It seems to me that humans are devolving. Perhaps evolution isn't exactly working the way we think it does and retrogressive motion isn't inevitable but I kind of think it is. Look around you next time you are out and about. How many healthy humans can you see? Be really critical.

Chimpanzee's are 6 times stronger than humans. Since we left the jungle we've lost our teeth and claws. The only thing that gives us any advantage is our intelligence.

Eyesight is weakening. We don't really need 20/20 vision to survive to procreative age in this age. Gentic diseases are increasing.

In short we are going backwards in my opinion. We only compete between ourselves and not all that seriously. Even the biggest failure can find and another failure to breed with.

Some people will call me a nazi for pointing out an obvious truth. In nature the majority of juveniles die off to ensure the species stays strong. Unfortunately we seem to have left nature behind and even our intelligence is fast disapearing.

A few years back wild dogs were captured and separated into two groups. One was given a park to run around free in and the other was kept like pets. Later they were tested for intelligence. Wild dogs are definitely smarter than domesticated ones. They actually had more folds in their brain. Strange huh.

My point is that we seem to be devolving back towards primordial slime. I don't believe things will get that bad. We'll get back on track once life becomes demanding enough. Perhaps if we're invaded by aliens or something.

Well with the advent of medicine, many people who should die out due to survival of the fittest, are surviving and going on to procreate.

Cybernetic, tissue and genetic engineering will fix all and will free us from evolving darwining into having power over our own lamarckian evolution. If technology keep progressing as is by 2100 many "people" might trace their linage to microsoft!

Mapping the genome is far short of understanding and controlling it. Some genes work in concert. Who is to say we are the best judge of how our evolution should proceed. Vital survival attributes necessary for the longterm might seem unimportant to us. As opposed to say smooth skin and lots of head hair.

Anger and fear are reflex triggers. Dampen them in favour of more superficial gentic touch ups and we might become a race of sheep.

If the human race ever traces its lineage to microsoft it will be shortly before the big genetic crash. Never trust microsoft. There are always bugs.

Mapping the genome is far short of understanding and controlling it. Some genes work in concert. Who is to say we are the best judge of how our evolution should proceed. Vital survival attributes necessary for the longterm might seem unimportant to us. As opposed to say smooth skin and lots of head hair.

Anger and fear are reflex triggers. Dampen them in favour of more superficial gentic touch ups and we might become a race of sheep.

If the human race ever traces its lineage to microsoft it will be shortly before the big genetic crash. Never trust microsoft. There are always bugs.

When did I say "mapping the genome" ment anything? Technically all gene work in concert. Who to say we aren't the best judge of how our evolution should proceed?

gattaca happened in a vacuum, combined with cybernetics and tissue engineering and we are more likely to become a race of borg then sheep. Are finally goal would be to become immortal, free of all human physical and metal weaknesses, ghost in the machine with unlimited expansion and potential: a race of gods.

Microsoft was used simply as a metaphor, they will likely go the way of Pan-Am. Risking computer viruses and ghost hacking is simply a trade off for the advantages of immortality, incorporeal form, unlimited expandability and self manipulation in personality and intelligence, it not a like you have a choice either you can either die from the mortality the human form or transhumanize. Since transhumans will have virtually no death rate, adapt millions of times faster, and will be able to replicate literally on assembly lines, the obsolescence of the previous race of talking monkeys will come fast once the singularity begins! Transhumans will either leave this mud ball and the talking monkeys to their own devices or kill them all swiftly (likely both).

It seems to me that humans are devolving. Perhaps evolution isn't exactly working the way we think it does and retrogressive motion isn't inevitable but I kind of think it is. Look around you next time you are out and about. How many healthy humans can you see? Be really critical.

Chimpanzee's are 6 times stronger than humans. Since we left the jungle we've lost our teeth and claws. The only thing that gives us any advantage is our intelligence.

