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I would be astounded if "humanity" exists a million years from now. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't exist a thousand years from now. The thing is we are

I would be astounded if "humanity" exists a million years from now. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't exist a thousand years from now. The thing is we are a technological species, we don't need to rely on random chance for evolution. We can already create DNA on demand and insert it into microorganisms. AFIAK we currently only do this with already-known proteins, but that is a limit of knowing what will be useful, not a limit of the technique. As time goes on it seems inconceivable that we will not reach the point we can apply this to human DNA at conception. I expect the first manifestations will be editing out known-bad genes and replacing them with the properly-working equivalents. Next will come replacing ordinary genes with known-superior genes. Then they'll be inventing new superior genes. I expect in almost all cases they'll make the edits backwards-compatible but we've all seen it with software--backwards compatibility only works over a range of generations. Don't expect v20 to play nice with v2. Once the mods reach the point that reproduction with a stock human is no longer possible we have a speciation event--the results can no longer be considered human even if they would not raise an eyebrow if dropped into today's society. As for long-term protection of our solar system--I can't imagine why. It would be a lot easier to protect the Earth by moving it rather than moving anything that might threaten it.

rbanffy 4y ago
> Then they'll be inventing new superior genes. The thing is, they only need to do it once in all those billions of years, and they become a totally different species. And that's assuming they'll still be fond of organic bodies and not decide to live in simulated environments that are much easier to move than planets.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Inventing a superior gene doesn't itself make them a new species. They only become a new species when the result can't breed with a base human. However, even that gets fuzzy--there's a "species" of bird whose name escapes me that lives in high latitudes. They can all breed with the neighbors, but birds from the two ends of the span can't breed with each other. I expect to see the same thing happen with humanity--eventually highly modded individuals won't be able to breed with unmodded individuals. (Although, unless immortality is developed there won't be any unmodded individuals to breed with. Why would the genetic engineers care about compatibility with the old version that's no longer around?)

rbanffy 4y ago

> Then they'll be inventing new superior genes. The thing is, they only need to do it once in all those billions of years, and they become a totally different species. And that's assuming they'll still be fond of organic bodies and not decide to live in simulated environments that are much easier to move than planets.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
Inventing a superior gene doesn't itself make them a new species. They only become a new species when the result can't breed with a base human. However, even that gets fuzzy--there's a "species" of bird whose name escapes me that lives in high latitudes. They can all breed with the neighbors, but birds from the two ends of the span can't breed with each other. I expect to see the same thing happen with humanity--eventually highly modded individuals won't be able to breed with unmodded individuals. (Although, unless immortality is developed there won't be any unmodded individuals to breed with. Why would the genetic engineers care about compatibility with the old version that's no longer around?)