The humans species: 50,000AD

Fromthetrees

On Qi the delectable Stephen Fry said that the average IQ is going up so quickly between each passing generation to the point that if your great great gran parents were alive today they would be legally retarded.

We will probably destroy ourselves before too long though.

CrazyRabbit

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

To be pedantic, admittedly my forte, Evolution does not actually work like that. We are not evolving "towards" anything in particular. It is a common error to think of evolution as always heading towards a "better" version of something that exists now. In fact evolution and selection is based entirely on the environment the organism is in which is also constantly changing. As we can not really predict what the world will be like in 50,000 years we also can not really predict what evolution will do in that time either.

Often quite the opposite happens. Brains can get smaller, some creatures which evolved eyes lose them again later, things that evolved towards size go smaller and vice versa, some birds become flightless.... so on so on.

Essentially evolution selects a best fit for a current environment and it will always tend towards a simpler version requiring less materials and energy. If eyes, intelligence, strength or size are all redundant in a particular environment... to name but a few... they will tend to evolve out.

While Idocracy does paint a bleak future (both in terms of our evolution and in terms of hoping Hollywood movies will ever improve) where the stupid far out reproduce the intelligent... leading to a natural evolution towards stupidity over time.... it is just a movie thankfully and we can hope such a thing is not really our future.

In terms of evolution we have used our technology to counteract much of natural selection and so there is little reason to expect much "natural" evolution except over extended periods. Things that would have been massively selected against for example are now alleviated using our technology. One must only look at the contributions of those like Stephen Hawking to the world despite his massively debilitating illness to see this. One might expect, as technology does much of our work for us, that we will become a physically weaker species.

From what I have read on the subject most of the evolution people in the field picture for our species over the coming ages tends to be related to how our immune systems will evolve in the constant war against bacterial and viral evolution. A war we have no firm reasons for expecting to win without the aid of technology.

I completely understand what you are saying, and I think it applies to practically all species, and mostly to humans. Evolution is indeed not a goal, but a process of adaptation (we just happen to be adapting to become more intelligent...and little reason to believe that will reverse). I didn't mean to imply that evolution had any goal.

We probably should consider that more that just our physical environment affects our evolution though. Is it not plausible to consider the influences of our society to be also a driving factor in our evolution, more specifically in brain development?

We live in a society now (a type of environment) that prizes intelligence over muscle/agility etc that would have been much more valuable in the past. I may be completely wrong, but I can't help but feel that evolution is not just about adaptation to physical environments. The body adapts to the physical environment, but perhaps the brain adapts to more than just that due to its nature??

And as you say, natural evolution may be a thing of the past..so to speak. With genetic manipulation, the possibilities are endless, with vast changes possible in a relatively small period of time.

CrazyRabbit

spankmaster2000 wrote: »

I sincerely doubt that!
Where was my jetpack and hover-car back in 2000? I don't think these advances are often as close as people seem to accept. Eventually; maybe yes; but "a few decades"; no.

I'd say that over the next few thousand years you'll be likely to see things like far less people having wisdom teeth; smaller jawbones/muscles (from eating processed food); and overall less body hair, etc.

Bionic eye....very limited, but it's a start and shows the possibilities.
http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16220708

And I'm pretty sure I read something about artificial tendons/muscle tissue being developed.

Edit: Ops..didn't get to opinion guy's post before I replied...same story, different website.

TeddyTedson

I wonder if we'll still be the inside of our cheek from time to time...

yuppies

Baldness will be eradicated within the next 500 years for sure as cheap, effective hair-transplants become as ubiquitous as a trip to the barber.

Shryke

Science and technology are exploding in every direction. Our future is in no way predictable, not even for the next couple of hundred years. As long as some retard doesnt press the big red button at least until we reach a certain level of independance from earth.

kylith

One word: Morlocks.

charlemont

Can a man get pregnant in the year 50,000 ?

BBDBB

charlemont wrote: »

Can a man get pregnant in the year 50,000 ?

brace yerself.....................

Battered Mars Bar

Domo230 wrote: »

Smaller/Weaker/More metrosexuals: Men used to need to be strong to fend off other males - With the advent of guns this is obsolete.Also it has been observed that women from healthier countries prefer more feminine men.I can only imagine the world will get healthier (as in less diseases) in the future so more and more women will choose feminine men.

