Andy Myers has a serious/entertaining FSB piece on the future of human evolution. Well worth reading and while reading it is useful to remember a few of the strange people pretending to be UK political leaders, celebrity 'experts' or media 'personalities'.
The Domestication of Humanity
How AI and technology are quietly rewriting evolution
We bred wolves into pugs. At some point, someone looked at a majestic predator and thought, “What if it had a snub nose, a wheeze, and couldn’t survive a gentle breeze?” Fast-forward a few generations and voilà—a creature designed purely to delight, not to endure.
And now, having reshaped the animal kingdom in our image, we turn the lens inward. What happens when we begin to breed ourselves—not with scissors and genes only, but with the quiet, persistent selection pressures of convenience, code, and comfort?
Welcome to the age of un-natural selection.
We bred wolves into pugs. At some point, someone looked at a majestic predator and thought, “What if it had a snub nose, a wheeze, and couldn’t survive a gentle breeze?” Fast-forward a few generations and voilà—a creature designed purely to delight, not to endure.
And now, having reshaped the animal kingdom in our image, we turn the lens inward. What happens when we begin to breed ourselves—not with scissors and genes only, but with the quiet, persistent selection pressures of convenience, code, and comfort?
Welcome to the age of un-natural selection.
3 comments:
Arguably any herd or troop animal will tend to breed towards an optimum mix of tame and wild animals. Yet the optimum mix will change from time to time.
The developed world and perhaps the less developed world are tending to have fewer children. This seems a risky gamble that may produce generations of children who might survive more frequently to adulthood or maybe is just a diminution of the size of gene pool Time will tell.
But there is no guarantee that a species will 'progress' for ever. Evolutionary processes don't work like that.
Otherwise known, AKH, as messing with nature.
DJ - "But there is no guarantee that a species will 'progress' for ever."
I agree, when life becomes too easy we may drift away from our adaptability. In a number of ways we already seem to be doing that.
James - yes, a lesson nature has yet to teach us but will probably get round to it.
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