Sin 2 :)

[sparhawk]

That's hardly the same thing. Siclke cell anemia does  does not stop people from breeding. A gene that stopped people from wanting to breed would have a hard time surviving.

 

That just shows how ignoratnt you are concerning evolution and genetics. Genes are not single entities. They are not living on their own, and there is no such thing as a single gene for suiciding. Genes are just a building block of a complex machinery, and one and the same gene can have multiple functions where one sideeffect coul be suicidal tendencies. But if the other effects are advantagous enough, such a suicidal (or not breeding gene, it doesn't really matter) could stay around along time, simply because in the whole picture this particular effect is not strong enough and therfore there is no selection pressure to remove it.

[sparhawk]

We have a complex brain, but not the most complex (sperm whales have the largest and most complex brain known - it is six times the size of the human brain, and contains 9 times the number of nurones, and has more complex sulci and gyri), and that is just one facet of our biology.

 

I'm not sure if you are now mixing size and complexity. Obiously a bigger animal has abigger brain, and this may mean more complexity, but in relation of the body volume to brainsize I think that humans have the biggest ratio. I think there were even dinosaurs with multiple brains, but that didn't make them smarter.

 

Being capable of complex abstract thought and transmitting learned knowledge across generations has advantages, but it also has disadvantages, otherwise more species would have evolved this ability a long time ago.

 

I'm notz sure if this could really happen now, as liong as humans are dominant. what would happen if we would find a speaking population of apes? Humans would acquire them, put them in a zoo for display or study and this would kill off the chances of any further development for them. So I doubt that something like that would happen soon in other species.

 

Being smart is fine, being too smart is a risky venture that can easily come to naught, and is just a feature, like having fins or fur. 

 

There are examples of animals which are on a dead track because of overspecialization.

 

I doubt very much that humans will make it even that far with attitudes like yours floating around.

 

It's only one of many. As you argued yourself the behaviour of individuals doesn't matter so much.

[oDDity]

Ok, you guys win by sheer weight of numbers, I'm not going to spend hours replying to those 4 huge posts, and if I just pick a few points and leave the rest you'll accuse me of deliberately choosing the ones I had easy replies to and leaving the hard ones.

My original core point, which is that we are no longer fully part of natural evoluiton, since we're using logical decison making to alter its path, and in fact, we're actually capable of altering our genes which becomes 'artificial selection' rather than 'natural selection, was never shown to be in error.

We're not totally subject to survival of the fittest any more either, in human society, it's not just the fittest that survive, we all survive, even poeple with severre phsical or mental disabilities, blind or deaf people get married and have kids, people with severe physical disabiltes like Stephen Hawking contribute a lot to society, people with all sorts of disease and deformities live decent lives becasue of our social structure. Sure, people born with advantages generally do better in life, but they're not the only ones who get to breed and propagate.

[sparhawk]

We're not totally subject to survival of the fittest any more either, in human society, it's not just the fittest that survive, we all survive, even poeple with severre phsical or mental disabilities, blind or deaf people get married and have kids, people with severe physical disabiltes like Stephen Hawking contribute a lot to society, people with all sorts of disease and deformities live decent lives becasue of our social structure. Sure, people born with advantages generally do better in life, but they're not the only ones who get to breed and propagate.

 

This will only be shown in times of stress. Currently we are living in a moderatly nice environment (not true for all countries I guess), so there is not much selection pressure at the moment. As soon as this changes, due to environmental changes, you will see this go down the drain. Health care is one of the first things that are cut down when the times are getting tighter. We can already see this in action right now, and we are far away from actual problems. Same goes for education. When the environment provides stronger selection pressure you will see how mayn people with illness and mental problems will survive.

 

And the nice thing about evolution is, that what we call now mental desease might turn out as an advantage later, so you can never know. What today seems wrong or morally inacceptible may be advantagous in tomorrows environment. And this includes everything like paedophily, murder, mental deseases, and so on.

 

To use a proverb, that illustrates this quite nicely:

Be nice to your kids, because they are the ones choosing your retiring home for you. (Translated from german, so it may not come across as well).

