

Will the Six Great Stages of Evolution Be Followed by a Seventh? - timf
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/will-the-six-great-stages-of-evolution-be-followed-by-a-seventh-.html

======
timf
This is interesting, I had never heard an estimate that high:

 _A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks
estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating
back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than
any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are
occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of
agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers
after the growth of human civilizations._

------
alanthonyc
So at this point, we are sort of like the fruit flies of large mammals.

------
baddox
I would think colonization of other planets (or in the article's own terms,
"invasion of outer space") would be a more likely and more comparable next
step.

~~~
Tichy
Hm, I know more about computer science than about physics. Sure, after reading
countless science fiction stories, it is difficult to imagine that there won't
be interstellar travel, teleportation and time travel one day, but aren't
there physical limitations? OK teleportation seems doable (has been done I
think), but what about the speed of light? Most sf stories seem to settle for
some kind of handy worm holes, but what if we don't find them?

Not saying it is impossible, but the path to AI seems much clearer than the
path to interstellar travel at this point, in my opinion. Like say in 100
years, do you think we'll be traveling to distant stars already? (Then again,
with super intelligent AI, maybe we, or "they", will figure something out).

~~~
baddox
Still, there's the potential for terraforming Mars or some of the rocky moons
in our own solar system.

------
scythe
If you ask me, #3 should be "aerobic metabolisms". It seems like a pretty
significant development.

------
polos
Evolution theory is an (old) theory. Here is some newer one:

[http://www.evolution-is-
degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=...](http://www.evolution-is-
degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=1104)

~~~
rwolf
He doesn't have a wiki in my native tongue, so I had to chuck google translate
at <http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele> . The results seem to indicate
he is a nobody, but I could be wrong. Also, could anyone provide a better
translation of the book title "I am Jesus-fan: but how you become one?"?
Without context from sources I've seen before, it's not clear that it's worth
my time to read the page you linked to.

I ran into this same problem while trying to read a broad survey of
Institutionalist economics papers--the amount of time I can spend reading is
limited, and sometimes there's no way to tell if a heterodox work is worth the
trouble. Sadly, my default is "no."

~~~
jurjenh
It seems google translate was right on with the translation. Doesn't make much
sense in dutch either...

He seems a fairly dedicated god-botherer / evangelist, with a few TV
programmes, so maybe a semi-celebrity (?)

(disclaimer: I was 11 when I left the Netherlands for New Zealand)

As for the parent comment, the evolution=degeneration theory does not pass my
common sense filter: are we that much more degenerate than our 5-million-
years-ago ancestors? Seems more likely to be a reactive criticism against
Darwin, but (not having read the book, only the intro) provided it makes VALID
points that need to be considered, it will (hopefully) aid our understanding
as to how we got here, and where we may end up going...

