14 March 2010

The Abbreviated Future of Human Evolution

When I study evolution, it is one thing to understand how the system works, it is quite another to imagine how it will unfold in the future. We know that from chaos emerges order, but we cannot predict that order. One of my favorite things to do is imagine the next step in our evolution, but it is quite difficult to do so. I place myself in the role of a novelist who is constructing a story set 100,000 years in the future. How will the human race develop? What new developments will we experience? What will happen to technology, language, nature?

In order for the human race to speciate into two different paths, a subsection of the population will need to be geographically separated for long enough to change to a point where they are no longer able to mate with the main population. With modern technology, that seems like an impossible proposition, as the gene pool is continuously being mixed about. What it means is that, most likely, the human race will continue to evolve together with no speciation.

Another possible scenario would find our species divided through social segregation. This seems less likely to happen, as it would literally take tens of thousands of years to accomplish. I think it is safe to say that anything can happen in 50,000 years, but gene pool mixing is almost certain.

Instead of speciation, the human race will probably experience continued development and "perfection" of its current strengths. That is, until we blow ourselves to oblivion.

All of these ideas are exciting to think about, but I am always sad when I realize that I will not live to see any of it. No, my life will end before 2100 comes and I will have experienced no more change than the expansion of the knowledge we currently possess. Knowing that the prefrontal cortex is an evolutionary advantage in the realm of mindspace, it is impossible to imagine what new brain structures our successors will possess that will allow them to perceive who-knows-what that we cannot. It sure is enticing to dream about, though.
Posted by Andrew Gonsalves at 1:56 PM
Labels: ,

10 nibbles:

  1. We also have to keep in mind always that although order emerges, natural selection and evolution have no 'end goal' built into them.

    I too wish I could be around to see how things turn out!
    ReplyDelete
  2. emily: Thanks for your comment. Hope to see you around here more often.
    ReplyDelete
  3. I am betting that within the next few thousand years it is a given that our species will be colonizing first the asteroid belt for it's ready resources, then the Kuiper Belt which extends beyond Neptune out to a good 30 to 50 AU, and finally the Oort Cloud which reaches an estimated 3 light years out in all directions from our solar system. That colonization will entail extended isolation of a multitude of human societies in ways we can barely imagine. Speciation will happen, both directed and through the natural processes that come with isolated communities adapting to circumstances with powerful influences on survival and random mutation in an extreme environment. There will be an explosion of varieties of post-homo sapiens sapiens. Count on it.
    ReplyDelete
  4. Mark, I'm curious about this future you see. I hadn't considered the asteroid belt as anything capable of sustaining life. Care to elaborate?
    ReplyDelete
  5. A brief Google found http://www.permanent.com/

    The idea that asteroids are a logical place to colonize is not a new one (Larry Niven wrote some interesting SF with that as part of the background story - the strongest and richest societies of the next few hundred years were would exist in the Belt).

    Mass + energy = living quarters. We have the ability, and what we don't know right this minute can be developed without reaching into the overly speculative realms of fiction. Asteroids are full of resources. Metals, carbonaceous compounds, water and oxygen . . . it is all there. The math for optimal spinning of properly sized asteroids to create 1 g environments for maintenance of human health over the long term has been worked out. The possibilities of actually heating up metal asteroids with solar mirrors, and spinning them to form hollow bubbles which can be settled on the inside like giant inside-out farms has been considered. The gravity well cost is so much less than a planet such as Mars. We could build magnetic launchers on the Moon to move material back and forth from the Belt, and points further out, and do this within the next century. Easily.

    Consider the societies that would develop. Some existing groups would be willing to cut all ties with Earth because we don't care for their agendas. Some of these groups have extremely wealthy people who could back them in their quest. Some of these groups would be bugfuck crazy and the societies they would develop would give you nightmares, but they are possible. As are the beautiful things that can happen.

    Possibilities Andrew - there are nothing but possibilities and they are amazing and various and manifold.
    ReplyDelete
  6. I actually think humans will devolve over time if anything thanks to technology. All the "perfect" features we have we developed for hunting, survival, and social reasons. And these things aren't really relevant anymore except in very poor or secluded areas of the world. Everywhere else technology makes hunting unnecessary and survival a given. That's why the world as a whole is getting fat -- we didn't evolve physically to live the way we do now. Technology has, in a way, surpassed evolution.
    ReplyDelete
  7. mark: I'm not confident in the science that is involved with your idea. The most basic of all things necessary to sustain life long enough for settling is a sustained breathable atmosphere and I just don't see how it can be sustained for thousands of years where it is not naturally occurring.

    kyle: "devolving" is a misnomer. We never devolve. Just like it is impossible for a cake to be reduced back into its ingredients, we won't take a step backwards. Perhaps, from a value-based assessment, we may become less fit, but that is still evolution none the less.
    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm pretty sure that there will eventually be multiple redundant power sources that could take an icy dwarf planet such as Pluto and cook out oxygen and water from it's mass for a very long time. That's why I said mass plus energy = living quarters. The critical useful components of these dwarf planets are considered to be, in part at least, a reasonably high fraction of their mass. The amount of oxygen, water and complex carbon compounds available in even one Pluto sized planet would be staggering. And the garnering more of these resources when the original supply gets lost through entropy, waste, accident, usage or what have you is certainly doable. After all, experienced people will be living for thousands of hears in an environment where such dwarf planets are estimated to exist in the tens and hundreds of thousands ( http://nineplanets.org/kboc.html ). The folks living in these environments would be our descendants and I'm willing to bet that if stone-age people found ways to adapt to the high Arctic, the Kalahari or the Andes their decendants can come up with solutions in the future for even more extreme environments.

    The scariest part of all this to me is the virtual certainty that eventually some freaks will start lobbing these dwarf planet sized objects at Earth. Freaks tend to pull this kind of shit because freaks are running always running their own agendas. After all, once we know how to move planatoids and comets around the next Pandora's Box is now open.
    ReplyDelete
  9. Just noticed my Lady had logged in on my machine - count that PP post as mine - she wouldn't have all the typos I do :)
    ReplyDelete
  10. We don't devolve, but our cultural adaptations have become the frontrunner in evolution. While we will never stop 'evolving', I believe that we have already reached the pinnacle of what we will become. All else from here is cultural (pressurized space planes, oxygen masks, medicines), and it is scary thinking how that might end up (think Jaba the Hut).

    I think what Kyle was trying to say is that due to our cultural adaptations, we will become less fit and less 'healthy' in today's standard. One can only hope we evolve a solution.

    :)
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)