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Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

42 points by mixmax 17y ago

michaelawill 17y ago
Always cool to hear what Stephen has to say but there isn't anything most of us don't already know in the article.
- tybris 17y ago
  but it's the first time someone didn't make it sound scary. The future is going to be relatively great. Just like the present is great relative to the past.
  - Silentio 17y ago
    There are about 3 billion people on Earth to whom your statement doesn't necessarily apply: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-the-bottom-5/ http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-...
    - kragen 17y ago
      In purely economic terms, a lot of those 3 billion are a lot better off now than they would have been a century ago. The top of the list, Namibia, has US$5500 or so per-capita purchasing-power parity GDP. If your income is US$5500 per year, you're already pretty far up Maslow's hierarchy. Of course, just because someone isn't starving to death doesn't imply that they aren't miserable; probably most people reading this comment know somebody in a rich country who has committed suicide.
pj 17y ago
just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life. What might that form of life have been like? Was it on earth? Where did it go? Why don't we see any fossil or other remnants of it?
- mixmax 17y ago
  Without being an expert I believe that science leans toward the theory that RNA, or something similar, preceeded DNA.
- berntb 17y ago
  If that happened, it was certainly a good time before there were multicellular life. Hence, no remnants. There are some hints that there was an RNA-based world before DNA. A strong one is that ribosomes is made partly from RNA.
- burke 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis I seem to remember hearing about some organism that only has RNA, but I couldn't find it with a quick search through wikipedia.
  - ilyak 17y ago
    Are viruses organisms? They aren't, but they only have RNA.
  - berntb 17y ago
    An interesting link, if you have organic chemistry interests but haven't read that much on pre-RNA. Thanks, should have checked that myself.
- kragen 17y ago
  The Precambrian fossil record is pretty thin, even though DNA-based Precambrian life existed for about six times as long as we've had multicellular organisms. There's a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#From_organic_molecules_to_protocells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#From_organic_mol...
pmichaud 17y ago
It's really not a new stage of evolution per se. The switch from random variations being selected through breeding, to deliberate enhancement takes us from "evolution" to "intelligent design" by definition. But he's right overall: we've transitioning into a period in which traits will be passed on by choice rather than by chance.
- joecode 17y ago
  Right now, yes. But throw in some resource constraints and random violence, and then you've got competition among the "intelligently designed" progeny. Then you're back in evolutionary territory. It's just an evolution that is more conscious of itself.
- thwarted 17y ago
  The eventual ability to use a brain to reason about and change your own species's genes isn't evolutionarily selected for? The brain and human intelligence itself doesn't exist outside of evolution. If it turns out that humans being smart enough to modify their own genes doesn't work out, doesn't produce viable offspring, and ultimately loses out to undirected selection, would we say that that's a failing of our capabilities or that evolution didn't select for human control of their own gene selection? Does the answer to this question change over different time scales or if our evolution was to be studied by other intelligent species? It ceases to be undirected natural selection, but continues to be evolution. "Intelligent design" assumes an intelligence outside and other than humans. This is part of the "playing God" argument against research in this area. So while I agree that the term "intelligent design" may be more appropriate, that doesn't preclude it from still being "evolution" over the long term (which is largely what evolution is focused on). I'd also rather not have the terms get mixed up; calling this "intelligent design" serves to confuse the ongoing religion vs science argument/debate that is holding back innovation and laws in this area.
  - pmichaud 17y ago
    How about "human engineering" instead of intelligent design?
  - 17y ago
Hexstream 17y ago
"Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression." Commit crime --> Get sent to Rehabilitation Center --> Get a few bits flipped in your DNA --> Off you go. This could go Really Wrong (ex: extremist pacifists take control and turn off the aggression bits in everyone) but it's an interesting scenario.
- lukifer 17y ago
  The more inclusive corollary to Murphy's Law: Anything that can happen, will happen. I imagine we'll see a lot of positive change, as well as widespread injustice and abuse. So it goes.
- nollidge 17y ago
  There's a couple issues here: this would be fairly difficult, as you'd need to change the DNA in probably several billions of cells before any phenotypic change could be effected. Perhaps one mechanism may be to engineer a retrovirus that would rewrite portions of DNA. This could obviously have far more important impacts as well: such an RV could reprogram cancerous cells to die off like proper cells, or disable their angiogenic capability; and of course it could be programmed to rewrite genes implicated in diseases like sickle-cell anemia or multiple sclerosis. Another issue is that while genetics of course plays a role in behavior, I think it plays out more in directing the development of the brain, not the actual millisecond-to-millisecond activities of it. Based on my ankle-deep knowledge of neuroscience, I think that adjusting the DNA is unlikely to cause an adult brain to rearrange itself in such a way as to modify behavior. A more likely use for it could be in adjusting brain chemistry, which I'm guessing can have dramatic, if not entirely targeted, effects.
- Zaak 17y ago
  > This could go Really Wrong (ex: extremist pacifists take control and turn off the aggression bits in everyone) but it's an interesting scenario. Which isn't a problem until we encounter the Kzinti...
polos 17y ago
We should not ignore, once in a while, that we only talk about hypothesis here, quite nothing about his (certainly very interesting theories) can be proven empirically -- so it's far from universally acceptable, real, concrete science. Sad to say this, but this kind of science has much more from fiction than from concrete science.
asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
I have to agree but I think this happened as soon as we had language which was thought and learned and wasn't pure instinct like other animal vocalizations.
req2 17y ago
If you want the crotchety, overly pedantic, poorly critical response by PZ, http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me_cranky.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me...
orionlogic 17y ago
i think this is the whole script. http://brembs.net/SWH.html http://brembs.net/SWH.html
tungstenfurnace 17y ago
Perhaps where evolution is really happening, then, is in the criteria we use to decide which limited number of books to read. * So much important information is being posted outside books: on the web, on kindles, etc. In evolutionary terms this is about as reliable as keeping genes on mitochondrial DNA.

