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

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/will-the-six-great-stages-of-evolution-be-followed-by-a-seventh-.html

by timf • 17 years ago

21 20 17 years ago

timf2• 17 years 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.

baddox2• 17 years 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• 17 years 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).

baddox2• 17 years ago

Still, there's the potential for terraforming Mars or some of the rocky moons in our own solar system.

scythe• 17 years ago

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

alanthonyc• 17 years ago

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

polos4• 17 years ago

Evolution theory is an (old) theory. Here is some newer one:

http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=...

rwolf2• 17 years 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 . 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."

polos4• 17 years 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.

jurjenh• 17 years ago

It seems google translate was right on with the translation. Doesn't make much sense in dutch either...

He seems a fairly dedicated god-botherer / evangelist, with a few TV programmes, so maybe a semi-celebrity (?)

(disclaimer: I was 11 when I left the Netherlands for New Zealand)

As for the parent comment, the evolution=degeneration theory does not pass my common sense filter: are we that much more degenerate than our 5-million-years-ago ancestors? Seems more likely to be a reactive criticism against Darwin, but (not having read the book, only the intro) provided it makes VALID points that need to be considered, it will (hopefully) aid our understanding as to how we got here, and where we may end up going...

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

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