Will humans become an evolutionary dead-end?

[Lark]

Look guys we are the absolute pinnacle of evolution, THE selected, most loved by the on high, we're damn awesome!!

Dead end is not something associated with us.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Look guys we are the absolute pinnacle of evolution, THE selected, most loved by the on high, we're damn awesome!!

Dead end is not something associated with us.

We are not the 'pinnacle of evolution'. the process continues until extinction.
Sorry that reality is difficult to understand. Keep reading though!

 

[xisnotx]

The infinite perspective says that it's irrational to think otherwise.

 

[xisnotx]

Look guys we are the absolute pinnacle of evolution, THE selected, most loved by the on high, we're damn awesome!!

Dead end is not something associated with us.

We are not the 'pinnacle of evolution'. the process continues until extinction.
Sorry that reality is difficult to understand. Keep reading though!

The tension between these two positions is 'we' vs 'I'. That is, if we aren't, then who is? It leads to conclusions some will disagree with, necessarily.

 

[Stanton Moore]

The tension between these two positions is 'we' vs 'I'. That is, if we aren't, then who is? It leads to conclusions some will disagree with, necessarily.

Who is the pinnacle of evolution? the question itself presupposes knowledge of the endpoint, and if you believe that 'someone' of 'something' can know that, then you have a tacit belief in a higher power.
the only tension I perceive is between dogma and observation, what we wish to be true (because our inner-6-year-old cannot conceive of, or admit to, any other answer) and what we see to be so though open eyes and intelligence.

 

[xisnotx]

Who is The pinnacle of evolution? the question itself presupposes knowledge of the endpoint, and if you believe that 'someone' of 'something' can know that, then you have a tacit belief in a higher power.
the only tension I perceive is between dogma and observation, what we wish to be true (because our inner-6-year-old cannot conceive of, or admit to, any other answer) and what we see to be so though open eyes and intelligence.

You don't have to know the ends to know what means are likelier to meet them. If 'we' aren't, and evolution is a given, then the things on which evolution is occurring are likelier to lead to the end, whatever that will be.

 

[Mole]

Natural selection doesn't have an end, it doesn't have a purpose, it is not teleological. It is merely vanity on our part to think that natural selection has led to us, and our vanity completely misunderstands evolution.

We fancy ourselves as created by God in His image, and so we imagine He created evolution as a way of creating us. But this is mere fancy.

 

[Standuble]

Unless humanity can manage to leave this planet prior to civilisation collapse through resource depletion then it is fair that we can eventually evolve into "higher" beings: Space aliens, cyborgs etc.

A move to a more primitive lifeform is still an evolution so in an event where a small human population is forced back into the wild then humanity may evolve back into the wild; losing its ability to innovate in favour of sensory data and probably ending up either as an ape similar in character to modern Chimpanzees or Gorillas or will eventually evolve to resemble other mammals e.g. Dogs or Cats. It's all just a game of random mutation where the environment decides whether its good, bad or irrelevant to survival. Mutations occur in every lifeform, they're just waiting to see if mother nature would give them the stamp of approval.

Humanity isn't an evolutionary dead end but that does not mean it will survive either.

 

[Little_Sticks]

And what is it that makes a human a human exactly?

 

[sprinkles]

And what is it that makes a human a human exactly?

Do you mean in terms of a human as a member of H. sapiens, or do you mean human as in a being with the philosophical human condition?

The former is easy to answer. The latter, not so much.

 

[COLORATURA]

Whoa!! I am impressed by Avik & Little_Sticks! They, I feel, are both correct in what they are saying.

Honestly, yes, things are always going to move & change from the way we know them now. EVERYTHING. So, what is a human anyway? What we define them as? Sure, they will change. Will they go extinct? Maybe. Depends on what happens to the "earth." However, we are all part of everything. We are all made of the same, and interconnected. It is the only logical conclusion. Space is infinite, and our galaxy has other objects/particles/whatever you wanna call it pushing against it in space making it what it is. Waves in space form what we see & call our universe. We don't technically even "see" what happens when someone "dies." We no longer can communicate with people whom die in the way we always have, and so in our little brains we assume they are no longer there. However, they only changed form. The only thing that "kills" matter is anti-matter, right?