[oDDity]

This will only be shown in times of stress. Currently we are living in a moderatly nice environment (not true for all countries I guess), so there is not much selection pressure at the moment. As soon as this changes, due to environmental changes, you will see this go down the drain. Health care is one of the first things that are cut down when the times are getting tighter. We can already see this in action right now, and we are far away from actual problems. Same goes for education. When the environment provides stronger selection pressure you will see how mayn people with illness and mental problems will survive.

We created this comfortable stable environment for ourselves, it wasn't always like this. We've gradually concieved of, and built civilization, which allows us to have a social structure where the strong help the weak.

We develpoped a system of individual specialisation where everyone does a specific job that contributes towards the whole, so we don't all have to catch our own food, make our own clothes, generate our own power. This leaves us with a lot of lesiure time and surplus.

Nature didn't give us these things, we developed tham for ourselves. Early humans lived the lives of animals.

I obviosuly have a lot more confidence in human's ingenuity and adapability than you guys have.

Obscurus is predicting the world will end in 100 years time and we'll all be dead)

 

And the nice thing about evolution is, that what we call now mental desease might turn out as an advantage later, so you can never know. What today seems wrong or morally inacceptible may be advantagous in tomorrows environment. And this includes everything like paedophily, murder, mental deseases, and so on.

 

Yes, I can just imagine how fucking 5 year olds up the ass might be an advantage to humans at some point in the future...

Murder has always been useful, wars let people murder each other inside the bounds of morailty. Being able to kill is an important trait to have, if it comes down to it and you have to defend your life.

[sparhawk]

We created this comfortable stable environment for ourselves, it wasn't always like this. We've gradually concieved of, and built civilization, which allows us to have a social structure where the strong help the weak.

 

We were able to do this because our environment was stable enough. If the environment would be harsher, then this would likely be quite different and not so generous. Just look in a warzone hoe much care for such people is spent. It is considerable less, and this is, concerning evolutionary standards, still a rather stable environment.

 

Nature didn't give us these things, we developed tham for ourselves. Early humans lived the lives of animals.

 

LOL. Nature gave us this because of evolution, which is a natural process. It was not as if some mamals said "Let's create some civiliation." It HAPPENED it was not designed, as you imply here.

 

I obviosuly have a lot more confidence in human's ingenuity and adapability than you guys have.

 

I don't doubt humans adaptabillity, where we don't agree is where this adaptabillity is coming from. You argue as if this were a human decision, which it is not.

 

Yes, I can just imagine how fucking 5 year olds up the ass might be an advantage to humans at some point in the future...

 

In fact if a major impact of a meteor occurs on earth and some people survive, this may indeed be seen quite differently. IMO it was no coincidence that in mdevial times the age where you married was much earlier and a 18 year old girl not yet married was considered an old maid.

 

Murder has always been useful, wars let people murder each other inside the bounds of morailty. Being able to kill is an important trait to have, if it comes down to it and you have to defend your life.

 

Yes. And that is my point. It depends on the environment. If you live in todays Vienna, being murderous is a disadvantage. If you live in a post meteor impact aera, it might be an advantage. And that is exactly why you can not say that this or that gene is good and this or that is bad, because it depends on the environment. And now guess what the most important factor for evolution is. Environment. Because this is the major selection pressure factor.

[Bhruic]

We're not totally subject to survival of the fittest any more either, in human society, it's not just the fittest that survive, we all survive, even poeple with severre phsical or mental disabilities, blind or deaf people get married and have kids, people with severe physical disabiltes like Stephen Hawking contribute a lot to society, people with all sorts of disease and deformities live decent lives becasue of our social structure. Sure, people born with advantages generally do better in life, but they're not the only ones who get to breed and propagate.

 

I think you misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest". It's not a short term phenomenon. In "nature" (whatever that word is supposed to mean), there are plenty of other animals that end up living relatively long lives with defects of some kind. That doesn't imply that they've managed to evade the "survival of the fittest" concept either.