Eyesight is weakening. We don't really need 20/20 vision to survive to procreative age in this age. Gentic diseases are increasing.

In short we are going backwards in my opinion. We only compete between ourselves and not all that seriously. Even the biggest failure can find and another failure to breed with.

Some people will call me a nazi for pointing out an obvious truth. In nature the majority of juveniles die off to ensure the species stays strong. Unfortunately we seem to have left nature behind and even our intelligence is fast disapearing.

A few years back wild dogs were captured and separated into two groups. One was given a park to run around free in and the other was kept like pets. Later they were tested for intelligence. Wild dogs are definitely smarter than domesticated ones. They actually had more folds in their brain. Strange huh.

My point is that we seem to be devolving back towards primordial slime. I don't believe things will get that bad. We'll get back on track once life becomes demanding enough. Perhaps if we're invaded by aliens or something.


EXTERMINATE! siliconshrew

I nominate myself Davros.

You would!

By the way, what the hell is a dalek???

By the way, what the hell is a dalek???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek

Oh! Well how can we become what we already are???

Oh! Well how can we become what we already are???

How can they be us? This is what they are ...

"Daleks are grotesque mutated organisms from the planet Skaro, integrated within a tank-like mechanical casing. The resulting creatures are a powerful race bent on universal conquest and domination, utterly without pity, compassion or remorse (as all of their emotions were removed except hate)."

I'd think humans are a little better than they are, don't you?:shrug:

You would!

Jealous.

I agree with ElectricFetus. Things are going to get wild.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Trans-post-human2.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

Who's going to afford all that? Craig Venter? Fuck Craig Venter. Yeah, I said it. Now deal.

Who's going to afford all that? Craig Venter? Fuck Craig Venter. Yeah, I said it. Now deal.

Transhumanism will be expensive at first but it will likely get cheaper. Especially with a robot workforce all humans might simply live off a government check or stock investment, everyone would be today's upper class. The price of getting open space will likely be much higher in the future, but the price of getting virtual cyberspace will likely but much cheaper then it is today, already today we see people getting sucked into what are very crude virtually realities (MMORPGS) now imagine how much better and more addictive they will be when you can direct brain link into a virtual world which will see, hear and feel more real then dirty overpopulated mundane reality.

Once you can assure me that the innate greed and elitism of humans can be overcome, I'll agree that transhumanism is possible. But I think people like to have other people on the bottom, if only for the ego boost.

Transhumanism? Sure. You can't even buy a coffee maker that will run for more than a year anymore. I agree with the op somewhat. It's hard to believe we are getting smarter by just looking around a the current state of things.

Once you can assure me that the innate greed and elitism of humans can be overcome, I'll agree that transhumanism is possible. But I think people like to have other people on the bottom, if only for the ego boost.

When you got robot slaves and free lovebots who wants human servants anymore? With transhumanism you could remove the urge for dominance and replace with with altruism (or at least perpetual orgasm mode).

Once you can assure me that the innate greed and elitism of humans can be overcome, I'll agree that transhumanism is possible. But I think people like to have other people on the bottom, if only for the ego boost.

I think ElectricFetus is being overly optimistic, but I do not see how innate greed and elitism of humans contradicts transhumanism. If those on the bottom are as well off (or better) as today's elite, it does not bother me that those on top are essentially Olympic gods.

In short we are going backwards in my opinion.That's because your scope of examination is too narrow. Stupid microorganisms "learned" to band together to create multicellular organisms that were much smarter. In the same way, humans learned (in this case rather more consciously) to band together to create civilization. Civilization satisfies many of the criteria that make up the definition of a living organism.

Each individual human is irrelevant to the course of civilization, and even the depradations of huge groups of individuals who make war and come up with foolish economic and religious models do not slow it down very much. Civilization continues to advance.

