Human Evolution

[Saber]

Do you think that the human evolution in terms of civilization &  technology  and also   social evolution  would be exponential ?    and we  would be  exploring the  galaxys  an  the  universe in the future ?  and like curing  all types of diseases and   these king of stuff  ?

Or  like  me  do  you think our advance & evolution has limits and its limited by our own nature and  it would have a peak  and after that  everything would start to fall apart ?

And our civilization would start to  gradually  collapse

In my opinion  we have past the peak  and started to downfall  for about a decade or so

Edited March 25, 2023 by Saber

[Genady]

19 minutes ago, Saber said:

we  would be  exploring the  galaxys  an  the  universe in the future ?

Why in the future? We are exploring the galaxies and the universe now.

[MigL]

Environmental forcings govern evolution.
And by environmental I mean everything from societal, geographical, predators and prey, climate and air quality, to basically everything that has an effect on our lives.

If our technology is advanced enough such that we can 'insulate' ourselves from these environmental forcings, and 'cure' any mutations that might arise, evolution would come to a stop for us.

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, MigL said:

 

If our technology is advanced enough such that we can 'insulate' ourselves from these environmental forcings, and 'cure' any mutations that might arise, evolution would come to a stop for us.

Not necessarily. Fundamentally evolution is just a change in the gene pool over time. In order for it to happen one would need a situation that fulfils the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Which also includes no sexual selection, sufficiently large population to eliminate stochastic effects and so on. 

[Bufofrog]

1 hour ago, Saber said:

Do you think that the human evolution in terms of civilization &  technology  and also   social evolution  would be exponential ?

No.

 

1 hour ago, Saber said:

and we  would be  exploring the  galaxys  an  the  universe in the future ?

If you mean traveling to other galaxies, I would say, absolutely not.

1 hour ago, Saber said:

and like curing  all types of diseases and   these king of stuff  ?

I'm sure more cures for diseases will be found.

1 hour ago, Saber said:

Or  like  me  do  you think our advance & evolution has limits and its limited by our own nature and  it would have a peak  and after that  everything would start to fall apart ?

Since there is no end point to evolution there is no peak.  To expound on this just a bit, if in the future humans have half the brains size that we currently have, that wouldn't mean anything other than a human with smaller brains would be more adapted to that environment.

1 hour ago, Saber said:

And our civilization would start to  gradually  collapse

There have been many civilization collapses in the past which did not mean the end of mankind.

 

1 hour ago, Saber said:

In my opinion  we have past the peak  and started to downfall  for about a decade or so

Not sure exactly what you mean since we are more advanced technologically speaking than 10 years ago.  As far as civilization in general that would all depend how you measured the level of 'civilization'.

[MigL]

If by stochastic effects you mean random mutations, CharonY, a sufficiently advanced technology would be able to scan and fix errant genetic material; that would also take care of any 'disturbances' to the H-W equilibrium ( had to look that one up 🙂 ).

Edited March 25, 2023 by MigL

[studiot]

Not too sure about any of this.

The tread is entitled Human Evolution.

Isn't this a strange idea ?

After all if we evolved would we still be human ?

 

I suppose it depends what you mean by 'evolution' ?

[Genady]

30 minutes ago, MigL said:

If our technology is advanced enough such that we can 'insulate' ourselves from these environmental forcings, and 'cure' any mutations that might arise, evolution would come to a stop for us.

 

25 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Fundamentally evolution is just a change in the gene pool over time.

 

4 minutes ago, studiot said:

if we evolved would we still be human ?

 

I understand that the OP does not refer to biological evolution:

1 hour ago, Saber said:

human evolution in terms of civilization &  technology  and also   social evolution

 

[Saber]

3 hours ago, Genady said:

Why in the future? We are exploring the galaxies and the universe now.

We  havnt gone more than our own moon and  that  was  because the US  had a  space race with its opponent..........from  those days  we  havnt  gone any   further........

And  also  for the  other  explorations   its  only  remote exploration.......and  for those  remote explorations  also   i think  they  sent some  rovers to  mars and venus in the 70's and  some probes to the  outer  solar system and beyond.......i dont think  we have  pushed that  much  further from  half a century ago....

From 1903  to  1969  we went  from  first flight  to landing on the moon in just 66  years  but  from 1969  till 2023  thats 54  years....we havnt  gone  much  further  

Same in the  other  fields too....in medicine  for example ....i think our advancements  and  achievements in the late 1800's  and early 1900's  we  much  more innovative  and  progressive............than  the  recent era.....

i mean our  advances  were more  ground breaking in the past   werent they ??

 

1 hour ago, Genady said:

 

 

 

I understand that the OP does not refer to biological evolution:

 

Exactly .......i  said  civilization And tech  also  social ....

