
Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution" - mixmax
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-the-planet-has-entered-a-new-phase-of-evolution.html
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pmichaud
It's really not a new stage of evolution per se. The switch from random
variations being selected through breeding, to deliberate enhancement takes us
from "evolution" to "intelligent design" by definition.

But he's right overall: we've transitioning into a period in which traits will
be passed on by choice rather than by chance.

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thwarted
The eventual ability to use a brain to reason about and change your own
species's genes isn't evolutionarily selected for? The brain and human
intelligence itself doesn't exist outside of evolution. If it turns out that
humans being smart enough to modify their own genes doesn't work out, doesn't
produce viable offspring, and ultimately loses out to undirected selection,
would we say that that's a failing of our capabilities or that evolution
didn't select for human control of their own gene selection? Does the answer
to this question change over different time scales or if our evolution was to
be studied by other intelligent species?

It ceases to be undirected natural selection, but continues to be evolution.

"Intelligent design" assumes an intelligence outside and other than humans.
This is part of the "playing God" argument against research in this area. So
while I agree that the term "intelligent design" may be more appropriate, that
doesn't preclude it from still being "evolution" over the long term (which is
largely what evolution is focused on). I'd also rather not have the terms get
mixed up; calling this "intelligent design" serves to confuse the ongoing
religion vs science argument/debate that is holding back innovation and laws
in this area.

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Retric
The human brain already does some selection based on genetic traits. And not
just simple heath/fit = good DNA, but it also evaluates your immune system.
Apparently people look for other people whose smell suggests that they have an
"apposing" immune system so their children will have a wider range of
immunity.

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michaelawill
Always cool to hear what Stephen has to say but there isn't anything most of
us don't already know in the article.

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tybris
but it's the first time someone didn't make it sound scary.

The future is going to be relatively great. Just like the present is great
relative to the past.

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Silentio
There are about 3 billion people on Earth to whom your statement doesn't
necessarily apply:
[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-...](http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-
the-bottom-5/)

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kragen
In purely economic terms, a lot of those 3 billion are a lot better off now
than they would have been a century ago. The top of the list, Namibia, has
US$5500 or so per-capita purchasing-power parity GDP. If your income is
US$5500 per year, you're already pretty far up Maslow's hierarchy.

Of course, just because someone isn't starving to death doesn't imply that
they aren't miserable; probably most people reading this comment know somebody
in a rich country who has committed suicide.

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Hexstream
"Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover
how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

Commit crime --> Get sent to Rehabilitation Center --> Get a few bits flipped
in your DNA --> Off you go.

This could go Really Wrong (ex: extremist pacifists take control and turn off
the aggression bits in everyone) but it's an interesting scenario.

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nollidge
There's a couple issues here: this would be fairly difficult, as you'd need to
change the DNA in probably several billions of cells before any phenotypic
change could be effected. Perhaps one mechanism may be to engineer a
retrovirus that would rewrite portions of DNA. This could obviously have far
more important impacts as well: such an RV could reprogram cancerous cells to
die off like proper cells, or disable their angiogenic capability; and of
course it could be programmed to rewrite genes implicated in diseases like
sickle-cell anemia or multiple sclerosis.

Another issue is that while genetics of course plays a role in behavior, I
think it plays out more in directing the development of the brain, not the
actual millisecond-to-millisecond activities of it. Based on my ankle-deep
knowledge of neuroscience, I think that adjusting the DNA is unlikely to cause
an adult brain to rearrange itself in such a way as to modify behavior. A more
likely use for it could be in adjusting brain chemistry, which I'm guessing
can have dramatic, if not entirely targeted, effects.

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tungstenfurnace
Perhaps where evolution is really happening, then, is in the criteria we use
to decide which limited number of books to read.

 __ __*

So much important information is being posted outside books: on the web, on
kindles, etc. In evolutionary terms this is about as reliable as keeping genes
on mitochondrial DNA.

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orionlogic
i think this is the whole script.

<http://brembs.net/SWH.html>

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req2
If you want the crotchety, overly pedantic, poorly critical response by PZ,
[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/futurists_make_me_cranky.php)

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pj
_just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life._

What might that form of life have been like? Was it on earth? Where did it go?
Why don't we see any fossil or other remnants of it?

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burke
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis>

I seem to remember hearing about some organism that only has RNA, but I
couldn't find it with a quick search through wikipedia.

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ilyak
Are viruses organisms? They aren't, but they only have RNA.

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asdlfj2sd33
I have to agree but I think this happened as soon as we had language which was
thought and learned and wasn't pure instinct like other animal vocalizations.

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polos
We should not ignore, once in a while, that we only talk about hypothesis
here, quite nothing about his (certainly very interesting theories) can be
proven empirically -- so it's far from universally acceptable, real, concrete
science.

Sad to say this, but this kind of science has much more from fiction than from
concrete science.

