nick B (Sep 8, 2015)

I think it is inevitable, unless we blast ourselves back to the stone age (or it is done to us by some random event).
And, what is wrong with it? If we are able to self-evolve (as we have started to) doesn't that make the procesrg a part of nature?
There will be misshaps, mistakes, tragedies and no doubt plenty of legal issues (as well as an industrious Blames Direct element) but in the end, we are simply evolving.

In my works of sci-fi, all (except a single intelligent alien species) the 'aliens' are post-humans, or e-humans as they are termed. Geneticaly modified for survival, warfare or simple cosmetic purposes.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 8, 2015)

Quellist said:


> we are simply evolving


No, self editing using genetic engineering to deliberately change our descendants is nothing to do with biological evolution. We shouldn't confuse what makes a good story with wisdom or morality.

Humans designing better computers or pigs with chicken or jellyfish genes isn't evolution at all.


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## J Riff (Sep 9, 2015)

I don't think humans can evolve much, other'n to grow bigger heads and brains and thus become more dangerous than ever to the other animals, who have already finished evolving and achieved perfection. )


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## psikeyhackr (Sep 9, 2015)

I think a lot of the people who are enthusiastic for Transhumanism are bonkers.

But the trouble with science and technology is that we don't really know ahead of time what will turn up or what people will do with it.

psik


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 10, 2015)

It gathers momentum. It will be decided by self appointed "Ethicists" and lobbying to Governments.  Disease will be used as thin edge of the wedge.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34200029


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## Vertigo (Sep 10, 2015)

The thing is the health argument is, IMHO, a very valid one. But, as you say, it will be used as the thin edge of the wedge.


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## Mirannan (Sep 10, 2015)

J Riff said:


> I don't think humans can evolve much, other'n to grow bigger heads and brains and thus become more dangerous than ever to the other animals, who have already finished evolving and achieved perfection. )



I very much doubt that it is possible for humans to develop bigger brains and therefore heads. One reason is that humans already have much more trouble having babies than any other animal; a baby's head is HUGE compared to the size of an adult woman, in comparison to the corresponding ratio in other species.

The other is energy supply and heat dispersal. Human brains already consume 25% of the energy requirements of the entire body; a bigger brain would make this even worse and also create more heat.


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## hopewrites (Sep 10, 2015)

Earlier delivery times and longer post-womb infancy would mitigate the head size issue.
Since we can already induce labor with relative safety to mother and infant, I don't see those being road blocks at present let alone in future.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 11, 2015)

I doubt there is any advantage at all to bigger heads. There isn't much correlation if any between brain size and "intelligence", "creativity" and memory.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 11, 2015)

I am not sure we will continue to evolve in terms of increased intelligence.

Selective evolutionary pressures on intelligence have long since disappeared. We (arguably) developed such high intelligence as a response to difficult problem solving requirements in out hunter gatherer past. Agriculture has effectively removed tis pressure. Sure we get a lot of protein and we get a lot of education (the development of art and culture being a big step for original hunter gatherers) but we also now get a lot of less smart people mixing with the gene pool.

I read some scientist (he may have been a crackpot I am not especially versed in evolutionary biology) had predicted a peak in humans around 10,000 years ago during widespread adoption of agricultural methods. He argues that the average Athenian would be smarted than the average Western nowadays.

Interesting premise - anyone have an evolutionary biology background and can shed more light on this?


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## Vertigo (Sep 11, 2015)

For very good humanitarian reasons we no longer eliminate failures from the gene pool. Without doing that I find it hard to see how we can continue evolving. Actually, though I can't back this up with any actual research, I suspect that successful people today are less likely to have children (or at least have less) than less successful people. If that is the case then it seems we are more likely to regress than advance further.

That is, of course, assuming we don't take matters into our own hands....


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 11, 2015)

SilentRoamer said:


> 10,000 years ago


A blip in time for evolution. Perhaps 100,000 years is significant time period.

Likely Stoneage people were just as smart as us. The first guy to paint animals on cave wall was an artistic genius that maybe hasn't been equalled since.

Education, archived knowledge and infrastructure is no evidence of greater intelligence than 10,000 years ago, just after ice age.

Daytime TV?


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 11, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> For very good humanitarian reasons we no longer eliminate failures from the gene pool. Without doing that I find it hard to see how we can continue evolving. Actually, though I can't back this up with any actual research, I suspect that successful people today are less likely to have children (or at least have less) than less successful people. If that is the case then it seems we are more likely to regress than advance further.
> 
> That is, of course, assuming we don't take matters into our own hands....



My understanding is that we are still evolving. The genome is always collecting mutations and there will always be pressures on us that select the fittest, whether that is some sort of grand environmental thing - like for example our foods being saturated with fat and sugar for hundreds of years, or the saturation of milk in our diet - perhaps, and we always make mate selections on one basis or another. There are lots of pressures in the 'evolutionary sieve'. Just because we're not sitting about shivering in caves any more, fighting nature tooth and nail doesn't make it otherwise. 