[studiot]

7 minutes ago, Saber said:

Exactly .......i  said  civilization And tech  also  social ....

So what do you mean by evolution ?

Do you mean change?

That is a perfectly acceptable usage.

Rocks 'evolve'.

[Genady]

1 minute ago, Saber said:

We  havnt gone more than our own moon and  that  was  because the US  had a  space race with its opponent..........from  those days  we  havnt  gone any   further........

And  also  for the  other  explorations   its  only  remote exploration.......and  for those  remote explorations  also   i think  they  sent some  rovers to  mars and venus in the 70's and  some probes to the  outer  solar system and beyond.......i dont think  we have  pushed that  much  further from  half a century ago....

From 1903  to  1969  we went  from  first flight  to landing on the moon in just 66  years  but  from 1969  till 2023  thats 54  years....we havnt  gone  much  further  

Same in the  other  fields too....in medicine  for example ....i think our advancements  and  achievements in the late 1800's  and early 1900's  we  much  more innovative  and  progressive............than  the  recent era.....

i mean our  advances  were more  ground breaking in the past   werent they ??

 

Exactly .......i  said  civilization And tech  also  social ....

Regarding the galaxies and the universe, most of the exploration is done by telescopes, which are much more advanced and capable today than in the past. A completely new kind of exploration, based on gravitational waves, has been added recently.

Regarding the medicine as well, diagnostics and treatments are much more advanced and capable today than in the past. Also, more affordable and accessible to wider population. 

[Saber]

2 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

There have been many civilization collapses in the past which did not mean the end of mankind.

yes  but i mean a  total  collapse of the whole  specie as we  were never so complicatedly been  connected as a  whole  community............now  the  whole  world is  dependent on each other......like  never before........

 

 

2 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

Not sure exactly what you mean since we are more advanced technologically speaking than 10 years ago.  As far as civilization in general that would all depend how you measured the level of 'civilization'.

Yes  i  agree we are more advanced................but  the  speed of our  advance............is not  like for example   the  early 1900's till the 70's and maybe  till the 80's ....

if we for example   graph our over all  advancment  i think  the  incline of the  graph  is still positive  but less positive.....(  the derivative of  the Function of that  graph is still positive but a smaller number )

9 minutes ago, studiot said:

So what do you mean by evolution ?

Do you mean change?

That is a perfectly acceptable usage.

Rocks 'evolve'.

i personally believe  rocks  also  evolve...............a  rock in a  river  evolves to a smoother  shape to  have less drag...........but its evolution is not self driven.........its done by its environment.......

it  evolves as a part of  that  river........the river  does that so  it has a better flow 
 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Saber

[studiot]

11 minutes ago, Saber said:

i personally believe  rocks  also  evolve...............a  rock in a  river  evolves to a smoother  shape to  have less drag...........but its evolution is not self driven.........its done by its environment.......

it  evolves as a part of  that  river........

Yup

MigL has said it simply

2 hours ago, MigL said:

Environmental forcings govern evolution.

Nothing wakes up one morning and decide I am gong to 'evolve'.

There is a whole formal theory of rock structure evolution.

16 minutes ago, Saber said:

Yes  i  agree we are more advanced................but  the  speed of our  advance............is not  like for example   the  early 1900's till the 70's and maybe  till the 80's ....

if we for example   graph our over all  advancment  i think  the  incline of the  graph  is still positive  but less positive.....(  the derivative of  the Function of that  graph is still positive but a smaller number )

I don't agree.

The Romans had piped fresh water and centrally heated buildings.

2,000 years later do we have better?

 

 

 

[Saber]

Amid  this  topic another question came up to my mind

Were does  science  draw the line of  self  awareness     according to science is an  amoeba self aware ?   lower  than them how about  complex and heavy  molecules ?

Edited March 25, 2023 by Saber

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, MigL said:

If by stochastic effects you mean random mutations, CharonY, a sufficiently advanced technology would be able to scan and fix errant genetic material; that would also take care of any 'disturbances' to the H-W equilibrium ( had to look that one up 🙂 ).

No stochastic would also includes who get to have children. If not every carrier of certain alleles reproduce at the same rate (because some folks don't have kids) it will shift the frequency. To avoid that you need everyone to mate randomly and have a large pop.

[iNow]

Punctuated equilibrium may be a useful concept to consider here. 

[CharonY]

4 hours ago, Genady said:

 

 

 

I understand that the OP does not refer to biological evolution:

 

Might be, but outside of biological evolution, the term is rather poorly defined.

