The Future of Human Evolution: Are We Evolving Towards a More Advanced Species?

[DaveC426913]

Or whales who lost their limbs after returning to the sea. That's not "devolving"* that's evolving.


*it should be used in quotes since it deos not deserve the honour of being a legitimate concept.

 

[DaveC426913]

Exactly. Those of us with access to modern medicine are "devolving" the same way that fish living in caves over enough generations become blind.

How is that de-volving?

I see his point though. With survival techniques (such as medicine), our survival is not dependent on our genes anymore. Survival traits are not being passed to future generations. This also means that there's little selection pressure on the genes. We can expect a weakening of those traits resulting in an ever-increasing dependence on our artificial survival techniques.

 

[dimensionless]

I don't think we are evolving much. Africans are developing a natural resistance to HIV. Americans might be developing an extended period of fertility. They might also becoming more promiscuous, since that would likely aid reproduction. We might also see a reduction in deaths from car accidents, falls, poisoning, homicide, suicide, cancer, and heart disease.

Of course if there is a natural global catastrophe, that would also have an effect.

 

[moe darklight]

Nature always seems to find a way to either slow down the reproduction, or kill off member of a species that grows too populous... humans are way past that point ... reducing our rate of reproduction doesn't seem like a bad idea; we are not doing very good at supporting our current number, I don't see us being able to support for more. So maybe a lesser desire to reproduce is a positive trait for a human.

I personally don't see evolution stopping. Many traits are still rewarded (beauty, intelligence, being a care-giver, strength) ... people of intelligence tend to breed with other people of intelligence... same goes for people of beauty, physical strength, etc. ... maybe humans are evolving by unconsciously, selectively breeding ourselves—the same way we bred different dogs in the past—by choosing mates with very specific traits and spreading those traits.
Maybe the future of human evolution lies in some twisted and bizarre form of evolutionary classism?

The only way of really knowing if the human species will drastically change in two million years is traveling in time.

 

[dimensionless]

I think the world can support far more people than it currently does. As far as my previous statement goes, I have doubts that things such as car accidents and homicides are prevalent enough to really have a major impact. I think for human evolution to really accelerate, there would have to be either some kind of limiting factor, such as widespread famine, or some kind of expanding factor(like grass fertilizer, but for people).

 

[Mr. Owl]

...

My theory is that humans will evolve into what they need to adapt to any challenge they have. Horses evolved into having holves instead of paws to get around better. And whales lost their limbs to live in the sea because they didn't have enough space on land to survive. So I think that humans will pull a similar trick and evolve to being smaller, due to the steadily increasing population they will need more room and grow smaller. Also, we might decrease our dependence on water due to lots of drought. I don't see evolution ever stopping. Personally, I think that it is just insane to consider such a thing. If evolution stopped then we would be considered the ultimate race. But if something isn't done about global warming then none of it will really matter. :)

 

[moe darklight]

lol though I doubt we would grow smaller for more "room"... there have been a few changes in the theory of evolution since de Lamarck.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Right now it would seem that natural selection is guided by economics.
http://www.aneki.com/birth.html
http://www.aneki.com/lowest_birth.html

So I guess that means that we are evolving into poor people.

 

[Huckleberry]

It would be nice for people to evolve some empathic system so we can understand better how our actions affect others.

You will be assimilated!

 

[Nexus555]

Actually I seriously doubt we will be better at fighting diseases biologically down the line. The more medicine that is made via chemistry, the less our bodys have to work to fight off these diseases. Eventually we may not even have an immune system and would rely soley on medicine. If this happened and the medicine supply was either destroyed, ran out or anything, we'd perish off rapidly.

It's also predictable that we will evolve into less muscular beings. Obviously with various hormone amplifiers and such we can achieve unnatural size. However we perform less physical activies as a whole species compared to what we used to. The wheel, computers, technology, machinery, etc. are all examples of "things" doing work for us. The less we use our muscles, the less nature will want to give us.

And it is apparent that we will get smarter. With the age of the internet, one could theoretically learn to do anything (That's currently possible) with just a point and click. The further technology goes, the more we will use our minds instead of muscles. Our parents couldn't go to wikipedia and learn anything they wanted. This is also the beginning of technology and one day their could be other means to acquire information. Natural selection has showned us the more we use or do not use something, the better or worse it gets.

 

[sas3]

I just came across this story and thought I would add it to this thread.

Human race will 'split into two different species'

 

[zankaon]

Evolution: both natural and cultural

Classically, one requires isolation, for a new species to evolve. Today the trend is just the opposite, with greater mixing; hence hybrid vigor? Yet disease has had a strong selection effect in the past, as for Europe, Africa; this kind of selection indeed might not be over; such as for histocompatibility genes and there products. What about evolution of human nature; are we stuck with what we have? See Terrence Deacon's Symbolic Species bk commentary on this and language evolution. If human nature is fixed more or less, but culture, such as technology, is exponentially (?) increasing; is there not then a time when humans might become irrelevant in comparison to sophisticated computers? Hans Morovec's Mind Children bk places this at 10k years, based on processor speed. However cognition is much more complicated than that; perhaps 100k to 1M years might be a better guess when homo culturus (next in our descent; a pure cultural species?) supplants us in regards to logic, rational management of planetary resources; von Neumann self-replicating probes for robotic space exploration etc. Perhaps implants for us in order to deal with the dark side of human nature; so that hatred and violence ends forever. Voila!