 

What I would grant you is that because of our technological prowess, we've managed to eliminate any serious rivals. We don't have to worry about anyone (other than other humans) cutting off our food base, or competing for the same food. This gives us a great deal of luxury that most other animals don't have.

 

As for genetic tampering, that field is too much in its infancy to conclude what we will be able to do with it eventually.

 

Bh

[oDDity]

We were able to do this because our environment was stable enough. If the environment would be harsher, then this would likely be quite different and not so generous. Just look in a warzone hoe much care for such people is spent. It is considerable less, and this is, concerning evolutionary standards, still a rather stable environment.

THe average working man has been gradually getting a better and better quality of life, and today it is better than ever before. Despite challenges, wars, famines and resettling to new continents, our lives have been steadily improving, and will continue to do so.

LOL. Nature gave us this because of evolution, which is a natural process. It was not as if some mamals said "Let's create some civiliation." It HAPPENED it was not designed, as you imply here.

Of course it was, people decided to stop hunting and following herds around, like they had been doing for a million years, and to start farming instead, and that decision was the basis of civilization.

Like children when they leave home, of course they will always owe their parents for giving birth to tyem and rasiing them, but anything it achieves after that they deserves credit for themselves.

I don't doubt humans adaptabillity, where we don't agree is where this adaptabillity is coming from. You argue as if this were a human decision, which it is not.

Initially, after we mutated into sentient species, however or whenever that happened, we were still under the influence of nature for quite a while, but we've been gradually discovering knowledge and using it for our benefit. We get some of the credit for our own achievements, it's not all down to nature.

In fact if a major impact of a meteor occurs on earth and some people survive, this may indeed be seen quite differently. IMO it was no coincidence that in mdevial times the age where you married was much earlier and a 18 year old girl not yet married was considered an old maid.

 

You said paedophilia though, that implies having sex with prepubescent children, not girls who are old enough to have babies of their own.

Any man would be capable of having sex with a 12 or 13 year old girl in the right circumstances, you wouldn't have to be a paedophile to do it.

Yes. And that is my point. It depends on the environment. If you live in todays Vienna, being murderous is a disadvantage. If you live in a post meteor impact aera, it might be an advantage. And that is exactly why you can not say that this or that gene is good and this or that is bad, because it depends on the environment. And now guess what the most important factor for evolution is. Environment. Because this is the major selection pressure factor.

Again, anyone could murder in the right circumstances, soldiers do it all the time, and they're not weird mutants, they're ordinary people.I don't see how a psychopath who actually enjoyed murdering and did it for fun would be better off in a post meteor-strike Earth. It wouldn't do the small remaining population any good to have murderers roaming around finishing off the few survivors. Someone like that would be quickly hunted down and killed by others, so it wouldn't do him any good at all.

[oDDity]

I think you misunderstand the concept of "survival of the fittest".  It's not a short term phenomenon.  In "nature" (whatever that word is supposed to mean), there are plenty of other animals that end up living relatively long lives with defects of some kind.  That doesn't imply that they've managed to evade the "survival of the fittest" concept either.

 

 

Bh

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

THat's small scale with a lot of provisos though. *Some* animals *may* survive for *some* length of time, *if* they're lucky, or the disability isn't too bad.

I'd like to see how long a blind or deaf or lame gazzelle would last.

Humans can lives full lives and contribute with quite severe disabilites. It's a common thing these days. Another advantage of our complex social structure and technology, and the stable environment we're created for ourselves with a surplus of supplies.

[Bhruic]

Sure they can. But my point is, that has nothing to do with "survival of the fittest". That concept deals with the long term adaptation of creatures to their environment (with some notable short term exceptions). Recent human history is too brief to determine whether us keeping around inferior (from a survival perspective) specimens will be a detriment to humanity.

 

Bh

[oDDity]

Like I said, our quality of life has been getting progressively better and better, and there's no reason to believe that the upward trend isn't going to continue.

We don't need survival of the fittest to drive our species forward any more, we do that artifically by constantly improving our knowledge and then using it in innovative ways.

