6 ms·

Will the Six Great Stages of Evolution Be Followed by a Seventh?

21 points by timf 17y ago

timf 17y ago
This is interesting, I had never heard an estimate that high: A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers after the growth of human civilizations.
baddox 17y ago
I would think colonization of other planets (or in the article's own terms, "invasion of outer space") would be a more likely and more comparable next step.
- Tichy 17y ago
  Hm, I know more about computer science than about physics. Sure, after reading countless science fiction stories, it is difficult to imagine that there won't be interstellar travel, teleportation and time travel one day, but aren't there physical limitations? OK teleportation seems doable (has been done I think), but what about the speed of light? Most sf stories seem to settle for some kind of handy worm holes, but what if we don't find them? Not saying it is impossible, but the path to AI seems much clearer than the path to interstellar travel at this point, in my opinion. Like say in 100 years, do you think we'll be traveling to distant stars already? (Then again, with super intelligent AI, maybe we, or "they", will figure something out).
  - baddox 17y ago
    Still, there's the potential for terraforming Mars or some of the rocky moons in our own solar system.
scythe 17y ago
If you ask me, #3 should be "aerobic metabolisms". It seems like a pretty significant development.
alanthonyc 17y ago
So at this point, we are sort of like the fruit flies of large mammals.
polos 17y ago
Evolution theory is an (old) theory. Here is some newer one: http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=1104 http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=...
- rwolf 17y ago
  He doesn't have a wiki in my native tongue, so I had to chuck google translate at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele . The results seem to indicate he is a nobody, but I could be wrong. Also, could anyone provide a better translation of the book title "I am Jesus-fan: but how you become one?"? Without context from sources I've seen before, it's not clear that it's worth my time to read the page you linked to. I ran into this same problem while trying to read a broad survey of Institutionalist economics papers--the amount of time I can spend reading is limited, and sometimes there's no way to tell if a heterodox work is worth the trouble. Sadly, my default is "no."
  - polos 17y ago
    You don't need to read the whole book: Just look at all the things Darwin "didn't want to know", and the progress which science made since Darwin. IMO, Darwin is simply not to consider a good scientist, and in Darwins book there are some disgusting racist parts, and discriminating parts against the intelligence of women.
    - gjm11 17y ago
      Yeah, obviously if science has made progress since Darwin then that shows that the modern version of Darwin's theory (resulting from, y'know, all that scientific progress) must be wrong. The reason why scientists accept evolution is not because Darwin was a good scientist or a nice person (although, for the record, general consensus is that he was) but because the evidence for is vastly better than the evidence against. Even if it turned out that Darwin was crazy as a loon, that his belief in evolution came from voices in his head, and that he liked to eat babies for breakfast, it wouldn't change that.

21 points by timf 17y ago

timf 17y ago

This is interesting, I had never heard an estimate that high: A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers after the growth of human civilizations.

baddox 17y ago

I would think colonization of other planets (or in the article's own terms, "invasion of outer space") would be a more likely and more comparable next step.

Tichy 17y ago
Hm, I know more about computer science than about physics. Sure, after reading countless science fiction stories, it is difficult to imagine that there won't be interstellar travel, teleportation and time travel one day, but aren't there physical limitations? OK teleportation seems doable (has been done I think), but what about the speed of light? Most sf stories seem to settle for some kind of handy worm holes, but what if we don't find them? Not saying it is impossible, but the path to AI seems much clearer than the path to interstellar travel at this point, in my opinion. Like say in 100 years, do you think we'll be traveling to distant stars already? (Then again, with super intelligent AI, maybe we, or "they", will figure something out).
- baddox 17y ago
  Still, there's the potential for terraforming Mars or some of the rocky moons in our own solar system.

scythe 17y ago

If you ask me, #3 should be "aerobic metabolisms". It seems like a pretty significant development.

alanthonyc 17y ago

So at this point, we are sort of like the fruit flies of large mammals.

polos 17y ago

Evolution theory is an (old) theory. Here is some newer one: http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=1104 http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=...

rwolf 17y ago
He doesn't have a wiki in my native tongue, so I had to chuck google translate at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele . The results seem to indicate he is a nobody, but I could be wrong. Also, could anyone provide a better translation of the book title "I am Jesus-fan: but how you become one?"? Without context from sources I've seen before, it's not clear that it's worth my time to read the page you linked to. I ran into this same problem while trying to read a broad survey of Institutionalist economics papers--the amount of time I can spend reading is limited, and sometimes there's no way to tell if a heterodox work is worth the trouble. Sadly, my default is "no."
- polos 17y ago
  You don't need to read the whole book: Just look at all the things Darwin "didn't want to know", and the progress which science made since Darwin. IMO, Darwin is simply not to consider a good scientist, and in Darwins book there are some disgusting racist parts, and discriminating parts against the intelligence of women.
  - gjm11 17y ago
    Yeah, obviously if science has made progress since Darwin then that shows that the modern version of Darwin's theory (resulting from, y'know, all that scientific progress) must be wrong. The reason why scientists accept evolution is not because Darwin was a good scientist or a nice person (although, for the record, general consensus is that he was) but because the evidence for is vastly better than the evidence against. Even if it turned out that Darwin was crazy as a loon, that his belief in evolution came from voices in his head, and that he liked to eat babies for breakfast, it wouldn't change that.