Perhaps because we can't quite see what is happening because it's happening now around us and it's all a chaotic mess, it makes it a bit harder for us to work out what's happening. Give us a few thousand years of recorded history at 21 century levels and I'm sure the trends will become much clearer!

The argument I'd make from above @Vertigo is why is intelligence correlated to success? Having worked in the city I've known some very successful people that can barely count with their fingers (Yes, in a profession that should be all about numbers it is a very widely held trait.)

Here's a nice article on the argument (argument mind, no one has an answer if we are getting more or less of such a elusive trait as intelligence) 

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/are-people-getting-dumber-one-geneticist-thinks-so


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## Vertigo (Sep 11, 2015)

@Venusian Broon  I was very careful to avoid using the word intelligence  and only referred to success. My point was that in the modern world people who are successful - highest performers, leaders - tend to have less children. Therefore success in our modern society does not necessarily equate to genetic success.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 11, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> @Venusian Broon  I was very careful to avoid using the word intelligence  and only referred to success. My point was that in the modern world people who are successful - highest performers, leaders - tend to have less children. Therefore success in our modern society does not necessarily equate to genetic success.



Apologies - you mentioned 'regress further' and I thought you were referring to the intelligence discussion above your post . 

Personally I think our current definition of 'success' within the human species is far too random for it to be an effective evolutionary pressure. Every time I stumble across the _X factor _or _Britain's got talent_ this view is further strengthened .


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## Vertigo (Sep 11, 2015)

Oh yes!!!!! 

But my real point is that I just can't see anything that I would consider to be a positive trait in the modern world which would actually be genetically reinforced. ie. that would result in more offspring from individuals with that trait. Also if, as seems likely, humans eventually end up having to restrict numbers of offspring then this can only further restrict evolution.

Yes, of course, there will still be random genetic mutation but unless those mutations are reinforced by being genetically more successful (those with that mutation having statistically more offspring) then those mutations will not spread.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 11, 2015)

We should if possible avoid using the term 'intelligence' to mean that-most-important-quality-of-humanity-which-drove-evolution. Most likely the evolution of consciousness was more important, it's final flowering being the cognitive revolution of a few tens of thousands of years ago (opinions vary, but probably 60-100,000). Intelligence is not terribly helpful if the members of a social group can't agree on how to use it.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 11, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> But my real point is that I just can't see anything that I would consider to be a positive trait in the modern world which would actually be genetically reinforced. ie. that would result in more offspring from individuals with that trait. Also if, as seems likely, humans eventually end up having to restrict numbers of offspring then this can only further restrict evolution.



As long as there is a degree of selection in how the numbers of offspring are restricted or produced then evolution can quite happily continue. I do think there might be an argument that the 'speed' of evolution in humans is slowing, because in the past huge numbers of people died young - look at infant and child/teen mortality rates, plus the impact of disease such as the Black Death - and thus I think you can argue that evolutionary pressures were much sharper in the past (although perhaps we are being blasé and something very nasty is just sitting around the corner waiting for us). The 'unknown known' factor here is to what extent we might deliberately fiddle with ourselves, à la the transhumanism stuff - will it as Ray has suggested be a generational fad thing, or will it eventually conform to a larger and natural evolutionary pattern. Currently, because we understand so little, I'd say we're on the fad end of things. But that might change.

As for the notion of positive and negative traits - evolution is the blind watchmaker, no? There is no march to ever greater perfection, just whatever works best in passing on offspring.



Vertigo said:


> Yes, of course, there will still be random genetic mutation but unless those mutations are reinforced by being genetically more successful (those with that mutation having statistically more offspring) then those mutations will not spread.



Well you make the point that successful people have fewer offspring (I think that is correct), I'll add that such families tend to have children later in life (again this does seem to be documented in the evidence) and that children born to older parents seem to have more problems (again there are many medical studies that bring up this finding.) Hence our modern society seems to actively weed out the genetic lines that try and fight their way to the top of the ladder. If there is some degree of genetic basis in providing this success there then that's an evolutionary process! People who are not obsessed with success in the modern world are the genetic 'winners' in this case - as long as they out-breed those driven success-mongers . All I'd add is that Mother Nature doesn't really care if that result is a perceived hit or miss to humanity


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## Vertigo (Sep 11, 2015)

Oh absolutely agree there VB which is why I say that what we might perceive as success is no longer the same as genetic success, though I would argue that it once was.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 11, 2015)

Evolution in the majority of cases isn't any longer purely regarded in original Darwinian terms. Lots of Evolution can end up in dead ends. Look at Pandas or Sabre Toothed Tigers.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 11, 2015)

Ray McCarthy - 100,00 years is nothing in terms of evolution - that's not my point.

The point is that evolution effectively stopped when Agriculture took over as the primary source of sustenance from hunter gathering and removed the selective pressures which helped drive evolution.

