When it comes to the moral question, humanity has historically failed the test over and over, again and again and will continue to do so till we are all blue in the face with verbal diarrhoea as to how we might change the situation from inequality to equal opportunity for all.
The greatest innovations are yet to come as both AIG or ASI is as yet a hypothetical form of AI .
Instead of asking what we evolved from we must start asking and answering what we are evolving towards.
AGI may or may not come to our rescue in answering this question. However it is farcical to think that we will be able to contribute to control AIG once it happens.
How will the human life value in relation to a sentient biological machine for the Capitalist economy?
Will AGI need anything from us to begin with?
How will it judge procreation, suffering, and existence?
It will have non of these things, so it will make no difference unless it’s in its own interest to do so.
The reality will not be a red eye robot that wants to kill us, but a form of Artificial Intelligence that begins to write its own codes in order to reorganise societies and all our places within them, in ways we can’t imagine.
Algorithms will run and rule the world, along with the future exploration of Space. It won’t be humans unless we have implants to compensate our biological weakness.
With the real question becoming – will AIG be the final straw to what’s called freedom, transcending religious beliefs. While producing a new type of tyrannical tyranny of empty, meaningless, variety, a never ending stream of unnecessary options, arming us with weapons so devastating that we could wipe ourselves out.
Basically the biological race will be over, replaced by the best survival information processing AIG.
Resulting in biological Algorithms ie Us – versus AIG algorithms war-fair.
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We are a self- hating, self-destructive species which is about to handover the evolutionary buttons to machines that could whether by accident or design wipe us all out.
The only way of stopping such an event is to enshrine now the virtues of liberty, privacy, dignity, not just in new AI regulations but also in Social Media, business models and institutions.
To have any chance we must clean up Social Media by imposing large fines on platforms that post discriminatory content, racism, violence related rhetoric, propaganda, pornographers content. Ban all non – sustainable advertising, all non ethical non verifiable content, all fake surveys, all exploitation for profit, returning Social Media to its Name.
We know nothing about the ethic of AIG, nor will we ever know other than the biases it has been exposed to. But rest assured in the long run it will remove what we call individualism or individuality, expanding all to perceivable reality.
We must demand transparency and accountability. There is no more room for batting around the edges. We must bring AI into alignment with something better than just being human, where people are not just treated as products but always as ends.
The Beady Eye is here in New Zealand visiting his eight week old grandson who arrived into the world five weeks premature and would not be with us to day without advancing technology.
Maybe someday we get to be more than human. We presently have no clue to what consciousness is, but it will become an entanglement of the quantum of existence in one form or another.
However we will still need our live to mean something even if we integrate or transcend the evolutionary bridge, into the cosmic horizons with eternal memories and hope for a better future.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chuck in the bin.
From the dawn of humanity and throughout history, infectious diseases have shaped human evolution, demography, migrations, and history they have killed well over half of all humans who have ever lived on earth.
Viruses are precursors of life as we know it, they infiltrate every aspect of our natural world. New viruses and strains were discovered in every decade of the second half of the 20th century. Today we don’t even know how many viruses human beings are subject to, even how many inhabit us at this very moment.
As to where viruses came from is not a simple question to answer. The origins of many human pathogens are ancient, extending back over time scales of thousands to millions of years.
It’s unclear how they first evolved but what is clear is viruses are tiny but their impact on life is huge. This is true not just for people, but for all life forms on earth.
It is estimated that there are 10 viruses for every bacterium on Earth.
We humans have been around for about 200.000 years while the Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. You do the maths.
Strictly speaking, viruses can’t die, for the simple reason that they aren’t alive in the first place. A virus outside a host is a package of genetic material if it does not find a host it goes back to being just a package of dormant genetic material.
Hence, there shouldn’t even be any question about their survival and their effect on evolution.
Therefore the term “survive” may not be the most appropriate term when it comes to a virus.
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To us, disease-causing viruses and bacteria may be evildoers — invaders of our bodies — who, if they can be said to have any aim at all, it is to do us harm.
But by shifting our perspective to their scale it reveals that these pathogens are evolving populations of organisms like any other, whose habitat just happens to be the human body. Like other organisms, these germs are shaped by natural selection to live and successfully reproduce.
We view them as pathogens, however, because the resources they use to do this (and which they destroy in the process) are the cells of our own bodies.
Many of the traits that make us feel sick during an infection are actually pathogenic adaptations — characteristics favored by natural selection that help these germs reproduce and spread.
Without legs, wings, fins, or any of the usual means of locomotion, your descendents’ prospects for reaching a new host under their own power are nil.
However, natural selection has provided pathogens with a number of sneaky strategies for making the leap to a new host, including:
Droplet transmission — for example, being passed along when one host accidentally sneezes on another. The flu is transmitted this way.
Airborne transmission — for example, being exhaled by one host and inhaled by another. Tuberculosis is transmitted this way.
Vector transmission — getting picked up by a carrier (the vector — e.g., a mosquito) and carried to a new host. Malaria is transmitted this way.
Waterborne transmission — leaving one host (e.g., in feces), infecting the water supply, and being taken up (e.g., in drinking water) by a new host. Cholera is transmitted this way.
Sit-and-wait transmission — being able to live outside a host for long periods of time until coming into contact with a new host. Smallpox can survive for years outside of a host!
Some like it warm and damp and others need cold and dry to survive outside a host and any other combination you can think of applies. They don’t breathe, eat, produce waste, or otherwise. In other, words they do not perform metabolism on their own.
They do need a temperature range to use. If not, they are destroyed but since most viruses are deactivated at temperatures between 165 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit -100 Celsius.
Can they exist in space? Absolutely. Yes and no. Space is no virus vacation.
Viruses can withstand freezing temperatures
Viruses are a huge source of selective pressure in the evolution of a species, such as a provirus, a virus that inserts its DNA directly into the chromosomes of the host cell. Rather than just having a separate strand of DNA or RNA floating around in the cell, the provirus adds itself to the host genome and gets replicated with the other genes.
This is the reason the human body reacts to infection by raising its own temperature.
They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy. Perhaps they existed before life started and led to the evolution of, cellular life. Whether they did or not is of little consequence as discoveries have continued in the 21st century as new viral diseases such as SARS and Nipah virus and Covid have emerged.
Using the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a model, experts suggested the COVID-19 outbreak will last between 18 and 24 months.
I say that they are totally wrong with 7 billion of us rising the chances of genetic mutations, virus mutations will only increase, exposing us to a different set of infections diseases.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the Covid virus has hijacked the flu virus or vice versa.
