What Could Be The Next Great Thing In Evolution?

MidWestAlki said:

I think perhaps we may take technology too far... Years from now we may have created chips and machines smart enough to "get smarter" without our help or programming. Perhaps we will actually move into avatars and live as long as we can find an energy source. By the time we are capable of uploading our brains into machines we probably won't have any energy issues I am sure so that entry may be obsolete...

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Here, who knows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

Don't you know? This is the next step in human evolution:




I've know this since I was six...

we are evolving as we speak each time we pass on genes to children they have evolved slightly , we are no longer so hairy , its a long time in human terms but in evolution it isnt a milli second

Jellyfish will grow the size of whales.

Biological evolution is too slow compared to technological evolution. Bology adapts to changing environment but we can use technology to adapt faster, than biology doesn't have anything to work with. We do continue to evolve, new defenses against disease and of course they evolve countermeasures, and back and forth, but biological evolution might actually be at a plateau stage and stay there for a long time. Without environmental pressures, sharks haven't changed significantly over their 400+ million years. That's older than the earliest dinosaur!

Bingo, Padawanbater! That is in part what I was on about in my earlier post. Once gene tech gets far enough, we will be able to build our children's bodies per menu ... and their brains as well. Mistakes will surely be made, but the fittest will be on the path to awesome ... Conscious feedback into the structure that is the seat of consciousness. The cool body mods/improvements will be just incidental gravy. cn

Everyone being perfect? Fuck that would suck. Without having flaws you wouldn't know what was good. Fuck technological evolution.

Padawanbater2 said:

You don't need flaws in order to know something is good.

For example, if I could fly, wouldn't you consider that to be an evolutionary advantage to not flying? Couldn't I then conclude "yeah, I can fly, that's much better than not being able to fly, I can get food in trees, I can escape predators, etc.". Same with intelligence. We don't need to have stupid people to acknowledge intelligence is an evolutionary advantage.

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If everything could fly then you wouldn't be special. My point is that if someone could fly and someone couldn't then the person flying would know they have an awesome trait.

In your example the flaw is not being able to fly, and the good thing is being able to fly. My statement was without flaws we wouldn't know what was good. So without the possibility of not being able to fly, flying wouldn't be good, it would be normal.

Padawanbater2 said:

Yes, but you don't need other human beings who can't fly to use as an example. You can simply realize that not flying would be evolutionarily disadvantageous.

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I know what you mean dude. It would be considered normal to us, just like walking is right now. I'm against having everything "perfect". If everything was perfect we wouldn't even care, we would be machines.
I forgot where I heard this, but there was two people having a conversation.
Person one: everybody's special.
Second person: that's just another way to say nobody's special.

I think everyone being perfect is just another way of saying nobody is perfect. I believe people are more perfect now then they will be years and years from now. Right now, everyone has their own special qualities that others don't have, and that's what makes them perfect.

But I do see your point, and I agree with you. Evolution is in our favor. I'm just saying it would suck if everyone was "perfect".

Ehh I have a bunch of random thoughts right now, so sorry if this is way off topic, lol. >>>Morals, usually with morals there's good and bad. What makes something bad and what makes something good? I think you have to have one or the other to make something good or bad. If not then everything would seem normal, not good nor bad.

Flying may not be such a great thing. The metabolic cost of growing and maintaining and feeding the massive muscles etc. needed to fly imposes a high resource cost on the organism. Nothing that large has flown since the great pterosaurs ... and they were very specialized. They didn't have our huge brains with their bad food mileage. cn

I think that with time, our muscles would adapt for prolonged flight. Just checkout the birds that migrate thousands of miles... I dont think they started out that well conditioned to take on these long flights. If they can get by on seeds and worms and whatever else their diets consist of, why cant humans if this was possible? It is just like jogging or sprinting, they both use two different energy pathways and different energy substrates. a sprinter cannot sprint for 26 miles straight, but a triathlete can jog em. I think if humans were able to fly, body structure would be different as well. I doubt that these muscles would be large, as the muscle fiber type used is not geared towards increasing size.

cannabineer said:

Flying may not be such a great thing. The metabolic cost of growing and maintaining and feeding the massive muscles etc. needed to fly imposes a high resource cost on the organism. Nothing that large has flown since the great pterosaurs ... and they were very specialized. They didn't have our huge brains with their bad food mileage. cn

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i think the pinnacle of human evolution would be where we could just replace used parts with new ones...thus living for hundreds of years.
i also want to say if we wind up looking like aliens with long limbs and big ass heads...i'm totally killing myself

Oly, my point's not about conditioning ... it's about the inherent energetic cost of flight, and of keeping flight machinery healthy while it's idle. Some outrageous portion of a pterosaur's body mass was a pair of colossal pecs. cn

Guys natural evolution has reached it's peak...it takes a REALLY long time to happen and technology is advancing about a million times faster.

Once we have advanced nanotechnology to the point it becomes "useful" then we'll be in control of our own evolution.

Nanites would mean no need to use retro-viruses to alter DNA, immunity to disease...the possibilities are endless.

how expensive will this nanotechnology be?

olylifter420 said:

I think that with time, our muscles would adapt for prolonged flight. Just checkout the birds that migrate thousands of miles... I dont think they started out that well conditioned to take on these long flights. If they can get by on seeds and worms and whatever else their diets consist of, why cant humans if this was possible? It is just like jogging or sprinting, they both use two different energy pathways and different energy substrates. a sprinter cannot sprint for 26 miles straight, but a triathlete can jog em. I think if humans were able to fly, body structure would be different as well. I doubt that these muscles would be large, as the muscle fiber type used is not geared towards increasing size.

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i dunno about yall but i dont want a bitch with wings. lol if they can figure out how we can fly without wings im down but i dont wanna think im fuckin a bald eagle(HAHA)

olylifter420 said:

how expensive will this nanotechnology be?

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Nanotech, the sci-fi staple that would yield nanobots up to and incl. "gray goo", isn't happening. Imo it's based on a misperception of the way very small things work. The nearest thing to nanotech is biology ... the bacterial flagellum "motor" is coolness. cn