[Bhruic]

Actually, there's plenty of reason to believe it won't continue upward. If only that, in the long run, things tend to balance out. That, and the fact that we currently have finite resources to work with. While technology is working to provide new ones, it won't likely do so as fast as the demand increases. The simple act of feeding the planet's population may be beyond our abilities.

 

Humanity, in general, is too much tied up in its own arrogance. What you've been posting is a great example. It's very easy to say that humans are the pinnacle of evolution when it's humans that are saying it. It'd be much like me coming up with a formula that determines the best human on the planet, which just happens to be me (no, really, I am! ).

 

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed."

 

Bh

[sparhawk]

Of course it was, people decided to stop hunting and following herds around, like they had been doing for a million years, and to start farming instead, and that decision  was the basis of civilization.

 

LOL! Where did you get that notion from? This is exactly what others have been talking about in regards to other species living in the sea. If the sea is a good environment to perform in then it makes sense to move there and adapt. If it is more advantagous to be a predator for your particular course it also makes sense to adapt to such an environment. Consequently if there are advantages to farm then this is the way to go. There is no such thing as a consciousness decision to become farmer. Some people realized that plants could be harbored and cultivated and this was a benefit for them so it increased. It was not as if some day they suddenly said "Let's try ourself at farming and see how we fare with it.".

 

You said paedophilia though, that implies having sex with prepubescent children, not girls who are old enough to have babies of their own.

 

Actually that depends on the law. In most european countries I guess this term would be used for adults dabbling with kids at an age defined by law. This has nothing to do with prebuscence or not. IMO in US it could still be seen for kids as old as 16 at which age girls are definitely capable of carrying babies and boys are definitely able to produce them. The youngest mother is IMO 9 year old. I think I read that somewhere in Guiness Book or such. Having sex with a 9 year old because you want to have babies with her is definitely considered as paedohilia in most countries IMO. I'm not talking about wether it makes sense to have kids at this age, only about the biological possibility and that law doesn't have much to do with bio. Law is just a (more or less) consensus.

 

It wouldn't do the small remaining population any good to have murderers roaming around finishing off the few survivors. Someone like that would be quickly hunted down and killed by others, so it wouldn't do him any good at all.

 

Well, that would depend on the actual circumstances. If this murderer is a member of a group holding one of the last pools of water, he definitely would have an advantage, because he can live out his urge on people trying to get at their resources and he would be the hero there. On the other hand, if this same guy was living with a bunch of womans who depise such a thing, they might consider to net have babies with him, and thus putting him on a dead end evolutionary speaking. Whereas a less murderous man might tread exactly the thin line where these woman would find it still acceptable. It could also be the other way around

For each example that you give, you can find a positive or negative example where it would or would not make sense to have such a trait. And this is what evolution is about. If you are living in an envrionment where your particular traits are helpfull then you have an advantage. There is no such thing as good or bad genes, because the value of your traits depend on the environment you have to compete in.

[oDDity]

You're ignoring the pint.You're tryign to prove that being someone who likes murder, or likes having sex with children could be a useful trait in certain extreme circumstances, but you have failed to prove it.

In the situation you describe like a post-nuclear war or meteor strike, any man could murder another man for food or have sex with a young girl, you wouldn't have any special advantage becase you're a paedophile or muderous by nature. All people would quckly descend into wild animals given extreme circumstances like hunger and fight for survival.The potential for muder is in all of us, given the right circumstances to bring it out. THe difference is that we *do* need those extreme circumstances, whereas someone who enjoys it will do it at any time, however, when those extreme circumstances arise, we will all be equal again.

Same goes for the sex with young girls.

 

Some people realized that plants could be harbored and cultivated and this was a benefit for them so it increased.

That's what *I'm* saying. THey realised it, they thought it out for themselves, they discovered the idea and then built on it an improved it when they saw it was working, and they only have themselves to thank, not nature.

We exploit nature as we wish for our own benefit.