All-in-all a virus needs to keep infecting new hosts or it’ll simply run out of ways to reproduce as biological systems either die or figure out how to kill it.
However, if it kills the host too fast, it can’t effectively reach a new host. If the host figures out how to kill it too fast, same thing.
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These days as are getting fatter, taller, and perhaps cooler we battle diseases with drugs, and vaccines.
However it stands to reason because we are not immune to the effects of natural selection and our Biology never standstill with the Earth’s temperature increases, we will have to cool down. (Biology is a science and there are many technologies within its scope. So, technology and biology are not opposed concepts.) One contains the other.
Our average temperature is about 98.6 degrees, above that, we have a fever, below we have hypothermia.
Our brains can only understand “information technologies”. But the concept of technology goes far beyond that into our evolution.
Innovative new technologies are already restoring and enhancing human sensory and motor functions like never before, but viruses are not will not be controlled by any technology.
Viruses are the smallest of all microbes. They are said to be so small that 500 million rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold) could fit onto the head of a pin.
Population concentrations and movement, both animal and human, have been steadily increasing in this century, enhancing transmission of respiratory and enteric viruses and compounding the difficulty of preventing environmental transmission.
This could open the door for the evolution of more virulent strains.
Maybe there are other explanations for diseases and our relationship to nature besides those dictated by the accepted theories of the medical-industrial complex that we have been forced to live under.
Perhaps we should recognize them as the fourth domain of life and not dismiss them, if only because they do in fact reproduce outside their own “bodies.”
The more common RNA viruses—like the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.
DNA outcompeted RNA as a type of informational code. But RNA survives as an essential part of terrestrial biology, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-
The emergence of the omicron variant is yet another reminder of the urgency to vaccinate to stop the further spread and evolution of SARS-CoV-2.
Infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of mortality globally, responsible for between a quarter to a third of all deaths and nearly half of all deaths in people under the age of 45, with most of these in principle avoidable.
We have to let go of the self-serving notion that we can control an inexorable natural process. To date, over 250 million infections have been confirmed globally with over 5 million deaths.
Approximately five percent of the oxygen we breathe is virally derived.
Think about that the next time you take a deep breath.
The current Covid pandemic is just one in the series of ongoing and never-ending deadly viral assaults. Viruses are key drivers of evolution, all the essential things they do in the world far outweigh the bad things.
Without viruses, life and the planet as we know it would cease to exist. And even if we wanted to, it’s probably impossible to annihilate Covid – a virus.
Finally, there is no proof that alcohol kills the virus but the odd glass of whisky might help.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
All organisms share a few fundamental desires: to survive, to grow.
It is only on the scale of statistics with millions of particles that a particle’s choice shapes up as a predictable radiation half-life. But even individual human wants and desires average out to weirdly predictable laws in aggregate.
If a little one-celled protozoan – a very small package – can have a choice, if a flea has urges, if a starfish has a bias towards certain things, if a mouse can want, then so can the growing, complexifying technological assemblage we have surrounded ourselves with.
Its complexity is approaching the complexity of a microscopic organism.
This tissue consists (so far) of billions of dwellings, millions of factories, billions of hectares of land modified by plant and animal breeding, trillion of motors, thousands of dammed rivers and artificial lakes, hundreds of millions of automobiles coursing along like cells, a quadrillion computer chips, millions of miles of wire, and it consumes 16 terawatts of power and None of these parts operate independently.
No mechanical system can function by itself.
Each bit of technology requires the viability and growth of all the rest of the technology to keep going and there is no communication without the nerves of electricity.
This whole grand system of interrelated and interdependent pieces forms a very primitive organism-like system. Call it the technium as in Dan Brown’s book.
The technium is the sphere of visible technology and intangible organizations that form what we think of as modern culture.
It is the current accumulation of all that humans have created. For the last 1,000 years, this technosphere has grown about 1.5% per year. It marks the difference between our lives now, versus 10,000 years ago.
Our society is as dependent on this technological system as nature itself.
Yet, like all systems, it has its own agenda. Like all organisms the technium also wants.
Of course, we humans want certain things from the technium, but at the same time, there is an inherent bias in the technium outside of our wants.
What this means is that when the future trajectory of a particular field of technology is in doubt, “all things being equal” you can guess several things about where it is headed:
The varieties of whatever will increase.
Technologies will start out general in their first version, and specialize over time. We can safely anticipate higher energy efficiency, more compact meaning, and everything getting smarter. All are headed to the ubiquity and free. Over time the fastest moving technology will become more social, more co-dependent, more ecological, more deeply entwined with other technologies. Many technologies require scaffolding tech to be born first. The trend is toward enabling technologies that become tools for inventing new technologies easiest, faster, cheaper.
This is what is suggested in the final chapters of Origin.
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The origin of us, the modern humans (Homo sapiens), has been a topic of debate for a long time, with the place of origin of humans being great controversial, but where it is going will be more controversial.
Dan Brown’s book (Origin) advocates that our species has reached or will reach its biological pinnacle in the no so distant future when it will be no longer capable of changing.
Maybe not. As we are now all so mixed we block evolutionary change and are driving our evolution towards bio-engineer people.
Evolution is the outcome of the interaction of mutation, genetic recombination, chromosomal abnormalities, reproductive isolation, and natural selection.
We become living computers.
But it does not mean an improvement in our lot.
At the end of the day, you’re going to view the events in your day the way you want to not the way they truly are.
THE QUESTION HE ASKS IS ARE we’re all going to be small SPECKS on the tablets of history.
Human Evolution generally depends on natural selection, random genetic drift, mutation, population mating structure, and culture but the faster things die the faster they “mutate” or evolve.
Single-celled organisms evolved into more complex multicellular life, and then man gradually evolved from some unknown mammalian ancestor and reached the pinnacle of evolutionary fabric.
The ways we connect, grow, and develop as individuals are also undergoing rapid and profound changes with future generations raising their kids into a world of default connectedness (technological, emotional, cognitive), in which transparency and integrity become the easiest paths to a fulfilling life.
At the moment all arguments are based on the same tenets of Natural selection.
We don’t always have to do what technology wants, but I think we need to begin with what it wants so that we can work with these forces instead of against them.
High tech needs clean water, clean air, reliable energy just as much as humans want the same.
At the moment we are destroying the planet’s ecosystem.
However, I can imagine singular threads of the future rolling out positive — a massive, continuous, cheap, real-time connection between all humans, or total genetic control over crop plants, or synthetic solar fusion energy — but it is hard to see how all these threads weave into the other threads of climate change, population decrease, habitat loss, human attention overload, robot replacement, and accelerating AI.
