I actually am in the process of writing a story that addresses this topic... First off, race and species are interchangable words (one of my pet peevs is people using the word race to mean ethnicity. I know it's kind of anal, but it's just one of those things you know?) Anyways... in virtually every case, when a species evolves it evolves into multiple different breeds... some of those breeds die off because of the inablility to adapt to their environment. Then the breeds that do not die off typically evolve into even more breeds which either die off or evolve into even more breeds and so on, until one breed no longer resembles the others and as such is another species... So no... Not only do I think that humans will not evolve into a single ethnicity, I think that humans will evolve into multiple different species...
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We have a problem here!
I agreed with everything Dr. Rock said here. And in our debates about religion and that 2000 plus year old book just reinforces the concept that cultures and ethnic groups don't die out eaily. Soceities do. Societies are a group of people who live at the same time. Culture refers to a way of life. A culture can exist for centuries without change.
The Jewish tradiition is on year 5000 so that say. It have evolved and changed. Some Jewish people maintain the culture but don't believe in God an the culture/regligion has branched into at least three groups. But many a stronger nation has tried to destory Judaism and none have succeeded.
The evolutionary changes and interbreeding and all of that may actaully cause faster biological changes then cultural changes.
Of course, we have a three new deminsions to add and that is the instant mass communication and rapid migrations just happening on a family scale and not as part of a larger organized group, and last but very important is the very rapdily increasing rate in the progressoin of technology. As in people move around a lot. Not as many people are living their golden years within 100 miles of theri chidlhood home as before. In days gone by the migrations were more organzied with all of the same ethnic group moving in the same general area. Now there is not as a distinct migration pattern as before
At the rate we are going, there is no way to predict just how technologically advanced we could be in 100 years.
We have yet to see what these two latter changes will do over the course of several centuries.
One thing for sure, no one on this forum knows the answers to that. It is all theory and postulation at this point.
Maybe they will dig out this thread and others later and tell the folks living then who was right.
Kinda hard predicting the future.
I agreed with everything Dr. Rock said here. And in our debates about religion and that 2000 plus year old book just reinforces the concept that cultures and ethnic groups don't die out eaily. Soceities do. Societies are a group of people who live at the same time. Culture refers to a way of life. A culture can exist for centuries without change.
The Jewish tradiition is on year 5000 so that say. It have evolved and changed. Some Jewish people maintain the culture but don't believe in God an the culture/regligion has branched into at least three groups. But many a stronger nation has tried to destory Judaism and none have succeeded.
The evolutionary changes and interbreeding and all of that may actaully cause faster biological changes then cultural changes.
Of course, we have a three new deminsions to add and that is the instant mass communication and rapid migrations just happening on a family scale and not as part of a larger organized group, and last but very important is the very rapdily increasing rate in the progressoin of technology. As in people move around a lot. Not as many people are living their golden years within 100 miles of theri chidlhood home as before. In days gone by the migrations were more organzied with all of the same ethnic group moving in the same general area. Now there is not as a distinct migration pattern as before
At the rate we are going, there is no way to predict just how technologically advanced we could be in 100 years.
We have yet to see what these two latter changes will do over the course of several centuries.
One thing for sure, no one on this forum knows the answers to that. It is all theory and postulation at this point.
Maybe they will dig out this thread and others later and tell the folks living then who was right.
Kinda hard predicting the future.
students of ancient greek, roman or chinese civilization might disagree with you there.
whose moral parameters are we using to define "desirable"? yours? mine? can you claim to know what is best for the future of the species? I can't.
I think you're trying to see it in terms of straight lines where none exists. genetic evolution is a constant and almost entirely random process. it's not a case of simple trial -> error -> trial -> success. environmental factors are also changing along with genomes, sometimes at a much faster rate.
the current human races, you mean? new ones will continue to evolve, converge and diverge as they have done for 2 million years. some will die out entirely and others will be absorbed. again, to my mind it's a big mistake to try imposing linear rules of logic on processes to which they can't be applied.
[post=289396]Quoted post[/post]
[/b][/quote]
thanks Freddie, jewish culture is an even better example - there's no other case of a single social group maintaining such a strong identity and tradition over such a long period of time. granted, the majority of jews will never identify completely with every aspect of ancient hebrew culture, but on the whole their preservation of traditions without major change is unique. obviously opinions vary as to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's certainly a good example of culture vs race (how many jews or people of mainly jewish descent do you know who look even slightly like ancient hebrews?)
- jonb,
Actually, the Jewish tradition counts from the year the world was supposedly created. So today is 29 Adar 5765.
Cultures still do change over time, but they don't fit into a racial pattern. I mean, the stereotype of hypersexual Africans sure as hell can't explain clitoridectomy.