[obscurus]

I'm not sure if you are now mixing size and complexity. Obiously a bigger animal has abigger brain, and this may mean more complexity, but in relation of the body volume to brainsize I think that humans have the biggest ratio. I think there were even dinosaurs with multiple brains, but that didn't make them smarter.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ahh the old body size vs brain size myth. In actual fact, the Platypus has the largest brain relative to it's body size, followed by the Echidna, followed by the elephant nosed fish, and there are a couple of monkeys that come in before humans in the brain:body ratio. It doesn't mean these creatures are the smartest. Similarly, the sperm whale is about the same size as a whale shark, which has a brain the size of a tennis ball, so clearly a large brain is not required to operate a large body. Similarly, a brachiosaurus weighed about eighty tonnes, yet it managed to operate this bulk with a brain little larger than a hen's egg. A similarly sized whale has a brain three times the size of a human brain. A typical dinosaur the size of an elephant had a brain the size of a walnut, but an elephant has a brain twice as large as that of a human.

So the fact that large animals clearly do not need large brains simply because they are big animals, indicates that large animals with big brains are using their brains for something that has nothing to do with their size per se (they might be big purely to support a large brain). Elephants, for example, have very complex communication, demonstrate that they understand the concept of life and death, and ther is no reason to think that they are not using their brains in a similar way to humans. Same deal with sperm whales, orcas, dolphins. They exhibit self awareness, abstract thought, communication that for all intents and purposes is language (some people like to define language in a way that is so narrow that only humans can be said to have language), and the fact that bats are able to process sonar information with a very modest brain, and the fact that odontocete whales have a special lobe of the brain that handles sonar processing (and leaves plenty of brain for other things) indicates that they have plenty of neural processing power far in excess of what humans have, which, given what we know about their behaviour so far, makes the hypothesis that they are capable of being more intelligent in some respects than humans quite reasonable. Odontocete whales (and also the platypus and echidna) also have much more complex neurological structures than the human brain, so by any measure you care to come up with, there are animals that come out on top over humans in the brains department, and we are far from being the only sentient or sapient species on this planet by any cognitive test you would like to use. To believe otherwise is just wishful anthropocentrism, nothing more.

 

There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the size of the human brain is a redundacy feature - because we rely on our brains heavily, and they are poorly protected (whales have very little risk of brain injury by comparison), we have a lot of spare neurones available for re-wiring if we lose a few when we take a large knock to the head. This is further supported by the fact that people can lose substantial chunks of their brain and still have a fairly normal life, with normal mental function. There have been plenty of people who have been found to have been born with a brain that is far smaller than normal who have normal intelligence, further indicating that a large brain is not necessary for a high level of cognitive function.

 

 

Regardless, this is all irrelevant as to whether a species will be an evolutionary success or not. Intelligence is an adaptive tool that enables a secies to occupy an ecological niche. It won't guarantee that species continued persistence if that niche can no longer be supported by the ecosystem.

 

Sooo, back to the debate as to whether humans have freed ourselves from the vaguaries of evolution. Humans are very adaptive, intelligent, and we can manipulate our own destiny to some degree. I won't dispute that. But that doesn't get us off the hook of natural selection. For one thing, we are quite a large animal (the average size of animals is less than 200g - we are considered very large) that, being also a mammal, requires a lot of food to maintain a viable population. We also have a long reproductive cycle, it takes humans at least 15 years to reach sexual maturity, which means we breed very slowly (compared to another ecological generalist like mice, which can start breeding from about 4 - 5 weeks old). If we overshoot the carrying capacity for our species (that is, the maximum number of humans that our environment can sustainably support) we are at much greater risk of becoming extinct because of our long reproductive cycle, large size, and our nutritional limitations (we don't synthesise all the vitamins we need, so we need to obtain them from our food - if that food is not available, we are screwed). Our intelligence might help us adapt to a disaster, but it doesn't make us immune.

 

Now, there are also over twenty other processes besides natural selection that drive evolution (and natural selection is not the most important one by the way) (eg, sexual selection, social selection, genetic drift, kin selection, parasite driven selection etc (look them up in a genetics textbook if you want), and we are definately still as subject to those as we ever were, regardless of how much we might have ameliorated the effects of natural selection at the moment. We are still evolving, it never stops.