42 points by mixmax 17y ago

michaelawill 17y ago

Always cool to hear what Stephen has to say but there isn't anything most of us don't already know in the article.

tybris 17y ago
but it's the first time someone didn't make it sound scary. The future is going to be relatively great. Just like the present is great relative to the past.
- Silentio 17y ago
  There are about 3 billion people on Earth to whom your statement doesn't necessarily apply: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-the-bottom-5/ http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-...
  - kragen 17y ago
    In purely economic terms, a lot of those 3 billion are a lot better off now than they would have been a century ago. The top of the list, Namibia, has US$5500 or so per-capita purchasing-power parity GDP. If your income is US$5500 per year, you're already pretty far up Maslow's hierarchy. Of course, just because someone isn't starving to death doesn't imply that they aren't miserable; probably most people reading this comment know somebody in a rich country who has committed suicide.

pj 17y ago

just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life. What might that form of life have been like? Was it on earth? Where did it go? Why don't we see any fossil or other remnants of it?

mixmax 17y ago
Without being an expert I believe that science leans toward the theory that RNA, or something similar, preceeded DNA.
berntb 17y ago
If that happened, it was certainly a good time before there were multicellular life. Hence, no remnants. There are some hints that there was an RNA-based world before DNA. A strong one is that ribosomes is made partly from RNA.
burke 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis I seem to remember hearing about some organism that only has RNA, but I couldn't find it with a quick search through wikipedia.
- ilyak 17y ago
  Are viruses organisms? They aren't, but they only have RNA.
- berntb 17y ago
  An interesting link, if you have organic chemistry interests but haven't read that much on pre-RNA. Thanks, should have checked that myself.
kragen 17y ago
The Precambrian fossil record is pretty thin, even though DNA-based Precambrian life existed for about six times as long as we've had multicellular organisms. There's a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#From_organic_molecules_to_protocells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#From_organic_mol...

