4 ms·

It's sad to know I will not see where evolution will take them, even worse is not knowing if they will have a chance to evolve in the years to come

JoeyBananas 5y ago
Let them evolve and you end up with humans
- colordrops 5y ago
  This makes the very false assumption that evolution has some linear path that it always trends towards.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    In this case they're pretty far along that road, though. It seems unlikely they'd evolve away from a very similar brain structure or hand structure to us, for example.
    - wahern 5y ago
      This implies that our brain and hand structure are the most crucial characteristics. There's been endless claims in the scientific literature about this or that physical feature or behavior, but it's all extremely speculative and lacking in both evidence and theoretical power. We can't even clearly articulate what distinguishes human faculties or behavior. Every time someone proposes a definition (e.g. tool use) and then tries to collect evidence (e.g. opposable thumbs, abstract modeling, etc), the definition falls apart as people identify analogous faculties, behavior, and capabilities elsewhere. I think it's self-evident that human faculties and behavior have a fundamentally and categorically superior characteristic. Others think that our failure to so far find it suggests that it doesn't exist. (Not sure how to square that with reality beyond simply suggesting that human civilization is purely and continuously accidental, or perhaps that a constructed spacefaring capability isn't meaningfully different from other behaviors.) Either way, we're still rather ignorant about what we are. And even if we could articulate it, we'd still need to understand why and how human evolution unfolded as it did as there may be a filter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter) making convergent evolution of human-like intelligence unlikely even if evolution were directed somehow. So we can't meaningfully say anything about how "far along" chimpanzees or any other species might be.
- frutiger 5y ago
  Pan troglodytes have evolved for precisely as long as homo sapiens have.
- faraaz98 5y ago
  Nope. Apes are "cousins" to humans regarding evolution, and secondly evolution isn't some linear thing where everyone eventually evolves into humans. So it's unlikely that they evolve into very human like species
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  'end up'? Humans are evolving today. So are chimps, crocodiles and coronaviruses. There's no end, no objective. Just reproduction with variation under selection pressure.
- wcoenen 5y ago
  This misconception comes from "the great chain of being"[1]. It's an old idea which still influences us to see evolution as a ladder. Evolution doesn't work like that though. It's a process that finds local optima for fitness by randomly exploring a very high dimensional space. It moves in myriad directions; there is no single ladder to climb "up". E.g. for humans, our evolutionary path looks like it selected for increased intelligence. For mycoplasma, it selected for the organism to be as simple as possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being

JoeyBananas 5y ago

Let them evolve and you end up with humans

colordrops 5y ago
This makes the very false assumption that evolution has some linear path that it always trends towards.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  In this case they're pretty far along that road, though. It seems unlikely they'd evolve away from a very similar brain structure or hand structure to us, for example.
  - wahern 5y ago
    This implies that our brain and hand structure are the most crucial characteristics. There's been endless claims in the scientific literature about this or that physical feature or behavior, but it's all extremely speculative and lacking in both evidence and theoretical power. We can't even clearly articulate what distinguishes human faculties or behavior. Every time someone proposes a definition (e.g. tool use) and then tries to collect evidence (e.g. opposable thumbs, abstract modeling, etc), the definition falls apart as people identify analogous faculties, behavior, and capabilities elsewhere. I think it's self-evident that human faculties and behavior have a fundamentally and categorically superior characteristic. Others think that our failure to so far find it suggests that it doesn't exist. (Not sure how to square that with reality beyond simply suggesting that human civilization is purely and continuously accidental, or perhaps that a constructed spacefaring capability isn't meaningfully different from other behaviors.) Either way, we're still rather ignorant about what we are. And even if we could articulate it, we'd still need to understand why and how human evolution unfolded as it did as there may be a filter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter) making convergent evolution of human-like intelligence unlikely even if evolution were directed somehow. So we can't meaningfully say anything about how "far along" chimpanzees or any other species might be.
frutiger 5y ago
Pan troglodytes have evolved for precisely as long as homo sapiens have.
faraaz98 5y ago
Nope. Apes are "cousins" to humans regarding evolution, and secondly evolution isn't some linear thing where everyone eventually evolves into humans. So it's unlikely that they evolve into very human like species
robotresearcher 5y ago
'end up'? Humans are evolving today. So are chimps, crocodiles and coronaviruses. There's no end, no objective. Just reproduction with variation under selection pressure.
wcoenen 5y ago
This misconception comes from "the great chain of being"[1]. It's an old idea which still influences us to see evolution as a ladder. Evolution doesn't work like that though. It's a process that finds local optima for fitness by randomly exploring a very high dimensional space. It moves in myriad directions; there is no single ladder to climb "up". E.g. for humans, our evolutionary path looks like it selected for increased intelligence. For mycoplasma, it selected for the organism to be as simple as possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being