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Author Topic:   Human Evolution
Ken Fabos
Member (Idle past 1240 days)
Posts: 51
From: Australia
Joined: 05-09-2010


Message 17 of 102 (573347)
08-10-2010 11:50 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by CosmicAtheist
04-18-2010 4:56 AM


Ongoing evolution
I think (just speculating) we are subject to more maladaptation than adaptation and, due to the cleverness of our species in overcoming physical limitations we probably carry more negative traits than most species could tolerate.
It would be hard to tell what changes would benefit humanity until or unless some serious limitation to our survival is come up against - though we are probably better equipped to tell the difference than at any time in history. It might seem unlikely from the perspective of a citizen of a modern techno-democracy, but, given that humanity is indeed edging up against (and may have already passed) the limitations of our global environment and given our inability or unwillingness to trade our short term economic opportunities away for long term sustainability, there's no reason to think that future humanity won't again face day to day struggle for survival. We can be smart but retain an almost limitless ability to be stupid along with it.
Of course we are likely to see deliberate genetic modification that potentially could be inheritable, although commercial practices make it likely that inheritability will be deliberately left out (much like the current trade in genetically modified seeds) in order to prevent proprietary DNA being disseminated free of charge. I don't know if this would qualify as evolution as such, even when inheritable.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by CosmicAtheist, posted 04-18-2010 4:56 AM CosmicAtheist has not replied

Replies to this message:
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