Many genetically engineered future human types will have no reason to fight with others as they will exploit different resources;
space adapted humans or Mars adapted humans would have no direct reason for conflict with the Earth population.

However some competiton for resources, and conflict, may occur in other cases where there is more overlap in habitat.

No-one said there won't be wars in the future.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

I believe that one cannot make something without a concept of what the final product will be, so I believe one cannot become something without a concept of what the end result will be. Fortunately, humans have huge imaginations and with this imagination we have created gods. Consciously we try to obey what our particular god says, but unconsciously we strive to become God. I believe the end of evolution unless it is disturbed will be Godhood in the human future. It is not that each human will become a god, but rather all humankind will become the collective God. In fact, I believe we were God long long ago, but there wasn't really very much to do, so God threw the 128 sided cosmic dice to see if it could reassemble itself after eons have gone by. In other words, it was the disbursement of the Godhood that was the big bang. What else could have done it? Okay, maybe a quantum flucuation gone wild, but I prefer to think of it as humans being an integral part of the past, present, and future. Just a thought, tribune

I think this is generally true for things we create by design. But evolution works precisely the opposite way - incremental changes are made at random and only the ones that are improvements will continue to future generations. So small steps are taken with absolutely no specific end point to aim for.

This can be inefficient sometimes but it worked well enough for us to be here.

With humans, once we start dabbling with genetic engineering I doubt we'll have a fully formed plan that everyone agrees on. What we'll probably do is fiddle around here and there and in a few generations we'll have a completely new model for what we define as "human". There'll be a few surprises and probably a few problems.

When you're heading into an unknown future, you rarely have a clear endpoint to aim for; you just take small steps in the hope that you're headed roughly in the right direction.

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Spike
:)

When we do evolve- genetically or naturally- will we still be called human?

I remember an Anthropology class where my professor was asked what we may evolve into. He mentioned that we are in the process of losing our little toe, the appendix was practically non-functional, some people were being born without wisdom teeth, the brow ridges were receding and brain case enlarging, and that with the retreat of the glaciers and the interbreeding between cultures, the lightness of the Caucasians was blending into a creamy light chocolate color.

As a way to illustrate what we may become, he addressed a black girl in the class, and pointed out her receding brow ridges and some other evolutionary features, and mentioned very casually that she most likely represented the future of the human race. Most of the class looked at her with different eyes, and I do believe she sat taller in her chair.

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Thanks Tom. That was exactly what I was looking for when I wrote this topic. I was wanting to know what some possibilities are of qwhat wed evolve into.

Of course, for any visible or significant changes in human physiology to occur through natural evolution, it would take hundreds of thousands of years.

We'll most probably be mucking about with our genome long before then.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

ASEI, re-Or, maybe not quite so long. There was a classic observation early last century of a white moth that would hang out out on white trees. A small percent of the population of moths came out darker, and the birds would pick them off pretty quick. When the pollution from the coal burning started turning the trees darker, the white versions of the moths started standing out, and getting eaten, and the darker ones blended in and were better protected.

After a few seasons, most of the moths were of the darker variety and a small percentage were light colored. I also heard that later on, pollution was reduced, the trees were more normally colored, and the coloration (natural-selection defense mechanism) switched back and the moths are mostly white again.

Lots of examples like this out there.

We need to get people to the Moon and Mars and see what happens, and how fast it can happen.

I'll go, I'll do it!!

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Yeah Ive read about that too. How long would it take to evolve?

Before we look too closely on how we change on the surface, that which is behind physical appearance is something that perhaps needs to be taken into account. Our perception will hopefully dramatically alter and perhaps will have to if we are going to evolve. At the end of the day, for all of our countless dicoveries we are only apes throwing rocks at one another. You might think that that is harsh, but looking on a broader picture, at the end of the day we are a spiecies very early on in our evolution. Our technology is growing at such a rate that it looks to be at the point of surpassing our current way of thinking within the next hundred years. we are struggling to get on with one another, still at war on an already dieing planet.

didnt we stop evolving already?

