I'm not sure "evolution" is on the table for humanity any longer. For one thing, evolutionary pressures don't really exist for humanity, outside of the most undeveloped areas.
Not making it to "breeding age" (feels weird to say that in the context of humans) doesn't really have anything to do with fitness any longer, more just luck.
Add in the fact that we basically already have the ability to manipulate human genes - and I think it's far more likely that we'll just start tinkering with our genetic code deliberately, as opposed to what we think of as evolution
Humans will go through a period of devolution now, where the population will get even lazier and dumber. It's clearly one of the goals to dumb people down so they can be controlled by their simple urges.
I feel sorry for kids today. It's going to be rough growing up in this shit hole.
Everyone is getting stupider except you right? Like you're not one of the dumbed down lazy people are you? or your loved ones?
People have said this shit since we have written records.The whole idea of fallen man is the foundation of the Abrahamic religions, probably others I don't know of too.
People are doing alright, actually go talk to some. Yeah yeah a lot aren't crazy educated but even the most educated intellectual titans of our age are uneducated in the overwhelming majority of things.
We do alright, there are many problems but they're not because people are getting less intelligent. We are no smarter or stupider than the first humans, or at least we have no reason to believe otherwise. We have better access to information and we're also facing some very large problems, but so did bronze age people.
Read the epic of Gilgamesh, it'll chill you out some.
Idiocracy is not a documentary.
That has nothing to do with evolution and "de-evolution" isn't a thing.
"...And these children that you spit on, As they try to change their worlds, Are immune to your consultations, They're quite aware of what they're going through."
'nuff said.
I don't think there will be one. We're extremely close to taking control of our genes in a very direct way, why would we continue leaving it up to nature?
Also, there's just really no longer any natural selection in humans. Basically all of us last through breeding years now. So other than selecting out acute health issues and normal mate selection, there's not much going on.
That's about to reverse though. I think during the climate apocalypse, eventually humans will no longer have access to things like vision correction, wheelchairs, antibiotics and other medicines, surgeries, etc. They will also be dealing with lower nutrient intakes.
I think there IS still natural selection in humans, and it is relatively new: birth control.
I suspect that those with religious/conservative beliefs who will not take morning-after or birth control pills AND those irresponsible people who theoretically might -- but didn't think about it until too late -- will be two groups that increase their numbers while more responsible/fore-thinking people and those without moral objection to the pill (or perhaps WITH moral objection to overpopulating the planet) will be more likely to cap their number of offspring. Yes, this was kinda covered in the movie Idiocracy, but I don't think it was that far off.
Well I hope we can engineer better spines because it makes no sense for our brains to just finish developing a few years before our backs give out
What makes you think taking control of our genes is somehow not part of our evolution?
Most likely women will be able to give birth much later in life.
With equality on the rise, many women are joining the workplace instead of having kids at a young age. By the time they want to, for some, it's too late - But for those who can give birth into their early 40s and beyond, they'll still have kids. Evolutionarily, those kids will then have a higher chance to give birth into their 40s, and so on.
I personally don’t think humans will be around long enough to naturally evolve given the climate crisis.
In an alternate future, I imagine humans live digitally and build themselves their own universe where they can control their own laws of physics and create simulations in that universe and live inside those. Never ending simulation in simulation so that they can outlast the heat death of the universe.
Humanity survived ice ages, it's plausible any climate catastrophe will just be a bottlenecking event.
You're right, but I want to note that climate collapse is a little more serious than an ice age. For one thing, the ocean is turning into acid. That's because CO2 reacts with seawater to make carbonic acid. The pH of the ocean is balanced by calcium carbonate which can neutralise acids, but once the carbonate runs out, the pH will change WAY faster. Also, calcium carbonate is needed by crustaceans to make their shells. No carbonate means no crustaceans, which means no krill, which means the entire ocean food chain will collapse.
@PerogiBoi you still have the problem of hardware. Once that gets destroyed, every bit of information on that is lost forever. Maybe if we could find a way to be stored in rocks or trees or something like that. We would likely share some space with bacteria in that situation lol.
I sure hope it's not extinction!
Narrator: It was.
Biological evolution of our species has been on hold for a pretty long time already and I don't see it changing any time soon. There are two univeral factors:
- the drive to reproduce away from your immediate group, further enabled by the tendency to migrate all over.
- the family societal structure, as opposed to a strict alpha male hierarchy.
These two things block the sharp rise of mutations and promote a wide diversity of individuals instead. It helped us to remain a unified species despite our spread all over the planet.
We evolve mainly through our culture, which complexifies at a spectacular rate. The downside is that a catastrophic collapse could wipe all our progress, even if we do survive it.
the family societal structure, as opposed to a strict alpha male hierarchy.
Those are the same thing twice. In wild wolf packs, the alphas are the parents. The betas are the kids, and the omegas are the grannies. The "alpha male" dynamic you're thinking of only happens in captivity when you take a bunch of adults who don't know each other and tell them to be a family. It's unnatural.
Alcohol resistant liver
Realistically, the climate catastrophe is going to mean earth supports a much smaller population of humans, which will hopefully adapt to the changed conditions.
I'm not sure what form that will take, but my guess is they will probably shrink in stature due to diet and have some adaptations for breathing less oxygen-rich air.
Depends on what you mean by evolution.
Humans have always adapted to their environments and some properties become inherited though genetics or culture. Enough difference in genes could mean alien anthropologists in far future separating future humans aside from current day homo sapiens, but that's expected.
Evolution doesn't imply "getting better or superior" like popular culture. If a disaster struck earth and we were forced to live underground, our eyes and sense of vision will eventually cease to be as relevant as other senses. People in our days might call it 'devolution', but is it? It simply means they adapted to their environment.
I don't want to make a prediction. Could be anything.
Modern medicine and technology has effectively circumvented the majority of evolutionary pressures we once had.
Permanently Deleted
Pretty sure AI/robots will just replace us eventually and be our ""offspring"".
If not, and we don't return to monkey either, you're going to see rapid speciation thanks to genetic engineering.
People will probably use different bodies like driving different cars, like Altered Carbon, but more like Man After Man.
You have a body for swimming, a body for hiking, a body for doing the naughty, etc.. "you" will either be a brain in a jar or just a chip or just a virtual "soul", slipping in and out of bodies. And some people will wear bodies like fashion, with new trends every year etc..
Perhaps you'll see people inhabiting these bodies full time, living "normal" human lives, with their entire families being the same. Like a mermaid village or something. And you'll see many such communities living simple or even primitive lives, but with completely alien bodies.
And I'm pretty sure 99.999% of humanity will be completely unrecognizable within just a few hundred years. But I'm guessing some regular old homo sapiens will always stick around, unless some fanatic intentionally wipes them out. But that's kind if hard if you can hide the information necessary to reconstruct all of humanity on a USB stick.
Depends on how catastrophic the climate change is going to be. If we wipe out 99% of ourselves and the remaining 1% are subject to living and dying according to how we adapt to our new envirionment, probably we're going to evolve to need less water on a daily basis.
