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Rants, Raves, Rumors! Evolving... into what? (Page 2)
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Author | Topic: Evolving... into what? |
LifetimeTrekker Assimilated Posts: 465 |
posted May 28, 2002 17:43
I'm kinda holding out for some intelligent species to ome onto the planet...my money is on the roaches. IP: Logged |
Passenger Geek Larva Posts: 27 |
posted May 29, 2002 05:36
Intelligence is relative...Suppose that your "outlanders" relate to you about as well as you relate to cockroaches? IP: Logged |
The Chump Super Geek Posts: 115 |
posted May 29, 2002 06:23
Here's the way I feel about it. There was no such thing as overpopulation and birth control for the most part for a long time. Suddenly we, as a species, had weeded out a good deal of the weeker members of our species. Eventually some religions come along and say," Wait a minute, there's too many people starting to come along and we need it to stop." So they think of this brilliant plan, you shouldn't have sex unless you intend to have a child. Regular Joe/Jane thinks sure, their still having sex all the time but now claim," I MEANT to do that." All this time, we devleop better and better technology and as a result life expectancy goes up and infant mortality rates go down. But now we have this taboo against birth control that is not only causing problems among individuals but is also inforced by people in control. One example of this is in Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" where a certain widely read magazine comes in and Frank and other boys are sent out to tear out all the pages on birth control. In some places in the world, birth contorl is illegal. So areas start becoming overpopulated, and the resources can't keep up. If you live in an area where everyone has 500 sandwiches, and there's only ten people, you'd be ok, but if you had the same 500 sandwiches in a place with 5000 inhabitants, then you're going to see poverty. Now only 500 people are going to eat today and everyone else is going to go hungry, so now I need to take my mind of my stomach. No TV, no radio, no 'puter, what does that leave me. Sex. The store won't carry condoms and there is no doctor, I'm just going to have to take my chances. Hope this helps explain feel free to flame or agree, I'd really like to get some feedback and some more well thought out positions than what I've already read. IP: Logged |
spungo Assimilated Posts: 426 |
posted May 29, 2002 07:11
Concepts of institutionalised monogamy and fidelity existed long before anyone mumbled anything about over-population. Sexual puritanism arises as a reaction to wide-spread STDs. ( Natives that James Cook came across in the South Pacific were promiscuous because they had no rampant infections.That soon changed). ------------------ IP: Logged |
Passenger Geek Larva Posts: 27 |
posted May 29, 2002 07:24
The Chump... I'm not going to flame you for having an opinion that may or may not be different from mine. I want to hear what you've got to say, otherwise I won't learn anything, right? Actually what I'd like to see is a time line in your post, when you think these events happened, relative to something I can tie my own thoughts to? (Myself, I'm a Malthusian and a non believer). IP: Logged |
GameMaster Alpha Geek Posts: 314 |
posted May 29, 2002 15:40
Hmmmm, new thoughts about the evolution of man... Man has been endevoring for a while now, with a lot of sucess to merge man and machine by making machines more "human" and man more machine. Our next form of "evolution" may be that merge. Granted that it wouldn't be a biological evolution, but it would change the face of man. The other front for artifical evloution is of course stem cell research and cloning. I don't know why people fear the cloning technologies so much, as it isn't making an exact copy, only a biologically exact copy like a identical twin. My problem with cloning is that there are too many children in foster care and awaiting adoption for it to be a solution to attempts to conceive. It could be argued that the family may want biological child and not an adopted one, but does biology matter that much? Just food for thought. ------------------ IP: Logged |
macjac Geek Apprentice Posts: 40 |
posted May 29, 2002 15:41
quote: I also! However my Ex (Bible teacher) made a simplistic point to me as a child: He said as far as 'God' commanding that man go forth, multiply & fill the Earth, -it is up to reasoning beings to know when to stop! Made sense to me even at 10 years old. ------------------ IP: Logged |
Passenger Geek Larva Posts: 27 |
posted May 29, 2002 19:24
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Man has been endevoring for a while now, with a lot of sucess to merge man and machine by making machines more "human" and man more machine. Our next form of "evolution" may be that merge". ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Strange. All my life I've resisted being a cog in the machine, a name on a punch card. All my life I've attempted to keep my humanity, to always remember that and and my fellow beings were human, and not machines. IP: Logged |