I don't believe that. Women like men, metros just end up in the friend zone for them to shop with.

Phill Ewinn

I don't give a sh1te.

BattleCorp

ScumLord wrote: »

Humans haven't evolved much in the past 50000 years and I don't think we'll change much over the next 50000 years. The human body has already shown its ability to survive in just about any environment. Its an excellent body type and if it ain't broke nature won't kill it off. Unless women start having children with tall super intelligent bug eyed men we won't end up like grey aliens either.

We haven't evolved much in the last 50,000 years because we didn't have to. Our environment was pretty much stable until the last 200 years. Now, with the advances in technology, we will start to evolve faster to adapt to our new technology influenced environment.

Change will happen because it's no longer "survival of the fittest". Technology has seen to that.

shedweller

Canis Lupus wrote: »

......................... I reckon our childrens children will read in history books about how now was the golden age of technology............

Theres a thing i was thinking recently, after seeing the looting of historical artifacts left right and centre in areas of conflict.

Will our descendants find much about us in 50,000 years time in whatever it is they have for history books?
Our structures arent made to last that long, devices will surely crumble to dust before then. We simply dont or couldn't be arsed building something like the pyramids, just to send a message into the future that "we were here"

When does history becomes mythology? Or simply forgotten/looted etc.
48,000 years is a lot of wars etc. and i don't expect to have a prolonged war free period any time soon.

shedweller

We might be able to get nearer to chernobyl and fukushima to clean up the place a little.

BBDBB

You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!




Charlton Heston - Planet of the Apes 1968

BeerWolf

desertcircus

In evolutionary terms, unless there's a drastic change in environment then there'll be very little change in physiology. For evolution to work, a decent proportion of people have to die without reproducing; outside of hunter-gatherer societies, that's no longer happening.

As for the brain: given its incredible plasticity, and assuming an ever more safe environment, IQ can probably keep rising until we reach a plateau. The brain assigns more parts of itself to the jobs than are needed most: in a world where material comfort relies less and less on physical skill and more and more on abstract thought, that will probably mean higher and higher IQs.

nozzferrahhtoo

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

We probably should consider that more that just our physical environment affects our evolution though. Is it not plausible to consider the influences of our society to be also a driving factor in our evolution, more specifically in brain development?

Indeed, which is what I touched on briefly by mention to that travesty of the silver screen Idiocracy. In that film it is for example suggested that if one were to construct a welfare state that favors the reproduction of the unemployed and unemployable, while working the rest to a point of stress when they have no time to have children... then one is clearly going to see an evolution in a certain direction. What that direction is I will leave to you to imagine but the film in question chose to portray it as a steady decline in intelligence and the evolutionary rise of "Trailer Trash". Probably less PC than my own imaginations on the subject but it certainly serves as an example.

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

We live in a society now that prizes intelligence over muscle/agility etc

I worry about how true that actually is. My experience... not just in dealing heavily in subjects like Religion, Evolution and Creationism but also wider than that.... shows that often intelligence, education, books, science and more are all regarded with distaste, distrust and suspicion by a worryingly large quantity of people. Perhaps much more so in the US where much of my impression of that comes from but I have seen over my life a creeping change in that regard worldwide and rarely in a good direction. There are people in the world who actually pride themselves on their ignorance and puerility and many of our religions seem to act like Mystery is a virtue and education and answers are some form of affront.

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

And as you say, natural evolution may be a thing of the past..so to speak. With genetic manipulation, the possibilities are endless, with vast changes possible in a relatively small period of time.

It is not even limited to genetic manipulation, but our technology as a whole. I gave the example of Stephen Hawking. We can see how our technology has managed to help him over come disabilities that would be fatal in open nature. to the point that not only could he reproduce but has also continued to care for and provide for his children.

The same is true of many things from poor eye sight to diabetes to the modification of resources by means of things like agriculture. We are systematically counteracting the effects of Natural Selection on many corners of our lives. While I do not think it possible to stop evolution per se, we have certainly slowed it in our species in many ways.

Wibbs

BattleCorp wrote: »

We haven't evolved much in the last 50,000 years because we didn't have to.

We have and we had to. More genetic change in the last 10,000 than in the previous 50. You got blue eyes? Lots of people have. Only evolved within the last 10,000 years. Blond hair not much older. Miss Holly Willoughby is a popular lass among the lads and for good reason. Miss Scarlett Johansson another with the horn factor for many. Women with their traits didn't exist 15,000 years ago.