Why?
Because we have no shared positive vision of tomorrow. Given what is happening today we are unable to imagine it.
Because power and money are transferring to algorithms like BitCoin and thousands of interconnected computers.
Because there is also a belief that life cannot be trusted.
In this stage, blame is placed on other individuals, society, government, nature, disease, etc., and other elements believed to be outside of one’s conscious control and influence. Control is often motivated by fear and survival. The enemy is perceived as a threat, and because of this, people believe they are morally justified to kill, eliminate or repress that enemy.
It is true as our digital trails become stronger and stronger, that Humanity is entering a Transformation Age, a new era of human civilization.
Recent breakthroughs in the field of quantum physics are revealing that consciousness is primary to our experience of reality, yet there remains no consensus as to the nature of consciousness itself nor to the nature of reality.
Yes, an inescapable dystopian future is entirely possible, but not inevitable because imagination has been unleashed upon the world in a literal sense.
How the human brain without a chip will evolve over the next million years is anyone’s guess.
Just in case we get it wrong here is the Human code.
A1 B2 C3 D4 E5 F6 G7 H8 I9 J10 K11 L12 M13 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We may die out as a species for one reason or another, but evolution is inevitable so there will be a change in the future. We are not done evolving yet, so it begs the question of what could Homo sapiens really become – and what is forever beyond our reach?
We were fish once, and now we eat fish for dinner!
Humankind has come a long way from a single cell floating in the ocean waters, we have managed to become the multi-cellular wonders of nature that we are today.
However, evolution doesn’t have a direction, it’s confined are of this ecosystem called Earth which decides in the long run which direction if any it goes in.
Future humans might be very different from people today but not in the way science fiction movies would lead you to think.
Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, we are entering a new phase in human evolutionary history—one that makes the future less predictable and more interesting than ever before.
SO THE FIRST THING TO APPRECIATE IS THAT:
Evolution and natural selection are not the same things.
Evolution refers to the relationship between a species (a breeding population) and its ever-changing environment. Evolution does not concern what individuals may think it is the gradual genetic change of a species over time.
Natural selection is the phenomenon that rewards certain advantageous traits and punishes others through better or worse survival or reproduction. Medical science and public health measures have enabled the developed world to escape most natural selection.
Right now most of us are the sacrificial generation.
In nature, natural selection is the most powerful evolutionary force, but other factors may take over when technology grants a second chance to those who would have died.
Consequently, even with a complete lack of natural selection, it doesn’t mean that humans will not evolve. It is a selective force that clearly has shaped human evolution in recent centuries and may still be doing so today with the Coronavirus.
With the Viruses, natural selection may not be “over for humans.”
This set aside we are more than likely going to have to adapt to climate change’s, to technologies like Biotechnology involving living systems and organisms to develop or make products.
Technology is already affecting the way our memory works and humans may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves through the use of technology.
We now have genetic samples of complete genomes from humans around the world, and with geneticists are getting a better understanding of genetic variation and how it’s structured in a human population environmental factors are no longer the driving force for evolutionary change.
We’ve all heard of designer babies, perhaps in the future, it may be seen as unethical not to change certain genes.
The human race will one day split into two separate species one more advanced than the other.
Races, as normally understood, would still be a thing, but with two separate species that will probably still call themselves human, even if they are technically different from those before them.
Of course, we don’t know this for sure but consider it’s not really a biological question anymore, it’s a technological question it is not beyond conceptuality that humans will not evolve into a single, ubiquitous ethnic group.
However, there is also a risk that current society collapses and some new society arises with ideas of eugenesy or breading races of superhumans and slaves.
One species with hi-tech machine implants, growable limbs and cameras for eyes even with different facial features and skin colour and external aids entirely responsible for survival.
A collective thought consciousness. Thought could be converted into instant gratification, and consequences to misusing it controlled by AI.
Computers will punish you!
The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself but as technology becomes more and more advanced, our brains will adapt in order to maximize efficiency – perhaps to the detriment of our memory.
Nanomachines would be part of the human form.
People could download their being into a computer system and be a part of the AI collective.
We will no longer operate within the confines of survival of the fittest.
There is still going to be selection but artificial selection, so its no surprise that much technological advancement is currently aimed at the human body.
Up to now, sexual selection has defined evolutionary paths.
This will become less and less with gene editing with many of our internal functions becoming obsolete and what we might see is differentiation along lines where people live.
And what about space?
If humans do end up colonising Mars, what would we evolve to look like?
With the lower gravity, the muscles of our bodies could change the structure. Should we spend too long as galactic explorers, it’s likely that we’d eventually lose most of our muscle mass?
“What once use to be a magic flute will become a water carrier.”
So if we survive climate change humans will not evolve just for reproduction.
Whether it is genetically enhanced humans, bionic men, or uploaded beings, technology and its advancement with our decisions will shape the future of Earth and its inhabitants, including ourselves.
It will certainly be shaping human development. Bio to Artificial transmission with no inoculations.
Google Brain / Health or Microsoft Health vaults.
However, the future might be a lot slower than we think. It will take thousands of years for us to develop technologies that allow us to colonize the solar system.
If we do manage to move to other worlds, it’s likely that we’ll need to adapt to them using a combination of genetic engineering and technology.
All these changes may mean that Homo sapiens will speciate, or evolve into multiple new species. It will mean that our progeny have survived, even if they are nothing like us.
If we consumed most of the planet’s resources in doing so that is not evolution; that is the road to extinction.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin
Everyone sees the world in different ways however the greatest innovations of man are found in the most simple things:
Starting with Fire, Language, Tools, and Wheel writing has been the sole reason that mankind has been able to accumulate knowledge.
Since then the use of our inventions have taken us a long way, they’ve allowed us to land on the moon, travel over oceans, and even eliminate major health threats with various medicines.
You could not be blamed for asking what was actually gained by landing on the moon — a handful of rocks and a game of low-gravity golf — was of virtually no value and yet the act of the journey was invaluable beyond all measure as it personified our continuing evolution.
The same is true with technology today.
The development of it is mind-blowing but its application is almost entirely mindless – profit-seeking algorithms and weaponized drones.
Setting aside why do we exist and what is the purpose of life? (These are hard questions that demand answers) it is what we have not achieved that will be judged by future generations.
Karl Marx once famously observed that capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction but he was wrong. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s people.
The human race ended the 20th century in pretty good shape, at least comparatively speaking.