Unfortunately, ChimeraTX's explanation would require that those behaviors be universal to a particular "racial" group.
Cultures still do change over time, but they don't fit into a racial pattern. I mean, the stereotype of hypersexual Africans sure as hell can't explain clitoridectomy.
Unfortunately, ChimeraTX's explanation would require that those behaviors be universal to a particular "racial" group.
Spyderdan: I've created a monster
I didn't even mean this to be so serious, i was mostly full of b.s. anyway
I still believe it is naive to say that humans are done evolving. We can say homo sapiens are done, but then the next generation may be some kind of super sapien or something we might say. How couldn't it be? Eventually this earth will die. Technology will evolve (oh dear, a different issue?) to utilize all of its resources including every bit of solar power when the fossil fuels are gone (300 years?), etc. Then the sun will die, but by then we will be able to move to another sun. Why not? We'll have to move to another environment even if it is on a planet with no atmosphere. This will become more and more likely as time (phew, thousands, millions of years?) goes by and more and more chances of meteors or other natural disasters destroying this planet goes up. Then, do you really think humans will look the same?
I'm saying, over all this time, certain traits are bound to die out, right? The ones we don't need. Adaptation, voila.
How about culture? A tribe in the Congo that eats the ashes of its dead in a banana soup one day and then smoking cowboy-killers, playing basketball, and worrying how much money a guy can make the next. It changed entirely. My family is of German decent but who cares? We (they) came to America, I have this culture now (multi-cultural, maybe?). It is a TV culture and led by what TV and media tell us (subliminally almost) to do, or live now. It is not living your day the way your grandmother (culture) told you to. "Tradition! Tradition! At 3 I went to hebrew school, at 10 I learned a trade,...."
In just a little bit of time, a whole lot changes. Only a century ago someone who had a much much higher IQ than I have, said that airplanes are just follies, mere toys and have nor will have any military value. Little did he know, little do we know, but I'm getting off the subject. Or do I have one? -_-
Racial. You speak like it matters. Dream of the future here. I'm thinking of the grander scale, a long long time. I have a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand, and an eon hand. Sorry this has gotten out of hand.
Probably repeated myself or others, and this is most likely going nowhere. I have no life. So shoot me.
You all have many great opinions. "Even those smart-ass folks who say we come descended from monkeys!" -Homer Stokes, Oh brother where Art Thou
You're all very smart.
I'm not. I'm usually quite slow. It takes me two hours to watch "60 minutes." My dad must think I'm pretty bright, though, because he's always calling me "sun"...
I didn't even mean this to be so serious, i was mostly full of b.s. anyway
I still believe it is naive to say that humans are done evolving. We can say homo sapiens are done, but then the next generation may be some kind of super sapien or something we might say. How couldn't it be? Eventually this earth will die. Technology will evolve (oh dear, a different issue?) to utilize all of its resources including every bit of solar power when the fossil fuels are gone (300 years?), etc. Then the sun will die, but by then we will be able to move to another sun. Why not? We'll have to move to another environment even if it is on a planet with no atmosphere. This will become more and more likely as time (phew, thousands, millions of years?) goes by and more and more chances of meteors or other natural disasters destroying this planet goes up. Then, do you really think humans will look the same?
I'm saying, over all this time, certain traits are bound to die out, right? The ones we don't need. Adaptation, voila.
How about culture? A tribe in the Congo that eats the ashes of its dead in a banana soup one day and then smoking cowboy-killers, playing basketball, and worrying how much money a guy can make the next. It changed entirely. My family is of German decent but who cares? We (they) came to America, I have this culture now (multi-cultural, maybe?). It is a TV culture and led by what TV and media tell us (subliminally almost) to do, or live now. It is not living your day the way your grandmother (culture) told you to. "Tradition! Tradition! At 3 I went to hebrew school, at 10 I learned a trade,...."
In just a little bit of time, a whole lot changes. Only a century ago someone who had a much much higher IQ than I have, said that airplanes are just follies, mere toys and have nor will have any military value. Little did he know, little do we know, but I'm getting off the subject. Or do I have one? -_-
Racial. You speak like it matters. Dream of the future here. I'm thinking of the grander scale, a long long time. I have a watch with a minute hand, millenium hand, and an eon hand. Sorry this has gotten out of hand.
Probably repeated myself or others, and this is most likely going nowhere. I have no life. So shoot me.
You all have many great opinions. "Even those smart-ass folks who say we come descended from monkeys!" -Homer Stokes, Oh brother where Art Thou
You're all very smart.
