What skill will our brains evolve next?

[Miramonti]

Our brains won't evolve as a result of the environment anymore, but as a result of the multitude of chemicals that our bodies take in on a daily basis.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

How can we evolve if we are healing the sick and allowing them to continue reproducing?

 

[Jmman]

How to actually program a vcr. Unfortunately it happened after the vcr's popularity is over......🙂

 

[TheoPetro]

it..it ....ITS STARTING!!! im the first X-man! whats my power you ask? i have the uncanny ability to make a sarcastic comment in any thread i deem needs one.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Descartes
I'm not trying to pick a fight in this thread, but I can only believe that the misconceptions are spread through posts like this. People enter the thread see nonsense like devolving and then perpetuate it everywhere else.

If the links I provided aren't sufficient to prove how oxymoronic the notion of de-evolution are then just Google around a bit.

Traits which don't see much use have been observed to disappear over time though, this isn't conjecture. "Use it or lose it" holds true for evolution, almost like genetic exercise. And with my riding lawnmower and garage door being plastered with warnings about the dangers of eating said products, I have to seriously question intelligence being as necessary a trait as it once was.

 

[Cattlegod]

Genetic memory FTW!!!

now you will have all the memory of your parents and parents parents!!

 

[schneiderguy]

masterbation with no hands :Q

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
masterbation with no hands :Q

air thrusting? 😀


in all honesty, I believe our bodies are adapting to the world around us, which can almost be seen as de-evolving. we have a meriad of man-made drugs and solutions to problems that nature couldn't figure out fast enough for us. we are completely throwing ourselves to modern medicine, to the point that our children's children may not be able to live through ANYTHING without medicine. The common cold may just end up being a killer at the rate we adapt to medicine.
im not bashing medicine, I am no scientologist and welcome medicine in my life, but at the same time, we are killing our body's natural abilities.

 

[Tom]

nipples on our thumbs.

 

[Nab]

i hope we get 4 hands and a tail!

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
technology supercedes evolution at this point. nanotech, implants, bio-engineering, ai is the next generation of 'evolution'

No, it really isn't and doesn't.

Regardless, it is conceivable that we would soon enter a time where technology would allows us to enhance ourselves to far greater effect than natural evolution allows.

 

[everman]

Originally posted by: dighn

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
technology supercedes evolution at this point. nanotech, implants, bio-engineering, ai is the next generation of 'evolution'

No, it really isn't and doesn't.

Regardless, it is conceivable that we would soon enter a time where technology would allows us to enhance ourselves to far greater effect than natural evolution allows.

Just for the heck of it, I'll take the position that man made technology will superceed all biological forms of intelligence. Artificial Intelligence more powerful than our own ("Strong A.I.") will end up creating everything eventually, coupled with our own enhanced "brain power" (heavily augmented by technology). Eventually all human intelligence will be over 99% non-biological. Our bodies will be whatever we want them to be, no longer relying upon our biological systems.

I think this will happen "eventually", anyone object? 😛
(I make no claims of de-evolution, stoppage of evolution, etc.)

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: everman

Originally posted by: dighn

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
technology supercedes evolution at this point. nanotech, implants, bio-engineering, ai is the next generation of 'evolution'

No, it really isn't and doesn't.

Regardless, it is conceivable that we would soon enter a time where technology would allows us to enhance ourselves to far greater effect than natural evolution allows.

Just for the heck of it, I'll take the position that man made technology will superceed all biological forms of intelligence. Artificial Intelligence more powerful than our own ("Strong A.I.") will end up creating everything eventually, coupled with our own enhanced "brain power" (heavily augmented by technology). Eventually all human intelligence will be over 99% non-biological. Our bodies will be whatever we want them to be, no longer relying upon our biological systems.

I think this will happen "eventually", anyone object? 😛
(I make no claims of de-evolution, stoppage of evolution, etc.)

A fellow optimist, how refreshing 🙂

 

[Willoughbyva]

Mind over matter.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Wel I'll leave out the biomechanical nonsense and assume that the OP was referring to natural evolution as a response to environmental pressures. What mental traits would you add that would make you better fit for survival right now? What mental traits would you add given your estimation of where our society is headed?