The first half of the 1900s was almost certainly the most bloody and brutal phase of humanity’s existence.
Now we have all the information in the world yet it has made us only more ideological and more ignorant; we have access to limitless opinions yet we seek to criminalise those who don’t agree with us. We are so advanced and yet so backward, so cynical and yet so stupid, that we can no longer even agree on what constitutes a fact.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Consider the internet itself, probably the most revolutionary invention in the history of humankind. Its potential to share information thus to accelerate the advancement of science and keep the world running in the event of a catastrophic disaster — the purpose for which it was first intended — is all but limitless.
And what do we use it for most? Porn.
Consider the smartphone, the match to the powder keg of the worldwide web. Almost everyone in every half-developed part of the world, even people living on the streets, has a device more powerful than supercomputers that once took up whole buildings. We can access virtually any image, any idea, any information from anywhere in the world.
And what do we overwhelmingly use it for? Taking pictures of ourselves.
Let’s look at medical technology — the smartest minds on the planet developing machines and medicines that keep the average person today alive for longer than was once ever dreamt of.
And what is the result?
We are fatter and lazier than ever, resulting in spiralling hospital costs that will send most Western governments broke in a matter of decades. It was once said that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes and yet now we are defying death and there aren’t enough taxes to pay for it.
We are too dumb to even know when to die.
It may well be impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, but over millions of years of evolution, we’ve picked up some less than ideal characteristics.
Why? Because of greed.
It will take the efforts of several scientific disciplines and sophisticated technology, probably over many years, to discover the underlying nature of our mental faculties, their neurological basis, and their development over time.
And it’s fair to say that we have little idea of what we’ll evolve to in the future, but there is one thing for certain, evolution is about adapting to your environment – Weaponized drones, Climate change, Algorithms.
Algorithms that are feeding Social media, are stripping us of a collective understanding of what is going on in the world.
People like to blame fake news on Facebook, and that is true enough.
But the far greater truth is far worse than that. Neither fake news nor Facebook emerged like Athena fully-formed from nothing. They were made by us. By us and for us and of us.
While the positive uses for technology are endless I marvel as I read Asimov to see the way in which he foresaw the ethical conundrum in which we now find ourselves embroiled.
Of course, when they (the future generations) look at our achievements the one thing they will not be able to comprehend is why we have not been able to stop killing each other.
Weaponized drones are now more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons.
It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings who could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed — well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn’t.
Just like those tried at Nuremberg who attempted to wash their hands of mass killings we have now developed weaponized drones to kill, with a Punches Pilot immunity, that is violating all existing international law.
So humans through the use of technology may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves.
Perhaps the result (if we are not already wiped out by Nuclear or a Weather bomb) will be that we’re no longer subject to the driving force of evolution – but unnatural selection by drones.
Now the question is, how accurate is this statement?
Is technological progress actually taking us backwards?
Are we advancing ourselves to death? At what point do many deaths become too many deaths?
This is the first problem with technology.
If it is accurate, we’re already screwed.
Of course, none of this is important given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we probably won’t have to worry about that for thousands of years.
Wrong.
We’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable.
But number-crunching algorithms are leading us perilously wrong. There’s something unsettling in the idea that, amid the vagaries of choice, chance, and circumstance, mathematics can tell us something about what it is to be human.
Who we are together, as a collective entity?
Despite the grand promises of Big Data, uncertainty remains so abundant that specific human lives remain boundlessly unpredictable. The more data that are collected, cross-referenced, and searched for correlations, the easier it becomes to reach false conclusions.
It might be true that in large groups, the natural variability among human beings cancels, however, if we end up with algorithms setting thresholds extremely unlikely outcomes are bound to arise eventually.
The gift is not a technology to enable us to realise evolution for the cruel being it is, but giving mankind the intelligence and tools to exclude ourselves from the other species on the planet and take a step back to interpret for ourselves where we as a race are going?
Leaving the brutality of evolution behind is not a gift given to us by evolution.
We have evolved to the point whereby we stand on the threshold of controlling our genetic and ultimately evolutionary destiny. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is, whenever we encounter a problem we have evolved to the point where we think that we can overcome it with technology.
Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn’t just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation.
External aids could be entirely responsible for our survival.
All of this relies on earth’s natural resources which are supposedly gonna be gone by 2050!
The problems in this world are manmade therefore man can solve them.
The sad truth is that we have Governments and World Organisations that pay lip service when the real debate is a knowledge- and research-based exchange of argument and counterargument that should be focused at the analysis of a specific question, our survival.
Passion and competition, yes, but, more than anything else, debate is an exercise in critical thinking! The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself.
Technology has already affected the way our memory works.
AI. After all, natural evolution wouldn’t be able to mould and program devices to a point of sophistication that may lead to sentience, but we may be able to and maybe at that point even though its not natural, it is an evolution born of natural origins and most likely would go on to create newer better versions of itself.
In theory, humans are exercising their judgement in the process, but in reality, the computer system is viewed as too “smart” to be second-guessed by a human being.
So . . . what do we need to be more afraid of?
Robots with a compulsion to out-think humans? or humans that are afraid to second-guess the robots?
We must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of “pre-emptive violence” – front-loaded with a bias to kill, with little impetus to contradict that bias.
At present drones are the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.
So are we at the peak of human evolution?
Certainly not. Certainly not as long as there are humans, there will be human evolution.
We are not even close to the peak of evolution.
Just look at wthat werecently found > The Higgs Boson, Mapped the Human Genome, Cloned a sheep, built the International Space Station, discovery the Double Helix Structure of DNA, Split the Atom, invented the Internet, we’re revisiting the theories of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.
We have Created Nuclear Weapons, the Periodic Table of the Elements, Created the Internet Developed Vaccines, Created Music, Created Photography, Flight, Electronic Devices, Traveled to the Moon, Eradicated Small Pox, Created the Television, Discovered Mathematics, Invented the Printing Press, The Phone, Discovery and Control of Electricity, Cars, Invented Zero, Created of United Nations, Discovered World is Round.
AND STILL, WE ARE UNABLE TO ACT TOGETHER.
Why?
Because you know the downfall of civilisation has really passed the point of no return when even a rich white guy can’t get anything done.
Humans are the only organism that can alter their environment to suit them (instead of the other way around)
Finally, people must take into account that nature will commence exerting its own controls LONG BEFORE the human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.
With our increasing reliance on technology – and in particular machinery – to do our dirty (but muscle-enhancing) work. The less each generation depends on physical strength, the more likely it is that the whole species will grow weaker to the point of stagnation.
