Re: News: Four Ways We May, or May Not, Evolve.
- From: Mark Evans <markevans1951@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:30:31 -0800 (PST)
On Nov 25, 7:09 pm, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
FUTURE HUMANS: Four Ways We May, or May Not, Evolve
James Owen
for National Geographic News
November 24, 2009
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091124-origin-of-spec...
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago
Tuesday, opened the book on our evolutionary past, which has since
been traced by scientists back to fossil apes.
But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through
space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship
Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to
digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?
And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it's worth remembering that,
150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species
struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.
PREDICTION ONE
Human Evolution Is Dead
"Because we have evolved, it's natural to imagine we will continue to
do so, but I think that's wrong," anthropologist Ian Tattersall of New
York's American Museum of Natural History said in an email.
"Everything we know about evolutionary change suggests that genetic
innovations are only likely to become fixed in small, isolated
populations," he said. For example, Darwin's famous Galápagos finches
each evolved from their mainland ancestor to fit a unique habitat on
the isolated islands in the Pacific.
Natural selection, as outlined in On the Origin of Species, occurs
when a genetic mutation—say, resulting in a spine suited to upright
walking—is passed down through generations, because it affords some
benefit. Eventually the mutation becomes the norm.
But if populations aren't isolated, crossbreeding makes it much less
likely for potentially significant mutations to become established in
the gene pool—and that's exactly where we are now, Tattersall said.
"Since the advent of settled life, human populations have expanded
enormously. Homo sapiens is densely packed across the Earth, and
individuals are unprecedentedly mobile.
"In this situation, the fixation of any meaningful evolutionary
novelties in the human population is highly improbable." Tattersall
said. "Human beings are just going to have to learn to live with
themselves as they are."
Steve Jones, a genetics professor at University College London, put
forward a similar scenario during a recent lecture series marking the
bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of On the
Origin of Species at the University of Cambridge.
The human population will become more alike as races merge, he said,
but "Darwin's machine has lost its power."
That's because natural selection—Darwin's "survival of the fittest"
concept—is being sidelined in humans, according to Jones.
The fittest will no longer spearhead evolutionary change, because,
thanks to medical advances, the weakest also live on and pass down
their genes.
When On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, only about half
of British children survived to 21. Today that number has swelled to
99 percent.
In developed countries, "the fact that everybody stays alive, at least
until they're sexually mature, means ['survival of the fittest' has]
got nothing to work with," Jones said. "That part of the Darwinian
fuel has gone."
PREDICTION TWO
Humans Will Continue to Evolve
Other scientists see plenty of evidence that human evolution is far
from over.
For instance, a study published last month in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that women of the future
could become shorter and stouter.
A team led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns
found that, due to ovulatory characteristics, shorter, slightly
plumper women tend to have more children than their peers. These
physical traits are passed on to their offspring, suggesting natural
selection in humans is alive and well.
Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New
Mexico, believes Darwinian evolution in humans is actually speeding
up. He highlighted sexual selection through mate choice as one key
driver.
"You still have powerful mate choice shaping mental traits
particularly … traits that are needed to succeed economically and in
raising kids," Miller said.
"We're also going to get stronger sexual selection, because the more
advanced the technology gets, the greater an effect general
intelligence will have on each individual's economic and social
success, because as technology gets more complex, you need more
intelligence to master it," he said.
"That intelligence results in higher earnings, social status, and
sexual attractiveness."
Miller added that artificial selection using genetic technologies will
likely accentuate these changes in the future.
"Parents could basically choose which sperm and egg get to meet up to
produce a baby based on genetic information about which genes
contribute to which physical and mental traits," he said.
"If the rich and powerful keep the artificial-selection technology to
themselves, then you could get that kind of split between a kind of
upper-class, dominant population and a lower-class, genetically
oppressed population," he added.
"But I think it's very likely the new genetic technologies will be
widespread in their use, simply because that's more profitable. So I
think there will actually be a leveling effect, where both the poor
and the rich are going to be able to have the best kids they can
genetically.
"You will probably see a rise in average physical attractiveness and
health," he added. "You will probably get selection for physical
traits that tend to be attractive in both males and females—things
like height, muscularity, energy levels."