Perhaps at some point our AIs will cross the threshold of self-awareness and be able to carry on our work as we descend into the Stone Age you hypothesize. Or perhaps civilization itself will do that. ;)

When you got robot slaves and free lovebots who wants human servants anymore? With transhumanism you could remove the urge for dominance and replace with with altruism (or at least perpetual orgasm mode).

Oh, very well, very well: I'll stipulate my support to your Orwellian prospect of enforced robotic altruism, all right? You had me at fembots.

"gattaca happened in a vacuum"

That was a cool movie.

"combined with cybernetics and tissue engineering and we are more likely to become a race of borg then sheep. Are finally goal would be to become immortal, free of all human physical and metal weaknesses, ghost in the machine with unlimited expansion and potential: a race of gods."

I do not wish to be assimilated. I don't even own a tv.

"Microsoft was used simply as a metaphor, they will likely go the way of Pan-Am."

I know. I just can't ever resist an opportunity to take a stab at Bill Gates. Shake hands with him and you'd better count your fingers afterwards. I'm glad his yahoo merger went belly up. That guy is rich enough already.

"Risking computer viruses and ghost hacking is simply a trade off for the advantages of immortality, incorporeal form, unlimited expandability and self manipulation in personality and intelligence, it not a like you have a choice either you can either die from the mortality the human form or transhumanize. Since transhumans will have virtually no death rate, adapt millions of times faster, and will be able to replicate literally on assembly lines, the obsolescence of the previous race of talking monkeys will come fast once the singularity begins! Transhumans will either leave this mud ball and the talking monkeys to their own devices or kill them all swiftly (likely both)."

Immortality is a dead end. It's stagnant and stagnancy is always death. Other newer life forms will always replace immortals. Such static beings can't evolve to compete with them successfully.

Q: Are we not men? A: We are Devo. That says it all. This has been the plan executed by the conspiracy. The conspiracy has been hard at work beginning with Woodrow Wilson, whose term as president was marked with the illegal enactment of the income tax. The conspiracy was forced to lay dormant until after WWII when the election of Eisenhower brought the Republican party to power. The CIA tried to hasten the process with mindcontrol experiments like Blue Bird, Artichoke and MK-Ultra, which resulted in the notorious Jonestown Massacre. It also lead to the widespread use of LSD which was first distributed by the CIA to test its affects on the human mind and to see if it could aid in the creation of a variable Manchurian candidate. It did. We saw the first zombie committed assassination in 1968 when RFK was killed by Surhan-Surhan. Anyways the CIA's work only created bad press so the conspiracy lay dormant once more during the tumultuous 60s and early 70s. Nixon didn't help much nor did the war. It was Reagan who got them on track again with his many evil republican plans. The closing of public mental institutions, just flooding the gene pool with lunatics, tax breaks for wealthy corporations whose products would only serve to create the warm, moist, consumer environment needed for devolution to grow, MTV etc. One of his most insidious acts was the privatization of public schooling which created the system of fear and failure that dominates our schools today. By treating school like a job they weed out the sociopathic, corporate zombie children and prep them for a life as an executive. These are the kids who are complete idiots but have 4.0 GPAs. Next they aim to destroy the children who prove a threat to this system (such as myself) by boring us to death with stupid, pointless work. Despite the easy level of this work we lose interest and our grades slip. We're blamed by the administration and parents are not "applying ourselves enough". Then there are the kids who are just so stupid or stoned to do anything. They have maybe a half a neuron that lights up in their heads. O.K. I'm exaggerating that. These are the consumers. They buy the ADIDAS, the Nikes etc. They shop at Holister, Aeropostle, American Eagle or sometimes Hot Topic and feed the machine. That's their purpose: to consume. The system is designed to make them fail. It's designed to make people like me fail. It's designed to devolve us. They sit in their temples preaching capitalism and abstinence but we all know which one of those two ideas is really practiced. The consumers drop out, they get dead end jobs and they screw. This happens enough times and the devolution process takes place. It's taking place. You have the morons in the streets and the rich morons in the towers and then the truly smart people die out.