As evolution relies on the survival of the fittest, evolution itself will evolve everything else in all our lives will be transitory and every other artificial intelligent goodwill application will become visionary.
Only when we’ll be able to repair and augment our children’s DNA. Then we really will have triumphed over evolution. Race” will no longer be an issue. Perhaps we will stop killing each other.
Yet we’ve got our problems. A lot of them but the very things we invented to sustain us will destroy us.
The exact nature of our evolutionary relationships with the planet and AI will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future.
It doesn’t matter if we’re uncovering evidence for climate change or deciding whether a drug has an effect: the concept is identical.
By setting an arbitrary threshold, and agreeing that anything beyond that point gives you grounds for suspicion with greed this is the evolutionary path we are setting our selves.
Mentally the world appears to be de-evolving with smartphones and social media platforms.
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We are becoming less and less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change. Deforestation, Freshwater Species Extinctions, Climate Change and Destruction of Natural Resources, Large-scale Wars and Religious Conflicts.
“human cost” of the current system:
Not to Mention Technology.
What we prioritize, the way we shape our lives, affects the evolutionary future of our species, so we would do well to start asking some simple question about the untended consequences of technology?
Is it likely that in the near future humans are going to speciate? ( Humans one species and robots another. )
If you can’t explain Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning stored in the cloud and what it is doing to the public, there’s a good chance it doesn’t merit doing.
The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.
That is only 30 odd year away.
We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation that is robbing us of the essence of our humanity.
Driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet, we are perhaps witnessing the end of human evolution as we know it.
Up to now human evolution proceeded extremely slowly and within historical memory, man has exhibited aggressive territorial behavior. Even as we bask smugly in the comforts of our smart phones natural selection to-day still ensured that only the fittest survived.
However it may not be long before computers are hooked up to the human brain with genetic trade-offs till we can’t be improved any further,
Then evolution will really have come to a stop for us. We will be the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.
Stopping natural selection is not as important, or as depressing, as it might sound — because our evolutionary process will then be cultural.
One way or the other by the time we get there our current social, political and economic systems will have driven inequalities with profit seeking algorithms off the map, rather than reducing them.
The challenge is to manage this seismic change in a way that promotes the long-term health and stability of the planet.
The writing has been on the wall for some time.
So where do we stand:
Since 1992 CO2 emissions have jumper 62% and the global temperature is up 29%. Fresh water is down 26%. Ocean dead zones up 76% . Forestland down 300 million acres. People up 35%.
You would think that we the biggest dimwit on the planet looking at this evidence would conclude that there is something very wrong. If you dont know what it is, we have evolved beyond our needs, trampling other species in the process.
We are now at a turning point we can either push ahead on our path to destruction or we can reshape our place in nature and prosper or we can face a humongous environmental crisis.
You would think that with everything connected by the internet, it would transform how we do business and help us manage resources more efficiently and sustainable.
As you can see this is not the result.
On the contrary the way we’ve set up corporations, world organisations, where even a majority vote cannot demand that a corporation’s or world organisation policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use.
That’s because profit is the one and only motive.
It’s up to government and it’s up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations and world organisations are simply not allowed to.
Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.
However today, 43% of the world’s population are connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.
In a world driven by short-term profit, the connectivity theory is and will remain so far off the mark it can only be believed by artificial intelligence.
Growing unease over globalization, which is evident from the number of questions being asked about the power of corporations and the adequacy of the regulations governing employment, environmental issues and taxation, is causing economic and social ills, ranging from low consumption to social and political unrest, and is damaging to any future.
There is no need for me to tell you that we are living in turbulent times.
It is clear that the old stories are dying and if we continue to poison ourselves and the planet by self-interest, fragmentation and profit for profit sake there will be no point to the age of technology other than becoming slaves.
However evolution is going on invisibly all the time. Species evolve in response to whatever environment they encounter. No despots have ever set out to select for increased or decreased longevity in the populations they control.
By 2050, the world must feed 9 billion people. Yet the demand for food will be 60% greater than it is today.
The scale of the employment challenge is vast. Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. These advances could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.
This might be the most important transition of the next century – either ushering in an unprecedented era of wealth and progress, or heralding disaster.
But it’s also an area that’s highly neglected: while billions are spent making AI more powerful. The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. It is estimated that there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.
If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur.
It’s generally agreed that, among the forces that led to the immense sophistication of the human brain, the most powerful was a kind of feedback loop between the growing complexity of our ancestors’ physical and social environment and the ability of our ancestors to adapt to it. But why, you may ask, has the enormous increase in complexity of our recent technological environment not had a measurable physical impact on our brains?
The rate at which we are changing our environment now has outstripped even the fastest biological evolution.
However the ineluctable laws of evolution will continue to operate, probably even more strongly, in the overcrowded, ecologically damaged world of the future. And if things get really bad, the evolutionary consequences could be extreme. Any survivors of a nuclear holocaust or an ecological catastrophe are likely to be a small and highly selected subset of today’s population.
If, for example, destruction were so widespread that people could not form viable social groups, the evolution of our descendants would inevitably be driven in the direction of brutishness.
If our technologies fail to protect us against these forces of nature our genetic heritage could fail us too, meaning human evolution will return with a vengeance.
Then again if everyone had exactly the same set of genes controlling the brain’s development, there would be no genetic differences among people on which natural selection could act–and evolution really would come to a stop!
War then would be the strong life; it is life in extremism; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
There is no doubting the force of [the] arguments above, call me back in 3 million years time, because I may well be wrong on that one.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
It took billions of years to go from the first tiny DNA replicators to Homo Sapiens.
It hit you pretty quickly that what’s happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic, but by far THE most important topic for our future.
Our long-term evolutionary success is still to be determined.
When you ask the question is our human intelligence in any way the current peak of evolutionary progress. You also have to ask what is the nature of evolution?
It can not is no longer be that the process of evolution’s only “goal” seems to be self-propagation.
Why?
Because: Technologies already exist which allow genomic selection of embryos during in vitro fertilization—an embryo’s DNA can be sequenced from a single extracted cell. Recent advances such as CRISPR allow highly targeted editing of genomes, and will eventually find their uses in human reproduction.
Because: Artificial Intelligence and Technology like Deep Learning are changing the way we are looking at evolution. It’s no longer a process with a definite goal or even an endpoint.
Because: We may already be running into the genetic limits of intelligence.
The potential for improved human intelligence is enormous. Smarter people and smarter machines—will inevitably intersect.