But "regular" natural selection will also continue to play a major
role, Miller believes.
"What you're facing now is a global pathogen pool of viruses and
bacteria that get spread around by air travel to every corner of the
Earth, and that's going to increase," he said.
"We're going to get a lot more epidemics," Miller added. "That will
increase the importance of the genetic immune system in human
survival"—and result in a human species with stronger immune systems,
he speculated.
PREDICTION THREE
Humans to Achieve Electronic Immortality
A philosophy known as transhumanism sees humans taking charge of their
evolution and transcending their biological limitations via
technology.
In essence, the old-fashioned evolution of On the Origin of Species
may be beside the point: The future may belong to unnatural selection.
Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the
University of Oxford, said Darwinian evolution "is happening on a very
slow time scale now relative to other things that are leading to
changes in the human condition"—cloning, genetic enhancement,
robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology, for starters.
Transhumanism raises a spectacular array of possibilities, from
supersoldiers and new breeds of athletes to immortal beings who,
having had their brains scanned atom by atom, transfer their minds to
computers.
In addition to living forever, "uploaded" beings would be able to
"travel at the speed of light as an information pattern," download
themselves into robots for the occasional stroll through the real
world, think faster when running on advanced operating systems, and
cut their food budget down to zero, Bostrom imagines in his paper "The
Transhumanist FAQ," available on the Humanity+ Web site.
If that were to happen, a new type of evolution would emerge, Bostrom
said.
"Evolutionary selection could occur in a population of uploads or
artificial intelligence just as much as it could in a population of
biological organisms," he told National Geographic News. "In fact, it
might operate much faster there, because artificial intellects could
reproduce much faster."
Whereas the current human generational cycle takes some 20 years, a
digitalized individual could replicate themselves in seconds or
minutes, Bostrom said.
Of course copying yourself isn't without complications, Bostrom
acknowledges.
"Which one of them is you?" he writes. "Who owns your property? Who is
married to your spouse?"
PREDICTION FOUR
New Era of Evolution Awaits on Off-World Colonies?
"Some major new isolating mechanism" would be needed for a new human
species to arise, according to John Hawks, an anthropologist at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Despite up to 30,000 years of partial isolation among populations in
places such as Australia and Papua New Guinea, human speciation did
not occur, he noted.
But if, in the far distant future, habitable planets beyond our solar
system were colonized by Earth migrants, that could provide the
necessary isolation for new human species to evolve.
"If we had spacefaring people who went on one-way voyages to distant
stars, that might be enough to trigger speciation," Hawks said.
But, he added, "if you think about it, a small group of people went on
a one-way voyage to [the Americas] 14,000 years ago, and then when new
people [Europeans] showed up 500 years ago, they were still the same
species."
--
Bob.
I always find these predictions amusing because the experts are (1)
narrowly focused and (2) looking at fairly near future scenarios.
Next million years on Earth, not much change in humanity. Except for
changes introduced by direct genetic manipulation. Off-planet? Well,
if you allow for interstellar travel changes depend on the gene pool
sent to other planets, how much contact they have with other colonies
and he home world and what the planet they settle is like. And if
they use tech or natural selection to adapt. The cyborg and digital
migration is not, strictly speaking, evolution since it involves using
hardware, not biology. We already have a sizeable population with
artifical parts ranging from simple eye glasses to implanted hearing
aids, implanted pacemakers and medication dispensers, replacement
knees and other joints and lots of other stuff. More of this will
become interactive as technology improves. As to a digital existence
we are more likely to make artificial minds that take off and
replicate on their own than to migrate our species onto computers.
Mapping an existing mind into a computer would be, ASFAIK, a lot
harder than making one fresh.
Of course, since technology tends to develop on a rapidly steepening
curve any prediction past the next decade or so is little better than
an educated guess. Add to the tech curve the social trends curve and
things get freaky real fast. My parents grew up in a setting where
they still used coal oil lamps and survived to see our modern life.
Their grandchildren had a lot of trouble understanding their stories
and vice-versa. I look forward to seeing the world of my grandkids.
Mark Evans
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