Comments by "Aaron Okeanos" (@AaronOkeanos) on "The Origins and Future of Humans (Nick Lane Interview)" video.

  1. I think Biological Evolution for humans is done. It happens in ranges of 100,000 years or so and humans are significant for this planet for only 12,000 years since we started to construct buildings. We now doing culture evolution and soon engineered evolution ... simply because humans are not patient enough to wait for nature. For humans the biological evolution was replaced by cultural evolution. The more successfull someone manages in society (mostly wealth) the more offspring they tend to create. Sadly also people who can bully, cheat and scam more successfull tend to doing better and procreate more. But it's even worse sometimes otherwise biological good genes are not given to offspring because economical and financial inequality may lead to no offspring and loss of otherwise biological good genes. People who have affinities to be geniusses or artists may go under in society simply by a lack of funding and compassion. The filter of cultural evolution is totally different to the filter of biological evolution and constantly changing. In short we created an environment in which people who adapt better to culture and better manage to exploit it for themselves with potentially problematic and weak biological genes procreate more. Selfish, criminal behaviour and greed leading to more wealth has higher chances of create offspring. And we may lose people who are intellectual, artistic, empathic or maybe good leaders because they not doing well in a society based on money. We ruining our genepool and maybe sealing the fate once culture fails and we are back to biological evolution. But something new has come up as well engineered evolution. Our scientific progress allows us to manipulate our own genes. And humans have not the patience for biological evolution so they will unavoidable start using this technology to fix and enhance things biological evolution would take millenia to do. And this will create a new form of evolution in which engineered and not engineered humans compete against each other in the environment of cultural evolution. Basically what nature done with neanderthals and homo sapians at the same time will now happen with different engineered human species. And I am not looking forward to this prospect. The potential unwanted side effects may create the end of humanity by over-engineering with unintended consequences.
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