RE: My Five Wills/Code of Ethics
June 25, 2013 at 2:02 am
(This post was last modified: June 25, 2013 at 2:33 am by deactivated01089.)
(June 24, 2013 at 8:36 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: Uhmm. Disagree. there is no real "homo sapien" it's just a name we give to ourselves cos humans like to name things (especially scientists, just take a look at all the proteins). There is no point in time where homo sapiens came into being, it's a continuous change. Gradual and slow change but continuous. We name things not to reflect reality but for organizational purposes, in this particular case. (Species has a functional purpose because separating populations that way does help us understand them better, but in evolutionary terms ... species across timescale, eg. if you go back far enough, you'll be biologically unable to breed with your own ancestor, I don't see the point of having this separation, because it has no practical purposes and doesn't help us understand evolution any better, which is not discontinuous.) Other than that if we don't go extinct, we'll be the ancestors of whatever occupies the face of the earth, just like forever ago a single celled organism was our ancestor. Whether it's "us" or "something else" is something for people to play with depending on their definitions, but it's not something that any evidence will speak to, it'll depend completely on what one defines to be a homo sapien.
I don't think evolving into something else is extinction. Extinction requires that a population completely dies out. Evolving is a state of being for every population. As long as a population is evolving it is not extinct. And every population is evolving.
It's not "just a name." Species are functional classifications of organisms, grouped according to similarities in their physiology and/or their genetic code. Perhaps your view of evolution doesn't warrant specific classification. But there are differences between organisms, and those differences are the result of evolution. With regard to organisms that are venomous or poisonous, understanding those differences can be a matter of life and death. Hardly "just a name." Homo sapiens is a distinct organism from Homo erectus, Homo habilis, or Homo neanderthalensis. You're arguing semantics, really. Yes, it's a gradual change; yes, it's hardly ever possible to notice substantial variations between parental and offspring generations; and yes, it would thus be difficult, if not impossible, to isolate a "first Homo sapiens" from a comprehensive collection of Homo heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens remains. But the fact is that modern man is not the organism we classify as Homo heidelbergensis/rhodesiensis or as Homo erectus. It is a distinct species, with distinct physiological and genetic differences from its ancestors. These distinctions arise as a result of evolution. So, perhaps, it is your view that needs updating.
You say, "I don't think that evolving into something else is extinction...as long as a population is evolving, it's not extinct." Where did most of the 99.9% of species that are now extinct go if not evolution? We say, "the dinosaurs are extinct," despite the fact some dinosaurs evolved into modern birds. Modern birds exist, yet dinosaurs are extinct. As you mentioned, all organisms on this earth, whether human or banana, descend from a single universally common ancestor. As far as we now know, that ancestor is extinct, yet it has evolved into us. We exist, yet it is extinct. And this is my point: regardless of whether we evolve into something other than Homo sapiens, or some extinction level event wipes us out before we can evolve, we will eventually go extinct. If the former is the case, there will be organisms that have descended from us, but they will not be us.
In other words, we will still go extinct, as all species generally do.
In any case, this is a massive digression from my original post. The point is simply that I don't find it particularly rational to care about anything that happens after I am dead. As I will be dead, incapable of existing again, nothing that happens after that point will bear any relevance to me. I see it as important to make the world as pleasant as possible while I am alive, and once I am gone, whatever happens is in the hands of those remaining, and of our universe. It is their concern, not mine. While I adore the beauty of this world's many life forms and natural scenes, they simply cannot matter to the non-existent, which I will be.
And just FYI, the singular form of Homo sapiens is Homo sapiens, not Homo sapien. Common mistake.
