Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Status:
"81 Years, NOT 91 Felonies"
(set 27 days ago)
Location: Dallas, TX
5,790 posts, read 3,598,050 times
Reputation: 5696
Advertisements
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ottawa2011
With any luck, humans may someday evolve into a superior form, and become monkeys.
I saw a documentary about different types of monkeys. It was shocking how much more developed they are than humans. For example: do you know the most efficient way of getting a banana out of the peel? Monkeys know this technique. Humans need Youtube videos to explain it to them. How do we continue to exist? We're worse than pandas...
Any success the monkey has is more due to "cultural literacy" than it is to intrinsic intelligence. Literally "monkey see, monkey do" in this case. How would a monkey who has never seen a banana get the banana out of the peel? Humans probably knew the most efficient way at one time, but lost that ability when we came to have a wider variety of food choices - especially those humans in areas where bananas don't grow. In truth, much, much of what we think of as "human nature" or "common sense" is actually knowledge learned as small children than intrinsic instinct.
It's been a long time since Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life[, but the processes it described have no beginning and no end. We have some of them under our control but not all.
I read, maybe 10 - 12 years ago, a NYT article that the last great evolutionary development of the human brain took place around 7000 BC (as best as I can recall) in the Middle East. A part of the cranium got larger, allowing bigger and better brains. It wasn't long thereafter that agriculture appeared and then villages and then, all the rest of culture and civilization.
To put the question in reverse, should the development of favoured races be encouraged? Eugenics appeared not long after Darwin. In the times in which it appeared, eugenics was bound to be encumbered with unsavory appendages.
But today, in our present more enlightened times, maybe we should give it another try? Much of what plagues or graces the human race has been handed down to us through our genes: many diseases, behavior patterns, desirable qualities, etc. Don't we owe our progeny at least an effort to improve what nature bestowed on us? We have improved crops, livestock, to our benefit. Why not improve us?
Development of the "post-human" idea been around for quite a while, as part of the practical immortality development for the Elite. This is why robotization, digitization, AI and nano tech are developing so fast. This is also why the principle of a human going digital is slowly but steadily seeded in "hominid" minds. As crowd has to develop acceptance and complacence, when Masters go digital.
Through genetic engineering we can massively accelerate evolution.
We no longer have to breed two intelligent people together and hope for a more intelligent off spring. We can now mix genetic material together and select for the most intelligent combination.
Of course, this will still take many generations to have any type of dramatic effect.
A faster step would be to 3-D print brains with optimized neurological connections. We don't have the understanding, yet, to do this and this is still a somewhat limited technique.
What is most likely to happen, and most dangerous, is computer intelligence. Most people in the field believe that there is a 50% chance of achieving super-human artificial intelligence within my lifetime. Once humans can create a machine more intelligent than themselves, that machine would, then, be able to create a machine more intelligent than itself, the resulting machine would then be able to create a machine more intelligent than itself, and so on until the difference between the machine intelligence and human intelligence would be similar to (or in excess of) the difference between human intelligence and, say, and ant intelligence.
The problem with this, is that such an intelligence wouldn't have any more reason to be concerned with our well-being than we do to be concerned with ant well-being.
It's far from certain that human evolution is anything we'll ever need to concern ourselves with.
It will be a combination of genetic engineering and AI. There's likely a superintelligent computer in our near future.
Neuroscience, coding, and robotics engineering will be an integral part of the next evolutionary step humanity takes. This time nature won't have anything to do with it.
In the future humans will trade their biological body for a robotic one and getting rid of aging, diseases, hunger, and thirst along the way. Initially the digital human brain takes up a room but will shrink to a pocket size device in a few decades, just like computers did.
People can travel at light speed by uploading their consciousness to devices on the moon, Mars, etc. I can go on and on about what this amazing future will be.
I hate that I won't live long enough be a part of it.
I thought we had to kill off our hominid competition....
the homo vegans starved to death,,,,they refused to eat meat.
we are the victor of the evolution competition...
some think the Neanderthals are still around (bigfoot) they have learned to avoid us
lots of youtube videos on this subject.....
one says that because we started cooking meats we got less disease and our brain enlarged...... we made bows and arrows while other hominids had spears..
also according to ancient alien theorists.... our ancestors could levitate and hurl rocks ... big rocks
Neuroscience, coding, and robotics engineering will be an integral part of the next evolutionary step humanity takes. This time nature won't have anything to do with it.
