The future of evolution

[CarlDarwin]

Can science be used to engineer evolution so that humans evolve into superhumans?

Edited March 24, 2022 by CarlDarwin

[Peterkin]

Sure. But what's a superhuman?

[beecee]

7 minutes ago, CarlDarwin said:

Can science be used to engineer evolution so that humans evolve into superhumans?

Good question. My mind goes back to the turn of the millenium and a "conference" of sorts at the White House....from memory Clinton was your President at that time and hosted the show.....and Stephen Hawking was a guest speaker. Stephen Hawking virtually said yes, and used our space explorations and research as a reason. 

this one.........................

 

[Ken Fabian]

23 hours ago, CarlDarwin said:

Can science be used to engineer evolution so that humans evolve into superhumans?

I expect some attempts at doing so - parents wanting children who are better than they are in places where that kind of choice is allowed and available, or authoritarian regimes wanting workers and soldiers more capable than their rivals (but probably wanting them to be more obedient and content with their place too). But I think the former depends on developing the means using comprehensive and reliable modeling of the results rather than experimenting on humans - parents will want confidence the changes won't cause unexpected harms but likely won't support trying it out on human subjects as the means to find out. The powerful people who want better soldiers, servants and slaves won't care about the human costs. They will likely want control too much to allow too much super free thinking.

Practicing eugenics to enhance or inhibit various traits is possible but I'm not convinced that the end can justify the means. I also suspect a society that is ordered enough to support long term eugenics within it's population may be intrinsically unhealthy.

 

23 hours ago, beecee said:

Stephen Hawking virtually said yes, and used our space explorations and research as a reason. 

Sorry Beecee, I'm not going to watch an hour and a quarter to get to the "virtually said yes" bits. Hawking was an amazing man with an amazing mind who had big ideas and shared your enthusiastic optimism about humanity expanding into space but his expertise was theoretical physics, not predicting the future.

Whilst bio-engineering humans for exotic environments appears a way to make successful colonisations of such environments more likely it takes a whole lot of unlikely hypotheticals on top of hypotheticals to get there. Most proposals for people in space start with making artificial environments close to what humans evolved with, with technologies ordinary humans are capable of mastering. Whilst isolated small populations will end up sharing traits, enough to be recognisably different to other populations I don't see how that would lead to becoming superhuman. Survival in space is unlikely to be easy so being well ordered is probably essential but that degree of order may ultimately be an impediment - any adventurous or rebellious urges may need to be channeled or suppressed to prevent them being counterproductive.

 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, Ken Fabian said:

Practicing eugenics to enhance or inhibit various traits is possible but I'm not convinced that the end can justify the means. I also suspect a society that is ordered enough to support long term eugenics within it's population may be intrinsically unhealthy.

It cannot possibly be healthy; it must be directed by a controlling entity or principle that does not allow independent judgment. Such a one-tracked mind will produce slaves,  worshippers or copies of itself.

Besides, ends never justify anything. Ends are nearly always an unforeseen byproduct of means aimed at quite different ends. I'm not sure you could find more than ten ordinary people or two biologists who agree on what the ends should be - what the traits we breed for should be, what a better human should be.

[beecee]

3 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Practicing eugenics to enhance or inhibit various traits is possible but I'm not convinced that the end can justify the means. I also suspect a society that is ordered enough to support long term eugenics within it's population may be intrinsically unhealthy.

The end certainly does justify the means, if  the moral gains of the ends are greater than the moral losses by the means.eg: the ticking bomb scenario with thousands of innocent lives at stake. but like most things, it cannot be said to be absolute.

3 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Sorry Beecee, I'm not going to watch an hour and a quarter to get to the "virtually said yes" bits. Hawking was an amazing man with an amazing mind who had big ideas and shared your enthusiastic optimism about humanity expanding into space but his expertise was theoretical physics, not predicting the future.

And I wouldn't really expect you to. It's been a long time since I watched the presentation, and from memory, I recall the relevant bit is around the 40 miniute mark. He covers much ground, that you will find interesting I'm sure, when you have that 75 minutes to spare. No I havn't yet rewatched it.

Again as per our past conversations, humanities expansion into space, hasn't a time frame on it. We cannot really know at what pace we will move at, and when lulls and limited stagnation may occur. No one is expert at predicting the future with any accuracies, but some certainly have a more realistic approach then others. And yes, it is possible that as we do expand, we may find a limitation to what we can and what we can't do to facilitate such expansion. 

3 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Whilst bio-engineering humans for exotic environments appears a way to make successful colonisations of such environments more likely it takes a whole lot of unlikely hypotheticals on top of hypotheticals to get there. Most proposals for people in space start with making artificial environments close to what humans evolved with, with technologies ordinary humans are capable of mastering. Whilst isolated small populations will end up sharing traits, enough to be recognisably different to other populations I don't see how that would lead to becoming superhuman. Survival in space is unlikely to be easy so being well ordered is probably essential but that degree of order may ultimately be an impediment - any adventurous or rebellious urges may need to be channeled or suppressed to prevent them being counterproductive.

I also don't share the "superhuman" concept, and see it as fantastic fantasy...Improvements, yes most certainly...in what way? I'm not really qualified to go into that.

Edited March 26, 2022 by beecee