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Sunday, March 22, 2015

Scientific American- Whither Human Evolution?- Readers Have Lots to Say

This article is from the In-Depth Report The Human Evolution Issue—2014

Where Is Human Evolution Taking Us?

We asked scientists for their views on the evolution of our species
Aug 19, 2014
WE ASKED leading scientists how they think humans will evolve in the future. Here is what they had to say. For more expert commentary, go to ScientificAmerican.com/sep2014/predictions

More on this topic:
Sherry Turkle Explains Why Social Technologies Are Making Us Less Social 
No, Humans Have Not Stopped Evolving
This article was originally published with the title "Where We are Going."
or subscribe to access other articles from the September 2014 publication.
Scientific American Volume 311, Issue 3
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bear8357 August 25, 2014, 9:08 AM
Better yet when they can get rid of the judgmental control freak abuser genes. Psycho humans are still scared little tree monkeys.
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mikewax August 28, 2014, 1:27 AM
Holy **** folks, how can you be so optimistic? how many people are there in the world today who exist only because thier parents are irresponsible, sheepish, or just plain dumb enough to blindly obey the catholic church? what do you think that does to our collective genepool? thanks to the church, blind obedience is probably the single greatest selective pressure in operation today. that's where evolution is taking homo sapiens. natural selection isn't a process or a mechanism. it's a tautology, a corolary to life itself, without which you can't even DEFINE life, so i don't think it's gonna go away any time soon.
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totransplant September 10, 2014, 4:25 PM
To some extent soccerdad is right - humans have found ways to enable people with "bad genes" to reproduce. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing. For example, we invented glasses for people with poor vision. Even though poor vision has no intrinsic survival advantage, we keep it in the gene pool because people with glasses are SEXY! Just kidding. What I mean is that our societies have evolved to the extent that we can better tolerate genetic imperfections. Thank goodness, because there are some people with genetic imperfections that have a really positive impact on the human condition.
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Ingamas totransplant September 10, 2014, 7:30 PM
Totranplant.
Gag.
Glasses more apt to be a response to an environmental situation called reading - no reading - no glasses.
How about more people that survive to reproduce more genetic diversity to help us in the future?
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wantstoknow September 10, 2014, 11:34 PM
I hope human beings evolve to have a peaceful instinct instead of what humans have at present, which is a war like instinct.
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LouisVA wantstoknow September 11, 2014, 3:17 PM
I understand your feelings; however, your comment is a generalization. I consider myself a pacifist and have never participated in a war and I am currently 64 years old . The one and only fist fight I had as a kid took place at age 11 with a neighborhood bully. I was blindly swinging and landed a punch giving the bully a black eye - a lucky punch indeed. Since then, I've developed the ability to simply stay away from potential fights.
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jayjacobus September 14, 2014, 9:52 AM
The environment controls evolution or so it seems. Humans control the environment. So environmental pressure will not be the determining factor. Besides isolated pockets of humans is not likely. So, variation is less likely. Perhaps the future humans will become more standardized in appearance and abilities.
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hkraznodar mikewax September 16, 2014, 2:16 PM
I hate to dump reality all over your anti-Catholic rant but most people are not Catholics. At no time in history has the majority of the population of the world been Catholic. Your premise is based on an error, if not an outright delusion. Since you start from an error, you end up at an error. Theology has far less to do with global population than does the availability or lack thereof in regards to low cost effective birth control and education in basic biology.
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kfinel September 23, 2014, 9:55 AM
The question should have been addressed in the "big picture." It is a sign of the times that, with the exception of Dr. Yohannes, those questioned here are highly specialized, and can comment only against their specialty. The Google guy sounds like a twenty-something thinker - come on, ten+ billion people worldwide with brain implants connecting with some Cloud? Dr. Sarah missed the big question entirely.
Clearly, the period of exponential growth has passed for human technology as a whole. The answer must consider extinction events, climate change, geological catastrophes, and human energy production and resource consumption. No one can intelligently predict such an outcome, it is beyond us.
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nicholasjh1 hkraznodar March 16, 2015, 11:50 AM
I'm sorry, but I have to say I think Mike is right. Yes, the majority aren't catholic, that was simply one small example. The fact is, that those who breed live, those who don't die. Those who breed control evolution those who don't die. Unless something severe happens, such as drakonian measures to control the entire earth, or wide spread genetic engineering, than mike is correct, the 'masses' will always outbreed those who 'restrain' themselves to 'save' the Earth. Low breeding is a dead end. there is no way it can ever 'help' the population problem.
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