what's the next big evolutionary leap going to be?

[onemonkey]

Mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.

Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.

The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans.

The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities.

http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,68962,00.html

 

[Maggot]

Everyone has forgotten that evolution takes place slowly over millions of years, not a few decades, or even centuries.

 

[onemonkey]

AI is often raised as threat, what happens if mankind forms a partnership with AI or AI grow like children, these children are then raised by humans or humans and AI. These ideas apply not just to AI but other possible outcomes, what happens if we gave dolphins full intelligence?

The future is bright, the future is AI!

except that a very large proportion of AI research is being done/funded by the military

 

[Final]

Everyone has forgotten that evolution takes place slowly over millions of years, not a few decades, or even centuries.

Depends who you're talking to I guess.

plenty of differeing opinions on the subject:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution

 

[kyser_soze]

They might not have as much cash or education, but at more basic level, they have a more effective survival strategy.

Hmm, a more effective survival strategy than creating a socioeconomic system that, with the backing of ultimate military force, diverts most of the planet's resource into about 20% of it's total population who have extended lifespans, fewer immediate health/survival concerns? Big families are about the most desparate, resource intensive method of species survival, esp in raw conditions. Besides which, if it became necessary 'The West' could quite easily suddenly start breeding.

HAL9000 - after you've opened the pod bay...it's only mentioned briefly in Excession (where Anticipation of A New Lover's Arrival gets moved 20 light years in a nanosecond by the Excession), but Minds pretty much teach themselves - they are self fettling IIRC.

 

[Purdie]

and how do we prevent these dual-livered überhumes from destroying us?

We don't. We eevolve with them. Funny you should mention dual-livered. The amount of shit we put in our bodies these days is probably causing evolutionary changes in our livers as we live. It might regenerate itself but surely it was never designed to process the dolly mixture of chemicals we get in our bodies. And even before we are born:

Concentrations of the antibacterial agent triclosan were higher in cord blood than in maternal blood, while maternal and cord blood had roughly equal concentrations of phthalates, which are used as plasticisers and are also found in ink, paint and cosmetics.

So before it gets better it'll get a lot worse i reckon. More mental health issues in ever younger children. More allergies from an ever earlier age ... .

In my sci-fi hat i would say the brain will evolve to 'communicate' on different wavelengths than what it does now. Like Maggot said:

Everyone has forgotten that evolution takes place slowly over millions of years, not a few decades, or even centuries.

 

[Final]

Besides which, if it became necessary 'The West' could quite easily suddenly start breeding.

oh really?
please send your ideas to the national goverments of most western countries, who are currently trying to work out how to get their populations birthrates up to a 'replacement' level of 2.1

 

[kyser_soze]

If the situation in say, Western Europe, went from that of plenty through to survival and the small family/high investment model was no longer viable humans would respond to it and start having larger families.

Pensions are an economic issue, not one related to whether as a society we're facing near death conditions all the time as experienced in Africa and other developing nations. If Europe started starving I have no doubt that birthrates would go up (if you care to check you'll find correlation between family size and economic status is prevelant around the world, outside of some specific communities for whom breeding is a faith based issue)

 

[Final]

If the situation in say, Western Europe, went from that of plenty through to survival and the small family/high investment model was no longer viable humans would respond to it and start having larger families.

Pensions are an economic issue, not one related to whether as a society we're facing near death conditions all the time as experienced in Africa and other developing nations. If Europe started starving I have no doubt that birthrates would go up (if you care to check you'll find correlation between family size and economic status is prevelant around the world, outside of some specific communities for whom breeding is a faith based issue)

What do pensions have to do with it? most people of that age are unlikely to be making significant contributions to the populations reproduction stats.

As well as pure population size and growth, the people in the LDCs also have much shorter generations when compared with the west (several british council estates aside ) - so as well as growing a lot faster than European populations, they're squeezing in more generations in the meantime...

* stops in mid-flow *

umm... I can't remember what point we were originally discussing now

 

[kyser_soze]

Evolution, and you were commenting that LDCs have a better approach because they have huge families against say Western Europe with small, high investment families. And my retort was 'Yeah, but 'we' control the world's resources and invest more of them into our kids, and if things went shit we'd still be able to breed in the same way LDCs do.

Anyway, your premise that evolution was more likely to happen in an LDC because of the bigger populations is, AFAIK, an incorrect statement.

 

[Final]

Anyway, your premise that evolution was more likely to happen in an LDC because of the bigger populations is, AFAIK, an incorrect statement.

That wasn't exactly what I was saying. I was saying that as far as the race as a whole is concerned, the things happening in the western world at the moment are less likely to affect future human evolution than what's happening to the race as a whole, although it was the western influences that the earlier part of the thread had been focusing on.

 

[kyser_soze]

Nope, still not getting your point. In fact, if anything the West, with the control over resources it has, is in a bigger position to affect the environment and social development of LDCs than ever before.

 

[Final]

Nope, still not getting your point. In fact, if anything the West, with the control over resources it has, is in a bigger position to affect the environment and social development of LDCs than ever before.

Controlling resources etc helps with 'survival of the fittest', but that's just one part of evolution.

Controlling every resource on the whole planet is going to do a civilisation no good at all if fails to biologically replace itself.

 

[Final]

an increased level of resistance to radiation.

Unfortunately.

ok - changed my mind. I'm going to go with this one.


Some tribe in Papua New Guinea or some relatively isolated place in the south pacific is going to develop a superb resistance to UV radiation or something. Then everyone's going to want a piece of it.

 

[HAL9000]

Evolution is slow, but evolution in a virus is relatively quick. What happens if a virus changes mankind? I heard that there's a virus which made mice less afraid of cats, and the mice get eaten. This is good news for the virus as it prefers cats to mice.

What happens if a virus changes human behaviour. This sci-fi story is worth a read (and its free)

http://www.davidbrin.com/givingplague1.html

 

[Final]

What happens if a virus changes human behaviour. This sci-fi story is worth a read (and its free)

http://www.davidbrin.com/givingplague1.html

28 days later? (great film).