Our environment was pretty much stable until the last 200 years.

Eh not really. The mini ice age of the late middle ages being just one sample of an environmental change that impacted humanity. Around the same time you have the rolling, damn near yearly plagues affecting Europe. Black death et al. Huge environmental pressure. It had an outcome too. It seems Europeans are less prone to the HIV virus because we're all the result of those who survived those many plagues(the black death was only one type). Now, with the advances in technology, we will start to evolve faster to adapt to our new technology influenced environment.

Change will happen because it's no longer "survival of the fittest". Technology has seen to that.

Technology has been seeing to that for at least 15,000 years and arguably before.

shedweller wrote: »

Theres a thing i was thinking recently, after seeing the looting of historical artifacts left right and centre in areas of conflict.

Will our descendants find much about us in 50,000 years time in whatever it is they have for history books?
Our structures arent made to last that long, devices will surely crumble to dust before then. We simply dont or couldn't be arsed building something like the pyramids, just to send a message into the future that "we were here"

True enough S. The joke is the pyramids will last longer than most of our more current structures. In 10,000 years time, barring earthquakes etc our own Newgrange will still note the winter solstice as it has done for a thousand years before the pyramids were a dream. Some technology will be left. The apollo stuff up on the moon would mostly survive. No air to oxidise it for a start. If you went back up today to the moon buggies the chances are good they'd look identical to when they were switched off in the early 70's and would likely start after a charge. All that stuff will probably be around in 50,000 years covered in a thin layer of stardust.

Computer tech is very fragile. There are probably millions of documents, never printed now stuck on the original floppy disks(that were actually floppy). The interweb is a major help because the info is spread, but in the advent of a dark ages when the lights start to go out, the interweb would not be safe(the thought of which seems like blasphemy to many tech heads). When Rome fell, within a generation pottery production fell off too. The ability to make proper concrete, literacy and all sorts of stuff dwindled massively. Every town and village would have had a potter. It was a widely disseminated skill/knowledge/meme, yet it was lost as a skill remarkably rapidly.

Look at photos. People are happy snappers taking millions of pics a day, yet few people bother to print any and if they do the inks aren't as robust as old style film. I've seen people lose whole chunks of personal memories in pics after a hard disk crash. No going to the grannies cupboard to find the negatives anymore. In a 1000 years time if we suffer catastrophes, we may have more photos of the 1940's and 50's than we do of the 2000's.

Ellis Dee

48,000 years is actually very little time in terms of human evolution, but I like to think that in 50,000 AD all the men will be as bald as Captain Jean-Luc Dickhard and all the women will have boobs like this::D:D

http://mos.totalfilm.com/images/b/battle-royale-movie-robots-vs-tv-robots-01-420-75.jpg

Wibbs

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

While I do not think it possible to stop evolution per se, we have certainly slowed it in our species in many ways.

Or have sped it up. Genetic change occurs faster in a larger population. We've more humans in the world than ever and while travel has never been easier the vast majority of us end up with "one of our own". Irish people tend to end up with Irish people and Chinese people end up with Chinese people, etc. The chances of a speciation event are higher now than ever(though unlikely enough). We're also a more diverse species than once thought. We're not all "pure" Africans with a few localised tweaks. We've got all sorts of genes from older hominids knocking about in our various bloodlines. Then the genetics themselves. As technology massively reduces the impact of "faulty" genes, many more of those genes survive and carriers of same reproduce them into the next generation, whereas before they might have died out or been very rare. Couples who are infertile, some of whom would be genetically predisposed to being so, can now have that bypassed in the lab and have kids with that genetic heritage. That's a pretty remarkable evolutionary change and rapid with it.

nozzferrahhtoo

"Slowed it down in many ways" certainly does allow for speeding it up in others. Indeed larger populations allow for genetic diversity and genetic drift. I was more talking about the effects of Natural Selection as a driver for Evolution however. What we are doing is counteracting by use of our technology the things that Natural Selection would otherwise have worked with.

Clearly you are right however that in doing so we are also increasing and maintaining genetic diversity by helping to maintain genetics that _might_ otherwise have died out naturally. (Though as you yourself allude to one can never be sure. Even things like infertility under the "normal" ministrations of Natural Selection do not necessarily ever have to die out). So in that sense we could be said to be speeding up the process too.