pmichaud 17y ago

It's really not a new stage of evolution per se. The switch from random variations being selected through breeding, to deliberate enhancement takes us from "evolution" to "intelligent design" by definition. But he's right overall: we've transitioning into a period in which traits will be passed on by choice rather than by chance.

joecode 17y ago
Right now, yes. But throw in some resource constraints and random violence, and then you've got competition among the "intelligently designed" progeny. Then you're back in evolutionary territory. It's just an evolution that is more conscious of itself.
thwarted 17y ago
The eventual ability to use a brain to reason about and change your own species's genes isn't evolutionarily selected for? The brain and human intelligence itself doesn't exist outside of evolution. If it turns out that humans being smart enough to modify their own genes doesn't work out, doesn't produce viable offspring, and ultimately loses out to undirected selection, would we say that that's a failing of our capabilities or that evolution didn't select for human control of their own gene selection? Does the answer to this question change over different time scales or if our evolution was to be studied by other intelligent species? It ceases to be undirected natural selection, but continues to be evolution. "Intelligent design" assumes an intelligence outside and other than humans. This is part of the "playing God" argument against research in this area. So while I agree that the term "intelligent design" may be more appropriate, that doesn't preclude it from still being "evolution" over the long term (which is largely what evolution is focused on). I'd also rather not have the terms get mixed up; calling this "intelligent design" serves to confuse the ongoing religion vs science argument/debate that is holding back innovation and laws in this area.
- pmichaud 17y ago
  How about "human engineering" instead of intelligent design?
- 17y ago

Hexstream 17y ago

"Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression." Commit crime --> Get sent to Rehabilitation Center --> Get a few bits flipped in your DNA --> Off you go. This could go Really Wrong (ex: extremist pacifists take control and turn off the aggression bits in everyone) but it's an interesting scenario.

lukifer 17y ago
The more inclusive corollary to Murphy's Law: Anything that can happen, will happen. I imagine we'll see a lot of positive change, as well as widespread injustice and abuse. So it goes.
nollidge 17y ago
There's a couple issues here: this would be fairly difficult, as you'd need to change the DNA in probably several billions of cells before any phenotypic change could be effected. Perhaps one mechanism may be to engineer a retrovirus that would rewrite portions of DNA. This could obviously have far more important impacts as well: such an RV could reprogram cancerous cells to die off like proper cells, or disable their angiogenic capability; and of course it could be programmed to rewrite genes implicated in diseases like sickle-cell anemia or multiple sclerosis. Another issue is that while genetics of course plays a role in behavior, I think it plays out more in directing the development of the brain, not the actual millisecond-to-millisecond activities of it. Based on my ankle-deep knowledge of neuroscience, I think that adjusting the DNA is unlikely to cause an adult brain to rearrange itself in such a way as to modify behavior. A more likely use for it could be in adjusting brain chemistry, which I'm guessing can have dramatic, if not entirely targeted, effects.
Zaak 17y ago
> This could go Really Wrong (ex: extremist pacifists take control and turn off the aggression bits in everyone) but it's an interesting scenario. Which isn't a problem until we encounter the Kzinti...

polos 17y ago

We should not ignore, once in a while, that we only talk about hypothesis here, quite nothing about his (certainly very interesting theories) can be proven empirically -- so it's far from universally acceptable, real, concrete science. Sad to say this, but this kind of science has much more from fiction than from concrete science.

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago

I have to agree but I think this happened as soon as we had language which was thought and learned and wasn't pure instinct like other animal vocalizations.

req2 17y ago

If you want the crotchety, overly pedantic, poorly critical response by PZ, http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me_cranky.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me...

orionlogic 17y ago

i think this is the whole script. http://brembs.net/SWH.html http://brembs.net/SWH.html

tungstenfurnace 17y ago

Perhaps where evolution is really happening, then, is in the criteria we use to decide which limited number of books to read. * So much important information is being posted outside books: on the web, on kindles, etc. In evolutionary terms this is about as reliable as keeping genes on mitochondrial DNA.