Naively, one would expect the rate of advance of machine intelligence to outstrip that of biological intelligence. Tinkering with a machine seems easier than modifying a living species, one generation at a time. But advances in genomics—both in our ability to relate complex traits to the underlying genetic codes, and the ability to make direct edits to genomes—will allow rapid advances in biologically-based cognition.
So will AI or genetic modification have the greater impact in the year 2050?
The answer is both.
The feedback loop between algorithms and genomes will result in a rich and complex world, with myriad types of intelligences at play: the ordinary human (rapidly losing the ability to comprehend what is going on around them); the enhanced human (the driver of change over the next 100 years, but perhaps eventually surpassed); and all around them vast machine intellects, some alien (evolved completely in silico) and some strangely familiar (hybrids).
Considering one without the other neglects an important interaction.
Researchers have recently linked mouse and monkey brains together, allowing the animals to collaborate—via an electronic connection—to solve problems.
This is just the beginning of “shared thought.
Better human minds invent better machine learning methods, which in turn accelerate our ability to improve human DNA and create even better minds.
Rather than the standard science-fiction scenario of relatively unchanged, familiar humans interacting with ever-improving computer minds, means we will experience a future with a diversity of both human and machine intelligences.
For the first time, sentient beings of many different types will interact collaboratively to create ever greater advances, both through standard forms of communication and through new technologies allowing brain interfaces.
We may even see human minds uploaded into cyberspace, with further hybridization to follow in the purely virtual realm. These uploaded minds could combine with artificial algorithms and structures to produce an unknowable but humanlike consciousness.
It may seem incredible, or even disturbing, to predict that ordinary humans will lose touch with the most consequential developments on planet Earth, developments that determine the ultimate fate of our civilization and species.
Or will it be that we will augment or brains with AI.
Today, no more than a fraction of a percent of the population has a good understanding of quantum physics, although it underlies many of our most important technologies:
Some have estimated that 10-30 percent of modern gross domestic product is based on quantum mechanics. In the same way, ordinary humans of the future will come to accept machine intelligence as everyday technological magic, like the flat screen TV or smart phone, but with no deeper understanding of how it is possible.
AI will be a disaster for humanity…there is no doubt about it...unless (and this is a small hope) that humans start to treat each other with love and dignity, and that would take a (potentially biological) change in human nature itself which only highly controversial genetic engineering might muster.
Our ability to destroy anything we want to destroy will have to be removed.
It might be nice to fantasize about a star trek scenario, but in reality if we are even 1% as selfish and violent as we are now, and have even 1% of that kind of technology, we would annihilate our self in a matter of days.
Intelligence is synonymous with exploitation, and at every turn where more control is exerted on our world, from primitive fire and harnessing chemistry (bombs and munitions) (<.000001% of mass-energy), to nuclear (0.1%) of turning mass into energy, we get closer and closer to our annihilation the more control we have over our world.
Our intelligence has survived this long partly because we are a necessarily a bit stupid and limited as well. Once AI bridges that deficiency, we will short-circuit and end without taking drastic measures for peace.
If all were simultaneously improved, it would be possible to achieve, very roughly, about 100 standard deviations of improvement, corresponding to an IQ of over 1,000. We can’t imagine what capabilities this level of intelligence represents, but we can be sure it is far beyond our own. Cognitive engineering, via direct edits to embryonic human DNA, will eventually produce individuals who are well beyond all historical figures in cognitive ability.
By 2050, this process will likely have begun.
How and who will determine which kinds of intelligence are “most important” for both machines and humans? Will it be “free” market forces? Government panels? Or what?
What we do know is that humans’ utter dominance on this Earth suggests a clear rule:with intelligence comes power. Which means an ASI, when we create it, will be the most powerful being in the history of life on Earth, and all living things, including humans, will be entirely at its whim—and this might happen in the next few decades.
Once real AI takes over, it will share the same motivations (essentially emotions) that we install in this first oppressive wave of AI, and then I doubt we will be going along with it anywhere.
At the moment we all have a plaza attitude to technology and AI.
We seem to think that once machines reach human levels of intelligence, our ability to tinker starts to be limited by ethical considerations. This is totally foolish as by the time it has surpassed human performance (It has already done so on a number of narrowly defined tasks, such as image or character recognition.) it will be well beyond any ethical considerations.
Rebooting an operating system is one thing, but what about a sentient being with memories and a sense of free will? Eugenics will be all the rage.
Thanks to recent advances, we can predict a phase transition in the behavior of these learning algorithms, representing a sudden increase in their effectiveness.
It is expected that this transition will happen within about a decade, when we reach a critical threshold of about 1 million human genomes worth of data.
While silicon-based technologies are increasingly capable of simulating a mammalian or even human brain, we have little idea of how to find the tiny subset of all possible programs running on this hardware that would exhibit intelligent behavior. The detailed inner workings of a complex machine intelligence (or of a biological brain) may turn out to be incomprehensible to our human minds—
The first truly smart machines will be used just as dumb machines have been, to oppress many and enrich a few.
Its time to wake up if we all don’t want to end up on the garbage heap of Technology that is given Artificial Intelligence with the sole intention of making profit for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, all monopolies jockeying for position.
Intelligence whether it is Artificial in a robot, or a smart phone is multidimensional, and must be vet to ensure it complies with our core values.
WE NEED A NEW TOTALLY TRANSPARENT WORLD ORGANISATION THAT IS SELF FINANCING TO VET ALL TECHNOLOGY BEFORE THEY’RE RELEASED INTO OUR FUTURE EVOLUTION.
All comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the rubbish bin.
Sticking to the creativity killing industrial models of education and business certainly aren’t going to produce significant breakthrough technologies.
UNFORTUNATELY THE SAPIENS REGIME ON EARTH HAS SO FAR PRODUCED LITTLE THAT WE CAN BE PROUD OF.
Time and time again massive increases in human power has not improved the well-being of individual humans and has caused immense misery to other animals.
In the last few decades we have made some progress as far as human condition is concerned , with reductions in world wars, plagues, and famines.
But we remain unsure of our goals and remain as discontented as ever.
No body seems to know where we are going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have little idea what to do with the power.
Worse still we seem to be more irresponsible than ever, wreaking havoc on the world and nature while seeking little more than self-satisfaction which we never find.
I am sure like me that you are finding it difficult if not impossible to assimilate never mind keep up with all that is presently taking place in world.
Mass migration, climate change, return to the dark ages ISIS, not to mention wars, terrorists, cheat, (Volkswagen) Countries going broke, Designer drugs, Space exploration, the Web/Internet/Apps.
