Thread: Future Human Evolution

Hello every one
Just wanted to share with you these links which discuss this interesting topic "future human evolution" , they have ideas and views about how humans will look like in the future and what they are evolving to:

www.humansfuture.org
www.betterhumans.com
http://hplusmagazine.com

Cheers :?

I once read that in 10,000 years we're going to all shrink into three foot tall midgets, our hands and feet will also become much smaller, and our heads will become abnormally large. Apparently our brains are supposed to be so powerful by then that our cranium will undergo some drastic evolutionary changes. :?

But then again, I also read that your level of intelligence doesn't depend on the size of your brain. So wouldn't that statement completely refute this claim about your heads being enlarged in order to accommodate our incredibly intelligent minds?

Wait, let me rethink that "incredibly intelligent" part... :P

history is great for figuring out what happened in the past
it's not particularly good at predicting the future

history is great for figuring out what happened in the past
it's not particularly good at predicting the future

So true. But I guess it could be very useful for the future sometimes when it came to recognizing some dangerous symptoms of cataclysm or devastation.

Example: Nipping a power-hungry soon-to-be-tyrant in the bud by quickly recognizing his political scams as something more than just another politician's mishaps...

Originally Posted by marnixR

history is great for figuring out what happened in the past
it's not particularly good at predicting the future

Hmmm... incorect. The best place to look to see our future is our past.

Humanity is on the cusp of fiddling with our own genes, and really taking our evolution into our own hands. So what natural selection might turn us into and what we'll actually become are probably quite different.

Originally Posted by SlugMan

Hmmm... incorect. The best place to look to see our future is our past.

why, when people have been trying to make predictions about the future, have they constantly missed the big changes that make the future look totally different from what we thought it would be ?

the worst predictions of the future have been made by people who said "if this goes on ... "
case in point : have a look at this item called "predictions from the past", which contains extracts from an article published in 1900 with the title "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years"

I think that future human evolution will be quite unpredictable.
Having said that, there are three strands of current human behavior that show signs of becoming very influential in the future.

1- Genetic engineering
I believe that any species that calls itself sentient should aspire to direct and planed control of it's evolution. This goal is not beyond our power.
In fact, the Alien Civilizations out there in the Universe will most likely consider us Primitives until we achieve this state of affairs.
(and so will refuse to play Cricket with our teams)

2 - Integration with our technology
I read recently of scientists that genetically engineered rats to have light receptive parts of their brains. These rats could interface with a computer that told them where food was through light pulses directed to their brains from lasers, and they understood the message!
Imagine a future generation of humans with such connection to the information infrastructure in such a direct way.

3 - War
If history has taught us anything then it is that civilisation rises, and then falls; with barbarians from without, or within, bringing down a culture that has risen too far.

Let us hope that this time it is, option 1 or option 2, and not just the usual option 3 that comes to dominate the future.

I would really like to be optimistic about the future of humankind but looking at myself now I couldn't be bothered to know what humankind will evolve to in the next century or the next 10,000 years. This is because I'm too bothered about 'now', too preoccupied with the materials of life. This is the situation of the world today that everybody is only concern about their material well being. The world economic crisis will soon unfold into something nastier since it is still based on capitalism. Since humans are greedy by nature, no amount of money we put into the stimulus plan will calm the crisis. People are now without jobs, as the repercussions of the economic crisis spreads further to the world, soon people will not have jobs and pay for food. There will be suffering everywhere.

But here there is hope that human evolution will move towards a higher plane. That we are not merely individuals but part of a system of nature. We're to put it simply, cells in a body, but yet we're not just a cell, but part of a system.

I am moving this topic to links. Please, links to other websites, even science related ones, is not thread starting material.
/moderator mode