I don’t think evolution occurs within a species; rather genetic variation develops within a species. Then one or more sub-groups become reproductively isolated, which somehow leads to speciation, and—a new species arises with different characteristics and in-built reproductive isolation.

Without reproductive isolation, which exists not at all today, or some kind of purposeful direction by some means like genetic engineering, I don’t think Homo Sapiens will change significantly in the future.

Yes, we are like gas molecules in a room. Some may attain high velocities, while others may have very low velocities. But the average velocity doesn't change too much.
Similarly, we have become too random in mating, and we may not evolve significantly.
About the toe becoming small and all that, what I feel is that until small toers have an advantage over those with bigger ones, we may not lose our little toe.

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Limericks, written by me: http://limericker.blogspot.com

Ah! but there is purposeful direction via genetic engineering. Both speciation and designed alterations within species will soon (<100 years) progress at a rate never before possible. Evolution, like the universe, is becoming aware of itself. Evolution is now less blind than it was formerly.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

Intelligance and physical strength are a given, but what other changes would we make?

Those that enable us to possess or explore ocean depths, open space, intense radiation, extreme pressures of the atmospheres of gas giant planets, stellar atmospheres, longer lifespans, ever expanding range of temperature extremes, etc.,.

__________________
For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

Hi, Gourdhead. You said, “Ah! but there is purposeful direction via genetic engineering. Both speciation and designed alterations within species will soon (<100 years) progress at a rate never before possible.”

I think this assessment is rather premature. In the first place, we don’t understand the mechanisms of speciation at all. It seems a little over-optimistic to assume we’ll just figure it out and be able to do it in any definite time span.

Speculation about technological advances doesn’t mean they’ll ever happen. The most obvious example is manned space exploration, which has, for thirty five years, advanced not one kilometer.

But there are many other examples: For instance, battery technology, which has hardly kept pace with Moore’s Law. I think it’s probably true that power density has not improved by an order of magnitude in the last 400 years.

Another issue is will. Because something can be done, doesn’t mean it will be done. Thermonuclear holocaust is a good example; at least, so far.

We may be able to introduce new characteristics into our species, but I don’t think that means such characteristics, even very minor changes, will be universally, or even widely, adopted. And, I foresee very widespread and effective opposition and resistance to any species changing genetic engineering.

I don’t think the existence of genetic engineering technology will alter our species within any foreseeable future.

Bob

I agree we don't fully understand speciation as it has occurred heretofore. Within 50 years or so we will drive it to goals of our choosing. The danger lies with the unintended consequences especially from hybrids that nature without our help would not allow. Mating-free breeding and gene juggling will produce some strange critters some of which will make managing Pandora's box seem like mere child's play.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

That could be a problem.....

Hi, Gourhead. You said, “Mating-free breeding and gene juggling will produce some strange critters some of which will make managing Pandora's box seem like mere child's play.”

I wouldn’t be so pessimistic, or maybe you underestimate the danger of Pandora’s box: When Pandora opened the box, disease, despair, malice, greed, old age, death, hatred, violence, cruelty and war flew into the world. She slammed the lid down...keeping only the spirit of hope inside.

I don’t think genetic engineering is likely to produce losses comparable to bringing disease, despair, malice, greed, old age, death, hatred, violence, cruelty and war into the world.

Also, people have been fooling with mating-free breeding and gene juggling for at least a hundred centuries with hardly any ill effects so far.

Bob

I hope your optimism overrides my caution. My fear is that Murphy won't let us off that easy. The complexity of the system we're trying to manipulate, and we should do this, is overwhelming. Disease, old age, and death are likely first order effects; the rest will derive from errors in genetic engineering of either microbes or us directly. Nevertheless we will and we should continue. I preach caution not abstinence.

Compared to today's level of competency, earlier attempts in these areas were very constricted. Since the invention of the wheel and various systems to apply power to it, we are more able to smash ourselves more completely, and yet we are ahead of the game for having done it. The potential dangers from genetically modified critters, especially the microbes, are much more difficult to anticipate and avoid.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?