I'm not. I'm usually quite slow. It takes me two hours to watch "60 minutes." My dad must think I'm pretty bright, though, because he's always calling me "sun"...
Spyderdan: Besides, its not that I don't care but I know one thing. I will not contribute to any kind of evolution because I will have no offspring.
Earlier in life, someone told me "that when you put a man and a woman together you get a baby. But when you put a man and another man together you just get a whole hell of a lotta semen....."
Earlier in life, someone told me "that when you put a man and a woman together you get a baby. But when you put a man and another man together you just get a whole hell of a lotta semen....."
nothing is ever "done" evolving. the point is that as long as we continue to isolate ourselves from the competition of the natural world, we're not going to evolve in the same way as other species.
try telling the international oil companies that.
that's a matter of another 500 million years or so. I'd be very, very surprised if anything even remotely resembling homo sapiens is still around in even 1% of that timespan.
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that's a matter of another 500 million years or so. I'd be very, very surprised if anything even remotely resembling homo sapiens is still around in even 1% of that timespan.
[post=290721]Quoted post[/post]
[/b][/quote]There may be a way to control the evolution of species in a few years. That would change thiings considerably for a while.
But 500 million years is a very long time. During that period of time, it is likely that the earth will be hit again by an asteriod. An event like that many million years ago wiped out the big dinasours. The effect on homo sapiens is likely extinctiom because our species will not be able to survive such an event.
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Spyderdan: jonb, remember the old Doritos commercial, "crunch all you want, we'll make more?"
freddie, consider "information doubling"
[pop quiz: if a single bacteria (@ 9:00pm) in a petri dish divides, and then those two bacteria divide, etc., and it takes until 12:00am to fill half the dish, how long will it take until the dish is all the way full?]
This is the way humans have been going. It takes millions of years to develop the wheel, all that time and nothing really happened. Then, on to the next level, hundreds of thousands of years. Then, we get smarter and know twice the amount of information "we" knew before in a thousand years. Then 500, then 250, and so on. You can see. (Please don't quote me on these numbers, I'm just making a point)
It continues until, in our lifetime we will see all information known to double every month, week, day, hour. Something sure as hell will happen, either we'll get smarter and figure out ways to defeat natural obstacles, or kill ourselves (to agree with Dr. Rock, and remember I agree with your responses! ).
But yes, freddie the race as it is now, and what we know now would not be able to survive such an event.
As for wiping each other out, I think its a matter of which country becomes bigger brother and controls the world (doesn't seem too impossible), and then the "selection" will be theirs. This is after half the world's population is annihilated in the struggle. Just my opinion, not to turn this political...oh no, please not
freddie, consider "information doubling"
[pop quiz: if a single bacteria (@ 9:00pm) in a petri dish divides, and then those two bacteria divide, etc., and it takes until 12:00am to fill half the dish, how long will it take until the dish is all the way full?]
This is the way humans have been going. It takes millions of years to develop the wheel, all that time and nothing really happened. Then, on to the next level, hundreds of thousands of years. Then, we get smarter and know twice the amount of information "we" knew before in a thousand years. Then 500, then 250, and so on. You can see. (Please don't quote me on these numbers, I'm just making a point)
It continues until, in our lifetime we will see all information known to double every month, week, day, hour. Something sure as hell will happen, either we'll get smarter and figure out ways to defeat natural obstacles, or kill ourselves (to agree with Dr. Rock, and remember I agree with your responses!
). But yes, freddie the race as it is now, and what we know now would not be able to survive such an event.
As for wiping each other out, I think its a matter of which country becomes bigger brother and controls the world (doesn't seem too impossible), and then the "selection" will be theirs. This is after half the world's population is annihilated in the struggle. Just my opinion, not to turn this political...oh no, please not
Spyderdan: I meant, there will never be a dry silo or armory. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are a-plenty. WMD do not have to be your standard every-day hydrogen bomb.
Spyderdan: I second that, and technological advances always have their downfalls.
By the way, good one. It's like, "uh-oh, there goes the planet"
By the way, good one. It's like, "uh-oh, there goes the planet"
those bright boys in north korea are working on a way around that problem, and a few of the other problems that make fusion weapons so awkward (and I daresay equally bright boys in many other countries are also working on it, they just won't admit it).
<!--QuoteBegin-Spyderdan@Mar 14 2005, 09:54 PM
As for wiping each other out, I think its a matter of which country becomes bigger brother and controls the world (doesn't seem too impossible), and then the "selection" will be theirs.
[post=290889]Quoted post[/post]
[/quote]I don't think individual countries have anything to do with it. it's the same cunts in different suits in charge of every nation on earth. the only difference is that some of them display their psychosis openly and others hide it behind political figureheads.
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