However in the context of this thread, musing on how different our species might be in X years compared to now, I certainly see no great expectation of significant change. Do you? I have read little, in other words, to make me expect the amount of change if you compared today's human to one 100,000 years from now to be anything comparable to that of comparing it to one 100,000 years gone.

Ush1

I kind of hate the term "survival of the fittest".

As has already been said it is simply feedback from the environment and the ability to reproduce which dictates what is successful.

Saying things like, "Well that guy would not have survived without technology", isn't suprising because technology is part of the environment. It's the same as saying "That really healthy, athletic guy would not have survived if he lived on lava instead of a house".

Ush1

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

"Slowed it down in many ways" certainly does allow for speeding it up in others. Indeed larger populations allow for genetic diversity and genetic drift. I was more talking about the effects of Natural Selection as a driver for Evolution however. What we are doing is counteracting by use of our technology the things that Natural Selection would otherwise have worked with.

I'm fairly sure that is still natural selection. We may have changed the environment but because we don't have an end "goal" in mind I think that it wouldn't be classed artificial selection.

nozzferrahhtoo

Ush1 wrote: »

I'm fairly sure that is still natural selection. We may have changed the environment but because we don't have an end "goal" in mind I think that it wouldn't be classed artificial selection.

By natural selection I am referring to traits that would have been selected against if that selection was not precluded by application of our technology and abilities.

For example the debilitating conditions of people like Stephen Hawking would clearly preclude him from caring for or providing for his off spring were it not for the wonders of our technologies. Similarly there are variety of conditions... such as some varieties of diabetes.... which are fatal except for our ability to moderate them using our medical knowledge.... and as Wibbs pointed out infertility is very close (though clearly not all the way there) to simply being an evolutionary dead end... except for again our medical science.

The point being that the material Natural Selection normally gets to work with in the rest of the Kingdom of Life are alleviated by our scientific ability. And this fact is likely only to increase as we not only can alleviate the effects of such conditions artificially but we gain the ability to "correct" them at the genetic level.

folamh

Check out this timeline for the future of the universe as predicted by Brian Holtz, MA in artificial intelligence. The human/technology stuff seems very speculative and there are some contentious assertions about positivism, materialism and libertarianism. But the last bit on the future of the natural universe is very interesting.

Ush1

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

By natural selection I am referring to traits that would have been selected against if that selection was not precluded by application of our technology and abilities.

For example the debilitating conditions of people like Stephen Hawking would clearly preclude him from caring for or providing for his off spring were it not for the wonders of our technologies. Similarly there are variety of conditions... such as some varieties of diabetes.... which are fatal except for our ability to moderate them using our medical knowledge.... and as Wibbs pointed out infertility is very close (though clearly not all the way there) to simply being an evolutionary dead end... except for again our medical science.

The point being that the material Natural Selection normally gets to work with in the rest of the Kingdom of Life are alleviated by our scientific ability. And this fact is likely only to increase as we not only can alleviate the effects of such conditions artificially but we gain the ability to "correct" them at the genetic level.

Yes but it's still natural selection. Deers and foxes can get run over by cars now rather than being eaten or killed another way, this is all just changes to the environment that just happen to be man made. Technology is just another part of the environment which we use to our advantage, same as many other life forms.

nozzferrahhtoo

Indeed. One would really just be equivocating over where to linguistically place the divide between natural and artificial selection. If one wants to put our technology down as just another type of natural then by all means it is also "natural selection". I see some utility in placing that divide elsewhere however.

The point of my post however is that in the context of a thread fantasizing about what humanity will be like 40k or 100k years from now I see our technological advancements and their penchant for foiling "natural selection" as being a strong reason to expect us to not really be all that different at all. Assuming, as one poster pointed out, we survive that long at all which is also a subject that does not currently fill me with optimism.

I guess the point I am making is, regardless of whether you want to call it natural selection or not, that our technology is reducing selection. The person with what should be terminal diabetes and myself are no more or less selected against for example because our technology has made us equivalent. Due to our medical technology that person has no more or less selection criteria than I do despite his otherwise terminal condition. Nor am I... a serial glasses wearer.... at much disadvantage over someone with perfect vision because my glasses too have alleviated that difference.

