The Force: has Technology trumped evolution?
The Force: has Technology trumped evolution?
Darwin informs us that natural selection, i.e. evolution, has been the guiding force determining the course of biological change. Natural selection, i.e. evolution, operates far too slowly to compete with Technology in the present and future determination of biological change.
Just ask the Polar Bear!
Is Technology the “true” meaning of Intelligent Design?
Originally posted by Quiero Mota
Apparently so. If or when The Island of Dr. Mearau or Jurassic Park becomes real, then technology will trump evolution.
Not really, because evolution will always run its course. Can humanity even through its own actions escape the natural evolutionary process? If the human stops changing and remains as it is now...could it not be argued that this is simply the culmination of the evolutionary process?
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
Not really, because evolution will always run its course. Can humanity even through its own actions escape the natural evolutionary process? If the human stops changing and remains as it is now...could it not be argued that this is simply the culmination of the evolutionary process?
If we ever create transporter technology, then, yes, we will fully circumvent evolution in it's entirety. Entropy's sting will be lost.
Originally posted by King Kandy
Evolution in humans has been slowed to a crawl because society creates a sheltering role towards humans who don't "measure up" to their fellow men in intelligence, strength, or otherwise, and they thus spread their genes equally to the greater humans.
Indeed. I've said this before, on many occasions.
We are weakening the human race.
McLuhan was, I guess, the first to express the insight that technology is an extension of the human body.
These hand-held gadgets for communication might very well represent the end of ‘understanding’ for almost all citizens by 2050. I can see it already on the Internet discussion forums where communication is becoming a stream of consciousness without coherent grammatical or thoughtful content or construction.
I am going to deal with numbers and ratios not that I think my numbers are accurate but I think they may be useful for comprehending certain things.
Suppose we establish a knowledge-to-understanding ratio K/U, i.e. the amount we know divided by the amount we understand (i.e. need to create).
I would say that a frontier family might have K/U ratio of 20/1. As time passes and there is less need for understanding (creativity) and more need for knowing because the demands of the frontier diminish and ‘civilization’ encroaches I would say the K/U ratio might go to 50/1.
After one hundred years I suspect the ratio might easily move to 100/1; after leaving the farm and moving to town and going to work in the factory the ratio might very well go to 1000/1.
Today’s modern man or woman may very well have a ratio of 10,000/1. The person with a PhD might very well have a ratio 100,000/1.
I have heard college professors say that you never really understand a subject until you try to teach it. I suspect a PhD who is also a long time teacher might have developed an understanding of many things and thus dropped the ratio back to 10,000/1.
I think that within the next 50 years ‘understanding’ will be only seen in a museum.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Not true. We are slowing it's evolution, that is not even remotely the same thing as a (totally subjective) weakening.
There's only way reason that I can conclude that you could arrive at such a shitty and false idea:
Because of modern medicine, those that would normally die, can now reproduce.
The shitty genes they have that were the cause of their "would have died 200 years ago", allow them to further degrade the evolutionary progress humans were making by simply reproducing. If we stagnated our technology and our numbers, we would eventually pollute the human race with so much genetics that we would eventually shitty ourselves way the **** up eventually beyond our ability to mitigate any further. Fer realz, dawg.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Because of modern medicine, those that would normally die, can now reproduce.The shitty genes they have that were the cause of their "would have died 200 years ago", allow them to further degrade the evolutionary progress humans were making by simply reproducing. If we stagnated our technology and our numbers, we would eventually pollute the human race with so much genetics that we would eventually shitty ourselves way the **** up eventually beyond our ability to mitigate any further. Fer realz, dawg.
Evolution isn't "progress". The ability to survive a disease isn't weakness.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Evolution isn't "progress". The ability to survive a disease isn't weakness.
Both of these are irrelevant to my point. No where do I imply or say that evolution is progress. No where do I say or imply that surviving a disease is weakness.
You missed the opportunity to make another, actually relevant point, to my post. I created a scenario that stagnated human progression, to make a point. This point, which I intentionally made as a flawed point, is not applicable to reality and serves no illustrative point. I was hoping that you would respond or retort with something about human progress reaching the point of actually changing the genetics for the better. Then I could say, "exactly" and then direct to a post where I already made this point already...quickly ending the conversation with both of us in complete agreement.
Edit - Digi already touched on it, in this thread.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Both of these are irrelevant to my point. No where do I imply or say that evolution is progress.
Except right here, unless I misread:
Originally posted by dadudemon
evolutionary progress
Originally posted by dadudemon
You missed the opportunity to make another, actually relevant point, to my post. I created a scenario that stagnated human progression, to make a point. This point, which I intentionally made as a flawed point, is not applicable to reality and serves no illustrative point. I was hoping that you would respond or retort with something about human progress reaching the point of actually changing the genetics for the better. Then I could say, "exactly" and then direct to a post where I already made this point already...quickly ending the conversation with both of us in complete agreement.
Well this is where we disagree. For my money there are really very few "better" genes simply because evolution doesn't head towards anything. You could use genetic manipulation to upgrade people but in the long run that strikes me as potentially worse than stagnation since it could quickly trend toward increasing homogeneity.
That said, I think heading towards transhumanism by genetics or cybernetics is a good thing, it has the potential to help a lot of people. I just suggest being wary of considering anything (normal evolution or outside modification) "better" unless you can see the future.
Originally posted by King Kandy
There is a clear divide between good and bad genes: Good genes increase their lifeforms odds for survival and reproduction whereas bad genes do not. This is the objective criteria.
And you can't know any of that unless you can accurately predict the future, which was what I said.