
How Humans Are Shaping Our Own Evolution - pmcpinto
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/04/evolution-genetics-medicine-brain-technology-cyborg/
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jfarlow
> Human enhancements needn’t confer superhuman powers.

We already have a library of powers demonstrated to us by nature itself.
Because the source-codes of most life on earth is written in the same
language, porting packages from one organism to another is actually,
generally, reasonable. We can already port single protein packages (though
with some difficulty in delivery, and associated risk). There's no fundamental
reason we can't start porting over entire processes.

Get radiation protection from Tardigrades[1], anti-cancer protection by
mimicking elephants' possessing many copies of p53[2]. Give everyone low-
oxygen tolerance conferred by PHD2 found in Tibetans[3]. More exotically,
photosynthetic and alternative energy generation from various heterotrophic
species.

And then of course, give optical I/O access using photo-sensitive neural
proteins [4]. Or other optogenetic components to give us read/run access to
dormant genes already in our genomes[5].

[1]
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/dsup/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/dsup/)

[2]
[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/p53/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/p53/)

[3]
[http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n9/full/ng.3067.html](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n9/full/ng.3067.html)

[4]
[http://web.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/sequence_inf...](http://web.stanford.edu/group/dlab/optogenetics/sequence_info.html)

[5] [http://blog.addgene.org/optogenetics-crispr-using-light-
to-c...](http://blog.addgene.org/optogenetics-crispr-using-light-to-control-
genome-editing)

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tropo
They left out the obvious things that tend to reduce the number of offspring:
birth control, distractions like video games, fear of losses in family court,
choices that lead to prison, the fact that women no longer need to please men
in order to survive, obesity/diabetes/cardiovascular issues, and the tendency
to dislike spreading resources thinly across numerous children.

People who overcome those impediments to reproduction are the evolutionary
winners. The changes can be physical, mental, metabolic, and/or anything else
-- it doesn't matter because evolution doesn't care how the job gets done.
People of the future will be more like those few people of today who are
effective at overcoming the impediments to reproduction.

