If evolution is our origin, where will we end up?

short term or long term or geological term?Short term we have defeated the environmental aspects to provide comfortable living in even extreme environments (outpost at the south pole? spacestation? sea bottom?)Long term these "solutions" are locally unstable, as evidenced by the tsunami, the {nola\katrina} mess and the {droughts\starvation} in africa. The instability is related to the degree of complication of the subsystems needed to maintain the solution (space being the most complex). This is abundantly clear with the nola situation.Radial dispersal helps to resolve this issue by ensuring that populations survive in other habitats until it can be reintroduced into a {human population} devasted area. People die when there is a failure of the local solutions, whether it is flooding, heat waves or winter storms when the power is out, with the {most susceptible\least fit} dying first.But any death that occurs after reproduction has been (individually) finished and after (progeny) raised to self-sufficieny has no effect on evolution: there is no selection mechanism on those genes to filter fitness back to the new population.And any species that achieves this same {kind\level\degree} of radial dispersal into multiple habitats is insulated from ecological selection -- look at starlings Speaking in geological ages, the jury is out: our total existance back to the first bipedal ape is a blink in geological time. Whether sever change comes from an asteroid in space or from our own doing or from sever climatological change, we don't know if the human species will survive or evolve to meet the challenge.Enjoy

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I disagree that medical eugenics are a bad thing. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I beleive any decission to prevent or terminate a pregnancy is up to the parents. I'm in no way for state inforced eugenics.In the big picture, the number of humans that benefit from genetic counseling etc is very low, so to say that genetic diversity is harmed is overstating things. Second, most of the genes being selected against are nasty and nobody wants them around anyway. In many cases the parents can have another child so their genes are passed on, just not the bad ones.The interesting thing is what happens in the future as more information is available and people may decide among not-so-nasty genes.

To put it in perspective, when I wrote "If we were to get carried away with eugenics,..." I was intending that to refer to state enforced eugenics. I don't think we really disagree. I don't have any problems with current practice, which includes genetic counselling.