The Chump Super Geek Posts: 115 |
posted May 30, 2002 05:16
I started a new thread so we can continue the posts on topic here: http://www.geekculture.com/ultimatebb/Forum19/HTML/000185.html ------------------ IP: Logged |
annie Alpha Geek Posts: 283 |
posted May 30, 2002 14:36
You know, in a way it doesn't really matter what we evolve into (if we survive long enought to evolve that is). Chances are we're not going to be around to see it. Yeah! IP: Logged |
Passenger Geek Larva Posts: 27 |
posted May 31, 2002 20:34
annie, what gives you the idea that man has the ability to evolve? Doesn't it make more sense that mankind is a dead end? IP: Logged |
GameMaster Alpha Geek Posts: 314 |
posted June 01, 2002 22:52
The odd thing is that traditional evolution isn't about enviroment, it's about variation in genes. We don't "adapt to our soroundings" we happen to a genetic predispostion that happens to get passed on because X in the eviroment kills things who don't. For instance, If there was a world wide famine, fat people would survive (having the lower matabalism and a dispostion to store unused callaries as opposed to burning it) while the people we think of as being more fit would die off. To be honest, just because the the trees grew higher doesn't mean the horse becomes a gerraf, it just means that horses with longer necks live... granted that over millions and millions and millions of years these horses could look like anything as mutations do happen. The bigger question is that what makes us think that human kind is an evolutionary dead end? ________________________ Back to my thoughts about tchnology... While many people don't want to become a "clog in the system," the advancements are already starting. The electronic coclear implants are a good exsample, now were able to restore the hearing of the deaf (in a lot of cases, and soon, I dare, all). The next improvment is the implants will pick up radio signals, so that the person with the implants can listen to music without affecting those around him and without having any "odd looking head peice" (as our kids will say when they look at our photos and see our head phones). They are working on a optical scanner to replace the retina, which would restore sight to quite a number of blind people. The next stage is that theyinclude night vission or the ability to use it as a recording device for photos and video. People who don't need these things will begin to go "hey, I want to night vission" or whatever, and then there is a craze much like the fad that is going on with cossmettic surgery (which was originally to repair the damage done by accidents and such). They have a mind controled pointing device that interfaces to the human brain and allows people who physically can type and use a mouse to access the computer. And the article posted earlier about the monkeys controlling the computer with their mind. This will lead to a new form of communication and new wireless internet surfing. Meanwhile in other labs at MIT, they are working on making emotional models more and more human. Trying to build a robot that functionally feels (mind you at this point these emotional models are far from a "feeling robot" but just a few brak throughs away) and reacts to it's enviroment. The man in charge is facing moral and philisophical questions and finding at least the most functional answers. I don't see a "cog in the machine" comming I see people able to download information in a second and acess information like recalling a memory. Granted it'll still take time to read the pages (at least for a while), we'll be extended into machines (become a robot to do a dangerous task, so that if the bomb goes off, no one is hurt or killed) and we'll be able to send equations that we can't solve into a calculator program and have the answer as fast as fast as if we could type as fast as we can think "4*(pi^2/2)". Eventually, I think it will be possibe to be able to download knowledge, thoughts and emotions. This idea is one that I've had since early childhood (back in the 80s... Don't know what prompted it, but seeing Tron fueled a few more and Robo Cop a few more) and I had this huge story written that I thought was so original and here peices of it have been the center of a great number of diffrent movies, books and shows. Granted it was a child hood game I'd play, but it all seemed so fantastic and never thouht anyone except me would buy into that stuff. If only I had written it down copyrighted it and sold it, before a number of the movies were made. I still plan to write it all down and publish it to my site, but the ideas are far from new now and might eve happen in real life in the years to come. Ah well... I'm done ranting and babbling about what I think we'll evolve into and what my silly game was.... so, I digress. ------------------ IP: Logged |
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