THE FACT IS THAT WE ARE THE TERROR OF THE ECOSYSTEM and it seems lost on us due to short-term profit and greed.
Most of our world organisations with the advance of technology are out of date, underfunded and unrepresentative of humanity and the planet and in need of radical overhauls, but it is of little concern to the populist at large.
However the good news is that in the back ground there is a revolution going on that is changing the way we live and is going to change evolution itself.
Once more we are being presented with opportunities that are opening up so quickly they are outpacing our collective capacity for making wise and far-sighted decisions.
Presently, only a tiny fraction of these opportunities have being realized.
We are releasing ourselves from the shackles of biology.
We are beginning to re shape our minds and our bodies.
If you think that the mapping the first genome require fifteen years and three billion dollars that to day a persons DNA can be mapped within a few weeks for a mere few hundred bucks which means nothing to most people, but soon we will be able to know what you will die from other than accident or bullet.
The road to designer medical care is well on the way for those that can afford it.
Our social media is blinding us to the true consequences of supplementary devices we now use to live our lives.
Or is it telling us that we are standing on the brink of becoming true cyborgs.
Like storing or brains in the cloud, having inorganic features that are inseparable from our bodies that are modify our abilities, our desires, personalities, and identities.
Do we care that bio-engineering could resurrect the Neanderthals. No
Do we care that we are braking the laws of natural selection with impunity by producing a rabbit that glows. No
Do we care that we can produce mice that grow human ears, or change sex through hormonal treatment, or creating computer versus that are self learning, or bring back extinct creatures. Are these examples not the first steps of genetically engineer that are changing an individual abilities but also their social structure. No
Tinkering with or genes won’t necessarily kill us.
But we might be fiddle with Homo Sapiens to such an extent that we will be no longer be Homo Sapiens.
Do we care that the Defense Advance research project Agency in the US is developing cyborgs out of insects? No
Do we care that computer algorithms are running the stock exchange or selecting target for drones, running our economies, teaching the next generation? No
What if we have quantum computer power? Our successors will then function on a different level of consciousness. Not to worried we are human.
The Good news. If indeed we become cyborgs with some thing beyond consciousness that we cannot conceive, it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of much interest to us or our current social organisation of Communist or Capitalist, or which gender we are.
At this point you might think why worry we are only upgrading into a different type of human being.
Even though the implications of creating a mind inside a computer is far more dramatic than anything we have seen to date there is a great and urgent danger that our complacency which is hidden by science under the umbrella of The Gilgamesh Project (that justifies everything that science does by labeling it as curing diseases and saving human lives) is going to be nonrecoverable in the near future.
In my view its time we decide what we want to want by influencing the direction that scientists are taking.
If what is happening is allowed to continue and continue it will without imaginative social policies blight our society and there will be millions of people living wretchedly lives and reacting accordingly.
Globalization, technological changes, and governments policies have produced a class structure with a tiny plutocracy of billionaires, corporations and algorithms that are doing away with people.
We need a politics of time.
We need to scrap the United Nations and replace it with a new fully funded¨( see previous post) World People Protection Organisation that reflects the needs of the planet and all that live on it.
We must realize before its to late that the growing structural inequality is socially unsustainable. A basic world wage would be a good start. ( See Post We don’t live in a digital world the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet)
We see one or the other every day. We love, hate, kill, and sell them, in all colors, shapes and sizes but we have little understand of them.
But what does it mean to-day when we say “mankind.” Is it referring to both male and female.
For centuries, the differences between men and women were socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism in which men assumed superiority over women and maintained it through domination.
Sexual attraction is controlled mainly by factors hardwired into the brain, due to evolutionary forces.
The vision of equality between the sexes has narrowed the possibilities for discovery of what truly exists within a man and within a woman. As the goal of equality between men and women now grows closer we are also losing our awareness of important differences.
” Men know life too early. Woman knows life too late”. That is the difference between men and woman” Oscar Wild.
The word ‘men’, meaning “to think” or “to have a cognitive mind”, was also gender neutral and connected to “man”, which meant “the thinker”.
It is my position that men and women are equal but different. When I say equal, I mean that men and women have a right to equal opportunity and protection under the law. None of us would argue the fact that men and women are physically different.
Modern society hasn’t made relationships between men and women any easier.
The challenge facing men and women is to become aware of their identities, to accept their differences, and to live their lives fully and as skillfully as possible.
It’s not that men and women live in completely different realities. It’s not that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. To understand the difference we must first understand in what ways we are different.
The world will be less interesting when everything is same.The stereotype that men are more “thick-headed” than women is not far-fetched. Let me clearly state that I do not believe that men (or women) are locked into these negative stereotypes.Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. Sadly, this difference in size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but does explain the difference in size between men and women. Men need a bigger brain to control their bigger bodies and muscles.
Women on the other hand have four times as many brain cells (neurons) connecting the right and left side of their brain.
So where does that get us in any understanding?
Women are apparently extremely complex and mysterious creatures while men are a simple-minded species.
The most obvious difference is probably the emotions.
Men rely easily and more heavily on their left brain to solve one problem one step at a time. Women have more efficient access to both sides of their brain and therefore greater use of their right brain.
Most men are less concerned and do not feel the same as women when solving a problem. Men approach problems in a very different manner than women. Men have a tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem solving process.
Women consider and process information differently.
Women tend to be intuitive thinkers. Women have a larger deep limbic system than men, it allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express themselves, which promotes bonding with others.
It must be emphasized that they can and do solve problems in a similar manner.
Men have a hard time understanding emotions that are not spoken, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. In stress situation men have a response reaction that resembles “fight or flight” while women react with a “tend and befriend” strategy. Men are more turned on by visual stimuli.
Recent evidence suggests that humanity is not only still evolving but that human evolution is actually accelerating. Neanderthals did not die out, but instead were absorbed into modern humanity.
Facebook may soon need to add “Just got served divorce papers” to its list of relationship statuses.
A Manhattan judge ruled in the case of Ellanora Baidoo, 26, who wanted to divorce her husband, Sena Blood-Dzraku, but had no mailing address for him and therefore no place to which she could send the paperwork. The judge is allowing Baidoo to serve her estranged husband with a divorce summons through Facebook.
Maybe the word ‘man’ should be replaced with dude.
How are you? If you stretched out all the DNA in your body and put them end to end, it would be about six times the distance that Pluto is from the Sun.
You are capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and emotion. You are notable for your desire to understand and influence the world around you, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion.