I think that if I had a more intuitive grasp of mathematics then I might be more fit for survival. Any evolution that could occur to that effect would be to my benefit. I also would throw in a photographic/eidetic memory and the ability to concurrently access and process more than 5 thought-streams at once.

 

[SagaLore]

We will develop a disconnection with "pain". We'll know exactly where the injury is, but it won't "hurt" more than an itch.

 

[TheShiz]

natural selection is no longer selecting naturally with humans, i doubt we will see any significant evolution of the human species until we can seperate ourselves by great distances, such as space travel. If we ever learn to travel and live in space, maybe in a million years we will meet up again, and I think by then it would be an interesting encounter.

 

[Bulk Beef]

If we ever learn to travel and live in space, maybe in a million years we will meet up again, and I think by then it would be an interesting encounter.

Will we be riding in a ragtag, fugitive fleet?

 

[The Batt?sai]

Originally posted by: AsianriceX
The ability to understand women...

Nah, that'll never happen. 😕

😕

 

[Triumph]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee
Wel I'll leave out the biomechanical nonsense and assume that the OP was referring to natural evolution as a response to environmental pressures. What mental traits would you add that would make you better fit for survival right now? What mental traits would you add given your estimation of where our society is headed?

I think that if I had a more intuitive grasp of mathematics then I might be more fit for survival. Any evolution that could occur to that effect would be to my benefit. I also would throw in a photographic/eidetic memory and the ability to concurrently access and process more than 5 thought-streams at once.

That is a good way of posing the question: where are we going and what will it take to get there? I'll have to think about that for a while. Maybe as a quick thought, if we begin to populate outer space, and spend generations on a space station, our bodies will become better adapted to a zero gravity environment. Muscles would atrophy, the heart would maybe reduce its size, etc.

As for your second point, those are traits that are almost attainable now. I don't know if you can "evolve" to be better at math, or have a better memory. The question that I'm posing is more along the lines of vision - eyes evolved to recieve visual information in the form of light waves. Will we evolve a method of "seeing" further into the electromagnetic spectrum? That is a bit different than simply being better at math.

I suggest we begin inundating all of our children with high powered gamma, x-rays, and microwaves. Eventually they'll learn to "see" into those spectrums. If not, well they'll be punished by radiation sickness until they learn.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: Triumph

As for your second point, those are traits that are almost attainable now. I don't know if you can "evolve" to be better at math, or have a better memory. The question that I'm posing is more along the lines of vision - eyes evolved to recieve visual information in the form of light waves. Will we evolve a method of "seeing" further into the electromagnetic spectrum? That is a bit different than simply being better at math.

I was assuming that we were limiting this exercise to developments of the brain or mental processes as a result of evolution. I have always thought that any evolutionary change in humans would be most evident as a gradual increasing of our current strengths instead of the development of new "powers". We might eventually be able to play out every chess game in history simultaneously in our minds while deciding our next move againsts an actual opponent. Or we might be able to grasp certain complex concepts all at once when at the present we must work them out one piece at a time and distribute the knowledge across many individuals in order to get any meaningful result.

Quite simply, what I see us evolving into is us, but better.

 

[Rock Hydra]

How I figure is that we'll (as a species) be able to control our evoultion, with the way technology is becoming.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: Triumph
Hundreds of millions of years ago, our brains were reptilian in nature, consisting of pure instinct and basic traits necessary for survival. As ages passed and we further evolved, we developed the mammalian traits of child rearing, empathy, nurturing, and the like. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, as the tools thus far developed for survival became inadequate, our brain developed cognitive abilities, creativity, reasoning. Essentially the brain as we know it today.

What skills and abilities will we develop next? Perhaps more importantly, what will be the impetus of this next development in our evolutionary history? Environmental change? War? Disease? Extraterrestrial influence?

More conscious control of autonomic functions like blood pressure and basal metabolic rates.

The capability to store more than the current seven things in RAM.