(April 1, 2017 at 10:47 am)bennyboy Wrote:(March 31, 2017 at 9:10 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I don't want to see the future, say maybe for things that might improve life and health but ultimately our species will go extinct like the dinosaurs long before our planet dies some 5 billion years from now. The way our species is acting now it is far more likely we will kill ourselves off with pollution and nuclear war, so no, I don't want to see that future. I still hold out some hope we might pull our heads out of our asses collectively as a species.
My opinion of our species is that your hope will only work out if punctuated evolution is possible-- that a single mutation or rapid evolutionary stage can introduce essentially a new species. I don't know whether this theory holds any scientific weight, but it seems to me that in extreme circumstances-- for example, with ice caps melting and snow being scarce, it seems likely that the color of polar bears could change to brown in just a couple hundred years due to massive pressure from the environment and really harsh selection rules (with also very high compensation for those with early variation that benefits them).
Perhaps a more likely source of punctuated evolution could be an artificially forced culling of stupid and violent through disease or direct genetic modification.
Right now, the problem is that those who COULD save the world are responsible-- they are less power hungry, reproduce less, and so on. We've clearly, with the election of a fucking orangutan to maybe the most powerful position in the world, and I suspect it's because Americans on average are genetically unable to think and make rational decisions.
Human beings survive. Nukes, planet-smashing asteroids, a bad slip on ice can end it for any and all of us. So let's give up, cower in fear and await our doom, eh? Or better yet, why not snuff it out and get it over with, eh?
If I don't get to take this ride again I want to experience every bit of it. I used to be more Sartre. Now I'm more Camus. The struggle is the end in itself. And there's some fun along the way, too.
Evolution by natural selection punctuates nothing. Only the fittest survive. My guess is that it's more likely that brown bears will expand their territory and eventually re-evolve into something like a polar bear than it is for the polar bear to adapt to its changing environment. Evolution does not care who was there first.
