
Human race will 'split into two different species' - gibsonf1
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=489653&in_page_id=1965
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herdrick
I didn't know the Daily Mail was that bad.

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asdflkj
You must not be very familiar with UK press, then. The Daily Mail is famously
bad. It's like The Sun for people too pretentious to read the real thing.

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chaostheory
is this a joke pulled out of HG Well's Time Machine?

I'd like to know the details of the theory...

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queensnake
Exactly, I'd like to know his reasoning. Why wouldn't there continue to be a
continuum between the two groups, eg? We don't get 'purer' now, why would
they, relying on technology, ie presumably with no selection pressure except
mating preference, do otherwise?

edit: He explains it as, the 'upper' castes take off from the rest of us; we
already mate assortatively, this would just be an extreme. But, why wouldn't
we put good genes into our children, a la 'Gattica'? Well, if we have economic
/laissez faire/, maybe the poorer ones won't be able to afford it, and
increasingly so.

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chaostheory
i think he's missing an even bigger thing: there's a very high probability
that unless we humans transcend our humanity somehow, we'll probably just make
ourselves extinct before we evolve further...

Then again like Asimov said, saying something isn't possible typically turns
out wrong in the long run...

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curi
Why do you think we will "probably" go extinct? That depends on creating risky
knowledge faster than we create knowledge of how to mitigate those risks.
Which in general seems unlikely, given that we are aware of the issue and can
aim our progress in the right direction as necessary.

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mdemare
Well, 'risky' knowledge seems generally easier to research than the knowledge
to contain it. See the atomic bomb vs. the missile shield, over 60 years
later. It's easier to destroy than to create.

Also, humanity isn't exactly united in aiming our progress in the right
direction. However, I don't think we'll go extinct any time soon (that would
take nothing less than a very big asteroid).

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curi
but we didn't and still don't necessarily need a missile shield to prevent the
atomic bomb from destroying us. we had, and used, diplomacy, locked weapons
silos, etc

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curi
This article is clueless. Sexual selection and genetic evolution is not
guiding the fate of humanity, and it hasn't been for a long time. Memes evolve
orders of magnitude faster and thus dominate.

