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Yeah, even evolution is evolving. We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, but honestly, we're still extremely primitive compared to what life could be

Yeah, even evolution is evolving. We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, but honestly, we're still extremely primitive compared to what life could be given another two or three billion years to play out.

felipemnoa 10y ago
Unfortunately life does not have that long [1]. A billion years at best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth.2C_the_Solar_System_and_the_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Unless you mean elsewhere than on Earth. That would also put different pressures on it too.
- astrodust 10y ago
  You're presuming that life doesn't evolve to the point where it can escape this planet and move to other ones. Even if we have a horrible nuclear war that kills all humans it will only take 100-200 million years for another highly intelligent species to come back and take over again. We've got around five kicks at the can before it's too late.
Arizhel 10y ago
Or, perhaps, in 1 million years, humans will evolve to be significantly less-intelligent aquatic animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29
webmaven 10y ago
> We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved Well, that's a mistake right there: All life on this planet has been evolving for the same amount of time[0]. Every organism, every species extant today has already beaten incredible odds to avoid extinction (arguably the only true long term measure of success). None of us are any more or less "evolved" than any other. [0] Of course, if instead of "time" we consider "generations" to be the correct measure of evolution, than all us multicellular eukaryotes are lagging the prokaryotes so much that we need to describe the number of orders of magnitude we're behind using powers of ten.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Except that we optimize on the timescales that are many orders of magnitude shorter than those of evolution. There was a threshold of intelligence in the past, the moment it was crossed, evolution[0] has lost the game. That is, unless we decide to forfeit by nuking ourselves out of existence. [0] - Here meaning non-human-directed part of evolution; technically, all humans and everything they do are part of nature too.

felipemnoa 10y ago

Unfortunately life does not have that long [1]. A billion years at best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth.2C_the_Solar_System_and_the_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...

AstralStorm 10y ago
Unless you mean elsewhere than on Earth. That would also put different pressures on it too.
astrodust 10y ago
You're presuming that life doesn't evolve to the point where it can escape this planet and move to other ones. Even if we have a horrible nuclear war that kills all humans it will only take 100-200 million years for another highly intelligent species to come back and take over again. We've got around five kicks at the can before it's too late.

Arizhel 10y ago

Or, perhaps, in 1 million years, humans will evolve to be significantly less-intelligent aquatic animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29

webmaven 10y ago

> We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved Well, that's a mistake right there: All life on this planet has been evolving for the same amount of time[0]. Every organism, every species extant today has already beaten incredible odds to avoid extinction (arguably the only true long term measure of success). None of us are any more or less "evolved" than any other. [0] Of course, if instead of "time" we consider "generations" to be the correct measure of evolution, than all us multicellular eukaryotes are lagging the prokaryotes so much that we need to describe the number of orders of magnitude we're behind using powers of ten.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Except that we optimize on the timescales that are many orders of magnitude shorter than those of evolution. There was a threshold of intelligence in the past, the moment it was crossed, evolution[0] has lost the game. That is, unless we decide to forfeit by nuking ourselves out of existence. [0] - Here meaning non-human-directed part of evolution; technically, all humans and everything they do are part of nature too.