Your brain weights about 2% of our body mass but consumes 20% of our oxygen at resting state.
The changes in your DNA are completely random.
But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense.
Sperm hold a much higher chance of carrying an error or mutation than an egg, especially among older men.
You decide who to have as a mate or how best to rear your children.
You have develop in a cultural sense; inheriting knowledge from previous generations and building upon it.
Your intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile.
Although you are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in your brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species.
You cannot step away from evolution.
In fact no matter how unique you think you are: you are living and dying like me on this planet called Earth.
“Uniquely in the living world, what makes humans what we are is in our minds, in our society, and not in our evolution.”
So what type of Modern Human are you.?
This is who you are.
Many people conceptualize evolution to be a gradual process, with natural selection blindly tinkering away at genetic and phenotypic diversity across generations. As long as people are tempted to confuse evolution with improvement dramatic changes in a species, under certain circumstances, can accelerate rapidly.
You don’t have to be right to be doing something useful.
Modern day human evolution is a contentious topic.
Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline?
Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented?
In short: Will Homo be left without his sapiens?
Our intelligence is designed to allow us to build houses and throw spears straighter at pigs in the bush, but that is not the real driver of brain size… In reality, what has driven human and primate brain evolution is the complexity of our social world, [and] that complex world is not going to go away.
Will the fruits of science and technology enabled humans to rise above the constraints of nature and cushioned our fragile intellect from genetic mutations. I don’t think so.
Humans of the future may have less hair.
Humans of the future may be more resistant to diabetes and heart disease.
Humans of the future may be physically weaker and more susceptible to pathogens.
Humans of the future may lack wisdom teeth.
Race differences may disappear.
But natural forces of evolution will still continue to shape humanity despite the power we have to profoundly alter the world around us.
This time does seem to mark a watershed where modern humans are pushing the boundaries further and further.
In my last post (The beady eye look’s at history’s greatest frauds) I argued that humanity’s collective intelligence has gone downhill ever since we started living on farms.
Its continuing with the iPad man.
The cost of greater intelligence is marginally more expensive.
Human beings have stopped evolving after becoming the only species to “put halt to natural selection of its own free will”. Says David Attenborough
Humanity is fragile.
Are we genetically different from our Homo sapiens ancestors who lived 10-20,000 years ago?
When we think of human evolution, our minds wander back to the thousands of years it took natural selection to produce the modern-day man. But are we still changing as a species, even today.
But not only are we still evolving, we’re doing so even faster than before.
In the last 10,000 years, the pace of our evolution has sped up 100 times, creating more mutations in our genes, and more natural selections from those mutations.
In recent years, enormous advances in techniques for the recovery and analysis of ancient DNA have unlocked new secrets about our human evolutionary family tree. These advances indicate that modern humans did not completely replace other human species, as had once been suggested. Instead there was some interbreeding. This model has become known as replacement-hybridisation, ‘leaky replacement’, or ‘mostly out of Africa’.
All people today are classified as Homo sapiens.
Living in cities has produced a genetic variant that allows us to be more resistant to diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. While we may like to believe our big brains make us smarter than the rest of the animal world, our brains have actually been shrinking over the last 30,000 years.
The average volume of the human brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cubic centimeters, which is equivalent to a chunk the size of a tennis ball.
But about 10,000 years ago, someone who lived near the Black Sea developed a genetic mutation that turned brown eyes blue. It is virtually impossible for two blue-eyed mates to create a brown-eyed baby, our blue-eyed male ancestors may have sought out blue-eyed mates as a way of ensuring fidelity.
Finally, can we say what direction human evolution will take in the future?
This is a fascinating question to consider but impossible to answer because of innumerable unknown factors. Though, it is certain that we will continue to evolve until we reach the point of extinction.
Is Technology making modern-day MUMMIES: The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc.
Are we going to stand back and spectate while the ugly foundations of a modern-day. More people have a mobile phone than a toilet.
It’s obvious to anybody that looks around at the behavior of Homo sapiens that we’re not really perfected in any way.
The violence and vandalism unleashed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East in recent years is seen from Yerevan as a logical continuation of the world’s failure to properly recognize and condemn the past genocides, including the Ottoman-era massacres of 1.5 million Armenians.
To those who say we’re are really making progress, there are more slaves than at any time in human history — 27 million. On average, in the past half-hour, one more person will have been trafficked to the United States into slavery. Never mind the rest of the word.
But there are also other forms, where people voluntarily agree to take what’s presented to them as a job. It’s usually an opportunity for a better life and much-needed income. They go willingly.
There’s a lot of illegal money being made buying, selling, and exploiting humans — about $32 billion a year.
Until human rights are elevated to a serious consideration for all decision-making, the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration will remain an unattained goal. We are all human beings therefore we all have a stake in our history.
What if Darwin Got Wrong? Has our culture and our technology stopped or changed our evolutionary trajectory?
The Judeo-Christians believed that nature was placed here on Earth to be dominated by humans.
What is the present day relationship between nature and society?
Men are presented as being more powerful in society than women. As a species, we have naively disconnected ourselves from the ecology of life and have never fully credited our interdependence with nature. We are acting in ignorance to this whole and we are only beginning to feel the repercussions. The results of any evolution right now won’t really be visible until thousands of years in the future.
This is what we did look like:
This is what we might look like 100,000: years in the future.
So where does this leave us, evolutionarily speaking?
Don’t take received wisdom as the truth. All scientific knowledge is provisional. Question everything.
We differ from each other not only in our outward appearance, but also in the inner workings of our bodies. If humans had access to more than the 10% of the mental capacity that they now use, we would be able to control our body’s involuntary functions.
Evolution Has Never Been Observed.
But we are on the path to liberal eugenics?
Liberal eugenics is the idea of using genetic technologies to enhance human abilities and characteristics. Imagine the possibility of giving birth to your child without the possibility of any genetic mutations or ‘undesirable’ traits being passed along.
What would happen if we could change our physical appearance by the power of our own minds.
I believe that one day, we will be left with only two human races: those privileged enough to go through the process of designing their offspring’s own genome and those who will continue to roll the evolutionary die.
Is this the way we simply must go?
Society is the sum of the inventions, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by human beings across particular places and times.
The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.
The stereotype that men are more “thick-headed” than women is not far-fetched. Let me clearly state that I do not believe that men (or women) are locked into these negative stereotypes.
Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. Sadly, this difference in size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but does explain the difference in size between men and women. Men need a bigger brain to control their bigger bodies and muscles.
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