 

2 hours ago, Saber said:

Amid  this  topic another question came up to my mind

Were does  science  draw the line of  self  awareness     according to science is an  amoeba self aware ?   lower  than them how about  complex and heavy  molecules ?

I do not think that we have a very stringent definition of awareness. That being said, all existing attempts are tied to higher mental functions and require a brain of some complexity.

[Saber]

5 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Might be, but outside of biological evolution, the term is rather poorly defined.

I posted this in the   philosophy forum  if  i  meant  biological it  must be in the Biology forum ....

 

6 minutes ago, CharonY said:

That being said, all existing attempts are tied to higher mental functions and require a brain of some complexity.

Yes  but  here i only  want to see where does science draw the line.....

[CharonY]

2 minutes ago, Saber said:

Yes  but  here i only  want to see where does science draw the line.....

I am not aware that we draw lines, we try to define things mostly to help our methodological approaches, but often times these are definitions based on convention or convenience. Historically we defined bacterial species based on >70% divergence in DNA hybridization assays. There is no reason to believe that e.g. 69% or 71% would not be similarly reasonable.

As the definition of awareness is fuzzy, the "line" would be fuzzy, too. Most would assume that we would have to look at vertebrates (and potentially some mollusks) at minimum. But I don't think (though I may be wrong) that we have something much more concrete. There are some tests (like the famous mirror test) but quite a few folks challenge the validity of them for such classifications (passing might be sufficient, but not neccessary).

[TheVat]

With changes brought by global warming and other rapid environmental stressors, any H-W eq. seems like an impossibility.  I would be unsurprised to see human cladogenesis, if there is a collapse of tech civilization and we have populations that have remained in the tropics and are geographically isolated.  Throw in some mutagenic agents left over from tech civilization and you've got a potential for founder effect groups to pop up all over the globe. They could be composed of small islanded bands of survivors of societal collapse, especially if there "death zones" from a nuclear war that deterred migration/exploration for many generations.  

Say that survivors of global nuking fled to Bonaire, and an ensuing nuclear winter picked off all but a hardy subset of refugees, and perhaps a couple of Russians and one Azerbaijani.  The refugees would be mostly young and nubile, and would need the remaining locals to help repopulate....

I may need some red wine to finish working this out.

[iNow]

40 minutes ago, Saber said:

but  here i only  want to see where does science draw the line.....

42

32 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I may need some red wine to finish working this out.

Or a cold shower 

[Saber]

48 minutes ago, CharonY said:

There are some tests (like the famous mirror test) but quite a few folks challenge the validity of them for such classifications (passing might be sufficient, but not neccessary).

I  dont mean  that  that animal  or  organism knows him self  if for example it sees its reflection in a mirror .......but i rather meant that organism knows that it is  something beyond its  environment and can alter its environment on its will.........

 

47 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The refugees would be mostly young and nubile, and would need the remaining locals to help repopulate....

When i was  like a child  like under 10-12  i  always thought about this that  in that case  (  in the case of society collapse resulting in a large percentage of people being wiped out  )......if i manage to survive........i have to do my part in regenerating the homo sapiens   
I  though  in  that  case it would be a  very  good time to be alive.......so  i tried to  stay fit and acquire survival skills in the nature to increase my survival potential....

 

i  also thought about  parallel universes  later  like when i was around 13-14 ......when ever i  wanted to choose between  two situations  of doing that or that......i used to run a little  simulation in my mind to  see what  happens if i did each......thus  to  decide better......  in  fact i  tried to  forecast  the future  in both scenarios with  this technique .........

And  once  suddenly a bizzare thought  came to my mind that  what if @ the point of deciding .......i split in to 2  and each version  goes in to a different world.....one going that and the other doing the second.......

And i  always knew i have to keep my mouth shut  about these kind of  thoughts........or people would start to mock me........and  i thought maybe  im a little retarded......to  have these stupid thoughts

until i was like 18-19  i saw a documentary on TV about the parallel universes.....and it was that moment i  was  thinking that  maybe  i was not retarded  ......and maybe   this phenomenon  really  does exist.....

Also  i  had  some other  thoughts.......that  i  think  talking about them  would really result in people making fun of me....

later in life  like after 20  or soo  i didnt follow those kind of thoughts any more......


 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2023 by Saber

[iNow]

Pro tip: One of those words you used twice in your post has fallen out of parlance and tends to be considered unacceptable. Try liberal or woke next time. They’re the latest moniker for the misinformed folks not burdened with an abundance of education. 

[MigL]

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

No stochastic would also includes who get to have children.

Advanced technology, such as genetic scanning, and a certain measure of control  ( a la Handmaid's Tale ) would eliminate that issue.

[CharonY]

Sure or just freeze everyone.