So, maybe I am in over my head saying all of this...

I can't always describe what I am trying to say...BUT! I found these people who can! Sorry, but this website is orgasmic to anyone interested in the truth of things. It is WWW.SPACEANDMOTION.COM.

Here's a little tidbit:

"In fact it is possible for a finite spherical Universe to form within an infinite Space. Unfortunately for Einstein, he incorrectly imagined a 'curved space' such that if you traveled far enough you would return to your starting point (a very abstract and confusing concept).

The solution is far more simple, and is found instead from Huygens' Principle. Three hundred years ago Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, found that if a surface containing many separate wave sources was examined at a distance, the combined separate waves of the sources appeared as a single wave front with the shape of the surface. This wave front is termed a 'Huygens Combination' of the separate waves.

Thus the out waves of all the other matter around us within our Hubble sphere must necessarily form our spherical in waves. This unites finite matter with infinite space due to this sharing of waves."

 

[Standuble]

Coloratura, I understood what you were implying completely though the Huygens Principle section may require longer for me to grasp! Thanks for giving me something new to mull over.

I did reply previously that a human is not defined: neither biologically, philosophically or spiritually but an error occurred when posting. Is a person with one brain cell less fitting to identify as a "human" than someone who has one more? What if a person is missing a limb? What would be the standard for the human to be measure against? Asking if humans are an evolutionary dead end depends on a subjective interpretation of what humans are. If any future entities with a common ancestry in the current "human" genepool can be fairly classified as human (no matter the extent of deviation from the "norm") then humanity is a dead end as no amount of genetic variance would justify a change in classification. To attempt to be realistic however I would say that a line will be drawn at some point (would probably compare genetic strands of a future generation against a stock sample of 50,000 "normal" "humans" of our present day. When variation exceeds a point the classification is withdrawn.) On this basis I shall support my initial response that humanity is not an evolutionary dead end. The alternative would probably involve a radical liquidation of the concept of a "species" altogether (as all life is inherently interconnected with its environment, forever extracting energy from external resources with continuous flux in a lifeform's composition creating a situation where life is little more than a dynamic convergence of the laws of the universe. With no satisfactory objective standard of life achieved, classification is more or less abolished.)

I went off on a tangent at the end, hopefully what I wrote made sense!

 

[COLORATURA]

Coloratura, I understood what you were implying completely though the Huygens Principle section may require longer for me to grasp! Thanks for giving me something new to mull over.

I did reply previously that a human is not defined: neither biologically, philosophically or spiritually but an error occurred when posting. Is a person with one brain cell less fitting to identify as a "human" than someone who has one more? What if a person is missing a limb? What would be the standard for the human to be measure against? Asking if humans are an evolutionary dead end depends on a subjective interpretation of what humans are. If any future entities with a common ancestry in the current "human" genepool can be fairly classified as human (no matter the extent of deviation from the "norm") then humanity is a dead end as no amount of genetic variance would justify a change in classification. To attempt to be realistic however I would say that a line will be drawn at some point (would probably compare genetic strands of a future generation against a stock sample of 50,000 "normal" "humans" of our present day. When variation exceeds a point the classification is withdrawn.) On this basis I shall support my initial response that humanity is not an evolutionary dead end. The alternative would probably involve a radical liquidation of the concept of a "species" altogether (as all life is inherently interconnected with its environment, forever extracting energy from external resources with continuous flux in a lifeform's composition creating a situation where life is little more than a dynamic convergence of the laws of the universe. With no satisfactory objective standard of life achieved, classification is more or less abolished.)

I went off on a tangent at the end, hopefully what I wrote made sense!

Yes, I believe you made perfect sense! I like the way you stated all of this, and I agree completely.

 

[Mole]

We know that large multi-celled animals have a short evolutionary life. In other words large multi-celled animals become extinct rather quickly in evolutionary time.

Homo sapiens is a large multi-celled animal and there is no reason to think we won't become extinct in short evolutionary order.

On the other hand, single celled animals live for millennia after millennia. So homo sapiens will be outlived by bacteria.