Gurgle

Evolution unfortunately is not about the 'best' traits surviving but who breeds most. It used to mean the same, when the best traits were the ones that allowed you to survive long enough to breed.

Now having kids is related more to lifestyle choice than survival, with global overpopulation we're in a position where the smartest / best educated / most responsible people choose not to have the traditional big families.

We've crossed an evolutionary peak and we're about to start going downhill.

Ush1

I think that there will always be a struggle though no matter how far humanity has come. Resources are finite and there will always be a balance.

While most people in the western world don't struggle for survival, people in the like of Africa do.

I was talking with someone before and they reckoned the large numbers of children in Africa was an evolutionary mechanism. If a family have 1 child and he dies, that's it, if they 10 kids, maybe 2 or 3 survive and have kids themselves?

ha ha hello

One figure that I find puts humans in perspective is that if you translated the (estimated) history of the earth into a 24-hour clock, 1 second would be equal to about 52,500 years ie. about as long as humans have been behaviourally modern. 1 minute equals about 3,150,000 years. So basically, our ancestors history makes up the last few seconds on the 24-hour history of the earth.
And in a billion years, it will be the case that intelligent modern humans existed in or around 7.40pm, and we will have just been a little transient blip on the earth's surface... as Father Ted says, a little sliver of light between two immensities of darkness!

Capt'n Midnight

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

We know that intelligence is increasing slowly with each generation.

We know that exams are being dumbed down
questions that used to be on O level papers in the past are now appearing on A level papers.

I'd probably have got another 100 points in my leaving cert

Capt'n Midnight

RichieC wrote: »

we will get increasingly stupid from here on out. At some point we will no longer be able to maintain nuclear reactors and we will go extinct.

Why do think there is such a big interest in renewables ?


You don't need to be a nuclear physicist to operate a windmill

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Very true. However human are unique in the living world because we shape our environment and most of all we have and continue to externalise our evolution. No other animal has or does this.

Apart from the social insects and beavers.


A lot of the physical changes in us are due to lifestyle and nutrition.
Japanese people are taller than before, and it's not due to genetics.

Also a lot of those castles with low doors ?
a) easier to defend if the attacker has to duck when entering a room
b) doors were bloody expensive and money was tight, smaller doors were cheaper

The difference in heights between people from the Netherlands and France only really happened since 1800. In France being tall meant you were more likely to be in the army and thus to die. After WW1 the French had a word that referred to a person who was the only survivor of his generation in a village.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

True enough S. The joke is the pyramids will last longer than most of our more current structures.
...

Computer tech is very fragile. There are probably millions of documents, never printed now stuck on the original floppy disks(that were actually floppy). The interweb is a major help because the info is spread, but in the advent of a dark ages when the lights start to go out, the interweb would not be safe(the thought of which seems like blasphemy to many tech heads). When Rome fell, within a generation pottery production fell off too. The ability to make proper concrete, literacy and all sorts of stuff dwindled massively. Every town and village would have had a potter. It was a widely disseminated skill/knowledge/meme, yet it was lost as a skill remarkably rapidly.

We still have books just like in The Time Machine. Hopefully the fact we've moved from acid pulp means some will still be around in 200 years time.

Thankfully now books in the original sense and not just a paper codex are everywhere.


Land fill means that unless dumps get mined for minerals the 20th century will be the most recorded ever, and most of the gizmos can be figured out fairly easily.

What is the best way to preserve stuff ?
Laser through 1m of granite would produce permenant writing (Footfall)
Lithography will produce very detailed writing if you have a microscope to read it.

So question is how to make an audio visual projector that will work in 50,000 years ?

Or how do you make a self replicating library machine ? , such that parts that wear out will be replaced. Yes you can hide information in DNA but kinda hard to read.

Mirrors in medium earth orbit ?
with a telescope you could read more of the writing

Cee-Jay-Cee

By the 50,000AD time travel will have been perfected and everyone have travelled back to this time where things were "better" and more "simple" I'm expecting my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandson to arrive any day now from the future.

Fighting Irish

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

We know that intelligence is increasing slowly with each generation. Will this continue at the current rate, speed up, or reach a plateau? Exactly how smart can we get?

Agreed but i think the majority of people are getting dumber

stateofflux

kylith wrote: »

One word: Morlocks.

at least we know jimmy saville's hair will always be fashionable