In the future humans will trade their biological body for a robotic one and getting rid of aging, diseases, hunger, and thirst along the way. Initially the digital human brain takes up a room but will shrink to a pocket size device in a few decades, just like computers did.
People can travel at light speed by uploading their consciousness to devices on the moon, Mars, etc. I can go on and on about what this amazing future will be.
I hate that I won't live long enough be a part of it.
Yeah but who gets to upload his/her brain? Not the poor. And we might upload memories but would we really be uploading our own individual thinking processes? We have different personalities because our brains are wired differently. If we upload our memory into identically constructed computers, I maintain that our individuality will be lost. Besides, there is room for clever engineers to tweak the software so that certain behaviors are suppressed. What will happen when everyone is the same, some ideal robot, where the "ideal" is somebody's creation? Where is the fun in that? Sounds like West World.
In this digital, robotic world of yours, the meaning of birth and death will cease to exist. You might look forward to such an existence, but personally I think what makes us human is that life is precious and short, and we all get only one shot at it. I think I prefer my evolving to be the old fashion kind in which there still exists mystery in where we are going.
Throughout all of time, there has never been a "be allowed to evolve." Either we evolve or we don't. That's how life works.
With all due respect, this humanoid, become part computerized mumbo jumbo stuff is a little too much for me, just like the idea of traveling to Mars or any where else in space. What is wrong with us being human, and with staying on Earth (given we take proper care of it like we are supposed to...guess we are still evolving to do that! har har).
This post brings up another (dumb) question, do we ever stop evolving? What is next for us in our survival in this world? We have already overcame SO much...why do we need to let technology ruin and take away all we have worked hard to achieve over the century's as part of our very own evolution and survival on this planet? Why are we trying to take away our humanity?
Yeah but who gets to upload his/her brain? Not the poor. And we might upload memories but would we really be uploading our own individual thinking processes? We have different personalities because our brains are wired differently. If we upload our memory into identically constructed computers, I maintain that our individuality will be lost. Besides, there is room for clever engineers to tweak the software so that certain behaviors are suppressed. What will happen when everyone is the same, some ideal robot, where the "ideal" is somebody's creation? Where is the fun in that? Sounds like West World.
In this digital, robotic world of yours, the meaning of birth and death will cease to exist. You might look forward to such an existence, but personally I think what makes us human is that life is precious and short, and we all get only one shot at it. I think I prefer my evolving to be the old fashion kind in which there still exists mystery in where we are going.
I don't think there has been any biological evolution in the human species since we became homo sapiens. Nature has done all it can with human biology. It is up to us to take the next evolutionary step.
The way humans evolve is through technology. Nature doesn't let us swim like fish in water, so we build submarines. Natures doesn't let us fly like birds, so we build airplanes. Medical science lets us live longer than what is possible naturally.
Our caveman ancestors shaped rocks into tools. Then they discovered and harnessed metals. With metals they built better tools. Tools enable us to be more productive and live longer lives. Computer, cellphones, the internet, robots, etc. are tools on the path of that evolution.
Don't fear robots. At the most basic level, they are tools programmed to do a certain things. And they have been around us for decades. Your coffer makers and microwave ovens are robots. The GPS are robots. Smarter and smarter robots are inevitable. Ultimately human immortality will be possible by ways of the digital and robotic revolution.
Some of us want to live for a long time. But it's impractical to do as biological beings. Digital is the way to go. I don't want to live forever for the sake of living forever. I just want to live long enough to know if there is a finish line to all this.
I don't think there has been any biological evolution in the human species since we became homo sapiens. Nature has done all it can with human biology.
Not true. There are many examples of evolution working. The ability to digest milk products is due to the presence of a gene that produces lactase, an enzyme. That gene is absent in most of Asia because milk is not a common part of their diet, while in Europe the gene is common. That disparity is due to evolution - people who needed to digest milk evolved to have the gene. Another example is sickle cell anemia, which gives the host immunity to malaria. It evolved in people who lived in equatorial Africa so they can survive in high malaria environments.
The one thing that hasn't occurred is speciation. But then if it had, we wouldn't be here, at least not as Homo Sapiens.
Quote:
It is up to us to take the next evolutionary step.
Nope. The last thing we need is other humans deciding which genes to propagate or creating new genes. People being what they are, will use that for their own agendas, like creating super-soldiers or creating the perfect, beautiful, blond-hair/blue-eyed master race. Diversity is good. We don't need to be engineered.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
