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Author Topic:   Is the evolution of modern man going to stop
dwise1
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Posts: 6064
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.4


Message 7 of 107 (608242)
03-09-2011 2:49 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by frako
03-08-2011 11:03 AM


Evolution will continue, regardless. Evolution is collective results on the population level of life doing what life does: propagate. Whether there is change or there is no change, that's still evolution at work.
Rather, your questions bear more on how the things of modern life, be they medical, environmental, or social, will affect our evolution.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6064
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.4


Message 82 of 107 (678281)
11-06-2012 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by New Cat's Eye
11-05-2012 11:04 PM


Re: Selection = Reproduction
Then you must watch Idiocracy whose premise is precisely the situation you just described.

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dwise1
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Posts: 6064
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.4


Message 88 of 107 (678400)
11-07-2012 2:50 PM
Reply to: Message 86 by caffeine
11-07-2012 4:03 AM


Re: Selection = Reproduction
Idiocracy is a silly film.
Yes, it is, from the some person who brought us Office Space. However, it also presents the most accurate evolutionary explanation of its premises than any other film or TV show that I've seen. That alone should be reason to at least start to watch it, especially if the price is right (ie, you can catch it for free). Another reason would be for Starbuck's (which in that future is a ubiquitous chain of sleazy massage parlors) "full-body latte".
There was also a classic 1951 science fiction short story, The Marching Morons, that Idiocracy seemed to be based on and yet did not credit (as I recall).
I recommended watching Idiocracy because the evolutionary scenario of its premise is exactly what CS was describing.
---------------------------
"Those who fail to learn the lessons of science fiction are doomed to live them."

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dwise1
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Posts: 6064
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.4


Message 89 of 107 (678403)
11-07-2012 3:09 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by kofh2u
11-07-2012 2:31 PM


Re: mental evolution
I'm not so sure that it would be a mental evolution, at least not in the sense of there being any progress.
Assuming civilization doesn't crash on us again (at least not too catastophically), I would see continued technological progress, which would entail the learning of necessary skills for working with that technology, both in developing it and in maintaining and operating it. For the latter role, it doesn't really take much mentally. By that, I mean that you can teach procedures and basic theory of operation, but those procedures can be followed successfully without really understanding the technology. For example, one senior NCO knew how to work with electronics, but didn't understand how electronics work, considering it to be FM ("fucking magic"). It's also illustrated by Asimov in Foundation where the Foundation starts exporting its technology to its barbaric neighbors, though as a religion with a technician priesthood ("To start the device, you have to say this prayer and then press that red button.").
There's also the problem of skills being lost, as well as the loss of needing to be smart. When you don't have the technology for certain tasks, then you need to come up with smarter ways of working, but when you have the technology then you can get by by being lazy and using brute force. An example is when Gauss' grade school class was being punished, so they all had to come up with the sum of all numbers from 1 to 100. While everybody else was applying the brute force method of doing all that addition, Gauss thought for a while and then wrote down the correct answer and handed it in. He had come up with a smart way to do it. Nowadays the smart way would be to implement the brute force method with a computer program. Or to Google for Gauss' method. But you couldn't look it up in your Book of Tables, because nobody has one any more, since technology has made them obsolete.
Another example of lost skills is that scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty types away very fast on a Mac keyboard to come up with the formula for transparent aluminum. Cute, but ridiculous, since typing would be a long-lost skill. In reality, Scotty would have been baffled trying to figure out what to do with that keyboard, let alone how to use the antiquated software on that Mac.
The other aspect you brought up is a good one, though. As our consciousness expands to encompass a Global Village, our social institutions and our ways of viewing that are needing to change accordingly. This, then, would be a form of social evolution.
... the awakening of the Freudian archetypes ...
I thought archetypes were Jungian.

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