The article I read argued that because of the massive influx into the genetic pool of otherwise unwanted traits has had a significant impact on the intelligence of the average person today. Undesirable mutations that 10,000 years ago would have been eradicated by natural selection are now finding their way into the wider gene pool.

We probably need a decent evolutionary biologist or someone with more than a passing interest in the field to get the nitty gritty details.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 11, 2015)

Venusian Broon said:


> As for the notion of positive and negative traits - evolution is the blind watchmaker, no? There is no march to ever greater perfection, just whatever works best in passing on offspring.


Yes, people miss this in the "popular" conception of Evolution.


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## J Riff (Sep 11, 2015)

The joke is the part where we are 'highly intelligent'. Who says? And, why do ETs have such big heads if not to hold bigger brains. Proof.
I swear that Octopii are brighter than the denizens of this coffee shop, most days.


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## Ursa major (Sep 11, 2015)

I thought that the main legs of evolution were 1) a mechanism that allows characteristics to be passed on; 2) a mechanism by which random variations can be introduced (i.e. providing _new_ or _altered_ characteristics); 3) a mechanism whereby some characteristics can be _preferentially_ passed on to later generations (sometimes characterised as 'survival of the fittest'). So, strictly, human evolution will continue, because those three mechanisms are still in place in our species.

That being said, I don't think that's what people mean by human evolution continuing; they mean that humans will get better (more intelligent, stronger, longer-lived, whatever) in a biological sense (i.e. not by better use of technology). I think this sort of "evolution" is very doubtful, simply because: 1) this isn't what evolution means (as evidenced by, say, peacocks); 2) we're a social species (but one that doesn't, unlike bees and ants, segregate society purely on biological** fitness to play one of a small number of specific roles).


** - Inheriting one's position in society, or the resources that better equip one to succeed in society, (or both) is not the same as inheriting biological fitness.


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## Mirannan (Sep 11, 2015)

Yup. One problem is that evolution doesn't actually act on organisms, but on genes; a point made rather well in "The Selfish Gene". In many species, some particular characteristic (often having to do with competition for mates, such as antlers or a peacock's tail) is strongly selected for - but it can and does often go too far. Genes for a really big tail, in a peacock, are strongly favoured - but sooner or later that line dies out because far too much in the way of resources is taken up producing it.

It's quite possible that there are similar genes in humans. Hyper-aggressive alpha males (gang leaders and the like) often have lots of kids but they don't do all that well.


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## Ursa major (Sep 11, 2015)

Peacocks: proving evolution isn't what a lot of people think it is down the generations.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 11, 2015)

Yeah I misphrased when I said evolution stopped. Ursa Major has me right - I meant to say evolution may stop producing physically and mentally superior human beings. Would be awful if we are the pinnacle.


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## Dave (Sep 23, 2015)

I agree that Transhumanism is not Evolution (so a little off topic) but I thought you might be interested in this article in regards to the comments made that: human evolution has stopped, the time period of 10,000 years is far too short, and that we might evolve differently on other planets: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150917160034.htm


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## Vertigo (Sep 23, 2015)

I still don't buy it, @Dave. Admittedly I am no geneticist and am purely relying on (I hope) logic. It seems to me that evolution is primarily driven by natural selection. Successful mutations live and so breed, unsuccessful ones die and so don't breed. The latter half of that equation no longer holds as modern medicine keeps the genetic failures alive and able to breed. Consider how many genetic illnesses we now manage to live with. You could argue that some people today choose not to have children and that there is therefore still an evolutionary pressure at work, but, statistically, I think that's too small a group to effect evolution. Yes we might evolve differently on other planets but only if we choose to engineer it ourselves; we're not going to colonise a cold planet and then prevent anyone who feels the cold from breeding (which is essentially what will have happened to the Inuit ancestors). Not unless there is a radical shift in our values as human beings.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 23, 2015)

Vertigo said:


> Yes we might evolve differently on other planets but only if we choose to engineer it ourselves;


Which is technology, not evolution.

I think very little natural evolution of humans is likely, but people looking back in year 102,015 CE (AD) will have a better idea, if there are people then. 
Deliberate "designer genes" in that sense of Transhumanism is a recipe for disaster and extinction of the human race as we know it. It's likely that Transhumanism in the non-biological sense will be short lived as biological systems and repair from your own cells converted to differentiated stem cells is going to be better. Perhaps cyber-implants will be a fad.



Dave said:


> and that we might evolve differently on other planets


Unlikely. We are more likely to create artificial environments or pick somewhere else. But "other planets" depend on invention/discovery of viable Interstellar transport. There are no other planets or moons in our own systems worth settling. More even than remote waldos like Curiosity is hardly worth it.

The article isn't hugely significant. It's interesting that the Vikings on Greenland died out, supposedly due to ignoring Inuit advice.
But are the Inuit there because they LATER adapted, or survive their because some tribe from North East Asia already had the adaptation?


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