http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2...mpaign=Feed: wired/index (Wired: Top Stories) Charles Xavier agrees! Kentucky disagrees! Long article, but fascinating. This partially answered a question which came to me a few days ago when I was reading another article (which I also posted a thread about) http://www.wordforge.net/showthread.php?t=96926 It makes sense. The human population has grown so large and generations of unchecked random mutations have become manifested as strange new disorders. But it is compelling to think that maybe some very cool or beneficial mutations will also soon emerge. What if some human born somewhere developed a spontaneous mutation that allowed him to instantly kill cancer cells? The beauty of this is that with our current technology we wouldn't have to wait for this trait to to be passed on and become dominant in the human population... we can study it, re-create it, and possibly develop something that could be instantly disseminated. The current human population could be carrying all sorts of potentially useful traits which we need only identify and catalog... who knows what humans could evolve into in the future? And I don't think this isn't just fanciful speculation. The fossil record shows that amazing changes have happened throughout history. Over time our ancestors left the water and began to breathe air. And some of those ancestors developed the ability to fly. Some creatures have built in sonars. Some creatures glow like lightbulbs. Some creatures have chameleon like properties, etc... With our technology, we may not have to wait millions of years to find out what we will evolve into.
So the X-men plots will soon become reality? I'd really like Wolverine's super-healing and not-aging powers.
I wonder if some of us will live long enough to see these new evolutionary traits surface. Though obviously it's not going to lead to speciation for a long, long time.
Unfortunately an advanced society decreases natural selection. We have all kinds of laws to help prevent stupid people from removing themselves from the gene pool. We have all kinds of therapies and medicines that prevent sick people from being removed from the gene pool. Idiocracy is coming.
If this is true, it is incredibly counterintuitive, and I'd like to hear of the maths behind it. It would seem to me that there are, by now, very few evolutionary pressures acting on us, so any change that happens will be mostly drift. That is, if beneficial mutations do evolve in some individuals, those are not likely to propogate throughout the species in any significant way, because passing on genes is now so easy for everyone.
I was thinking maybe humans would soon develop force sensitivity, but your theory is equally plausible.
What some humans think is 'advanced' isn't necessarily what nature deems more fit. Besides, caring for the sick or weak is part of what has made humans such successful mammals. If we just shrugged and said "sucks to be you" to anyone who was injured or diseased, we'd've been much less likely to have ever come up with germ theory or vaccinations or genetic knowledge or anything else that can improve the lives of currently healthy people.
For all we know, couldn't this have already happened? I mean, plenty of people never get cancer. Isn't it possible that someone, somewhere, does have a mutation that causes the body to instantly kill cancer cells before they become detectable? And if that happened, how would we ever know it?