 

There is good reason to think that humans have already well and truly overshot our carrying capacity, but there is often a delay before the effect becomes obvious (60 - 150 years), as ecosystems take time to unravel. I won't matter one bit how adaptible we are as a species if we all starve to death. We have already created strains of bacteria that are immune to every antibiotic known, and there are plenty of diseases that are more than capable of wiping out 90% of the human population before we have time to use our ingenuity to come up with a solution. We have almost certainly altered our climate in a non-beneficial way, and we have overfished the oceans, overfarmed the land, and cut down too many trees. This is not being pessimistic, just realistic.

 

I am not saying we are doomed as a species (we might just survive a few catastrophes), but I am saying our civilisation is doomed if we persist in thinking we are the pinnacle of evolution or Gods chosen creatures and assume that nothing can go wrong. The only way we can assure the continued persistance of our species for any significant length of time is to disperse to other worlds, and by not fucking up the one we occupy at the moment.

 

Or natural selection will weed us out permanently.

[obscurus]

That's what *I'm* saying. THey realised it, they thought it out for themselves, they discovered the idea and then built on it an improved it when they saw it was working, and they only have themselves to thank, not nature.

We exploit nature as we wish for our own benefit.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

That is a very specious argument. You are pretending that there is a distinction between humans and nature that doesn't exist. We have the ability to solve problems and invent things as a result of our natural evolution, so you could say we have nature to thank for our ability to create things for ourselves.

 

Regardless, you seem to be under the illusion that things like agriculture, cities, cars, extended lifespans etc are a good thing. From an ecological or evolutionary point of view, they are not. Agriculture depletes the soil of nutrients, and most of the practises of modern human civilisation are unsustainable. Compare the traditional life of say, the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari with that of a typical Westerner. The bushman lives within the ecological limits of his or her environment, in a lifestyle that has barely changed over tens of thousands of years. Sure they have somewhat higher infant mortality, but that is natural selection weeding out defective genes. The ones that survive to adulthood are stronger, fitter and healthier than most typical Westerners, and go on to live a fairly long life (once you take infant mortality out of the equation, the longevity of people living modern lifestlyes is barely any better than that of hunter-gatherers). Hunter Gatherers typically spend about two hours a day finding food, the rest is lesiure time. A typical hunter gatherer diet is healthier than a modern western diet. We have often assumed that because people grow bigger and taller on Western food, that it must be better. But it causes the frequency of things like impacted wisdom teeth, spinal defects and joint injury to rise. Civilisation has benefits, but it has huge risks that we are beginning to find out about. And we might find ourselves hunting antelopes for a living sooner than you think if we continue down the path we are on. I am not saying I am about to trade in my computer for a spear, but if you look at civilisation through rose coloured glasses, you will miss the problems our "ingenuity" has caused.

 

Exploting "nature" without regard to the complex web of life that underpins our survival will be our undoing, and is not a good thing. Or maybe it is - life in general might have a better chance without bipedal apes with delusions of grandeur running around building nuclear weapons that can eliminate just about all life...

 

 

EDIT: Also, natural selection has nothing to do with "survival of the fittest", it has to do with how good you are at reproducing. Sure, many people with genetic defects survive with modern technology, but they rarely get to leave their genes behind, and all the processes that drive evolution along, including natural selection, will continue to operate unless we adopt a position of wholesale eugenics and genetic engineering, and do not allow anyone to breed naturally. So we might possibly have oDDity's world one day, if we make it that far, but we aren't there yet, and most people have grave reservations about the idea of eugenics, so I doubt it will happen.

Edited August 4, 2005 by obscurus

[Maximius]

But to be perfectly fair, life in general is going to get mostly erased when the next cataclysmic impact happens. And it will. Without a sneeze of a doubt. The question is when.

 

So if we wreck the environment, kill most of the higher, specialized life forms, but manage to get a successful off planet colony up and running, is it still bad? Wiping ourselves out in the interim could be construed as bad by some but the conundrum is that what is killing us now may be our salvation four hundred years down the road.

 

The point Im making is that terms like good and bad dont really apply to such questions. There is only survival or extinction. True, our technology may kill us as a species. But if it doesnt, a two mile diameter comet is definitely going to, at some point in the future. So our technology may save us as a species if we can use it to spread out to space.

 

Casting such debates in moral terms is dangerous, morality is for interpersonal relationships alone, it falls apart when you broaden your discussion beyond person to person problems.

[obscurus]

Ahh yes that is very true - life on this planet will inevitably come to an end, whether we cause it, or a comet causes it, or it happens because the dynamo that keeps our magnetic field up dies out, or the sun consumes the earth - life on this planet is screwed.

 

So human civilisation can be a good thing for life in general if we can focus on using our ingenuity to disperse life throughout the cosmos. Or a bad thing, if life is already fairly ubiquitious, and we mess up other ecosystems elswhere (but they would eventually stabilise and evolution would continue on it's merry way, so it would only be a temporary disruption). If the panspermia model is correct (and there are plenty of good reasons to think it is), then bacterial life at the very least is very common throughout the galaxy, regardless of where it might have originated. There are bacteria on earth, such as Deinococcus radiodurans , that are more than capable of surviving a trip though space on a comet or peice of rock blasted off from an impact, or hitching a ride on one of NASA's spacecraft. If there was no life on Mars before the Viking landers, there almost certainly is now, as the landers were not sterilised to anywhere near the degree necessary to kill off any of the bacteria that could easily have survived the trip in spore form.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that human technology is inherently a bad thing, just that it has risks associated with it that make it a mixed blessing, and that it needs to be used carefully and wisely. I don't mean that as a moral argument - far from it, I am talking from a point of pragmatism, on the assumption that it is desirable for life to persist. Humans have a habit of inventing things that are ultimately detrimental to them, but ignoring the downside because we are so enthused by our own cleverness, or because we value short-term thrills over long-term stability.

[Springheel]

So human civilisation can be a good thing for life in general if we can focus on using our ingenuity to disperse life throughout the cosmos.

 

Meh, what's the point. The universe is going to be dead or empty soon enough anyway. Face it. Life is screwed, period.

[obscurus]

Yup. In the end, nothing we (or anything else) do counts for shit. No point looking for immortality in a mortal universe. Just enjoy the ride while it lasts.

[sparhawk]

Well, we certainly have no saying in wether the universe should ocntinue or not. And we will probably not live through it anway. We as we are now. But depending on how thje universe is structured, there may or may not ways to survive even beyond that. But no matter if this is or not, when this will happen, I somehow doubt that the species that will exist at this time (if any) will be anything resembling humans anymore. Even if our species manages to survive for such a long time, we could call it still humans from a scientific point of view, but they will probably be as closely related to modern humans than the australopitecus is to us.

[oDDity]

We may look pretty much the same in the far future. Some animals have remained the same for hundreds of millions of years. We'll carry on mentally evolving, but there's no reasion why we'd need to keep physically evolving that much.

I think humans from a million years ago were as clever as we are today, they just hadn't gathered as much knowledge, and humans a million years from now will not be smarter than us, they'll just have a lot more knowledge.

[sparhawk]

We may look pretty much the same in the far future. Some animals have remained the same for hundreds of millions of years. We'll carry on mentally evolving, but there's no reasion why we'd need to keep physically evolving that much.

 

That may be so, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

I think humans from a million years ago were as clever as we are today, they just hadn't gathered as much knowledge, and humans a million years from now will not be smarter than us, they'll just have a lot more knowledge.

 

I often ask me this question. If you could get a babie from 500000 years ago and put it in our society, would it learn the same as we do now?

[oDDity]

Well, it depends on the intelligence of the particular baby. Not all people born today are equally intelligent, but I'm sure there were babies being born a million years ago which were just as capable of learning as babies today.

Maybe it would be correct to say that todays babies on average have greater intelligence than a million years ago, but there' s no way to prove that of course.

I don't think you can judge intelligence totally on the size of the brain cavity in hominid fossils.

[sparhawk]

I'm not talking about individual I'm talking about the general population. Of course there are extremes like Einstein, or on the other side, disbaled people, but they are not reall of interest when you are talking about populations as whole.