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http://www.ted.com/talks/harvey_fineberg_are_we_ready_for_neo_evolution.html

What a fantastic idea.

It seems he was simply doing another round of future speculation for what was possible, which I was disappointed to realize. Regardless though, while it sounds fun all that would serve to do would be to decay humanity as a whole as we're no longer losing what should be lost as a weaker gene or create a potential group of longer lived people who would become increasingly fragile and require more and more care. I doubt it would be as effective as we could want and hope that such technology is used to keep the current lifespan healthy but not to elongate it

Azure wrote:It seems he was simply doing another round of future speculation for what was possible, which I was disappointed to realize. Regardless though, while it sounds fun all that would serve to do would be to decay humanity as a whole as we're no longer losing what should be lost as a weaker gene or create a potential group of longer lived people who would become increasingly fragile and require more and more care. I doubt it would be as effective as we could want and hope that such technology is used to keep the current lifespan healthy but not to elongate it

I can't watch the video due to terrible internets, but I gather it's something on transhumanism. The thing one must realize is genetic evolution was made effectively obsolete the second the human brain developed enough to realize that the product of ten minutes of sharpening a stick to a point was a better weapon than claws or teeth that took countless millennia to evolve. Human engineering has done more in the past two hundred years alone than came about naturally in the past two billion years. We stand on the cusp of being able to create machines that can do as much in two minutes. Genetic evolution is obsolete in humans, and any genetic failing will be reparable with medical technology in the near future.

Considering that the talk was apparently on genetically engineering humans to be better, I have to disagree with that too, though. Genetic engineering (on humans) does nothing for the living. Nanotech, and other medical technologies/technologies with medical applications, are what will improve living humans, long before we understand genetics enough to make genetic engineering viable in humans. All it would take to make humans functionally immortal (and perpetually healthy and productive) were a way to either stop tissue decay, or fully repair it on a regular basis, no need for tampering with genetics to get there.

This is nothing new. The Greeks and Romans would 'expose' disabled babies.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Azure wrote:It seems he was simply doing another round of future speculation for what was possible, which I was disappointed to realize. Regardless though, while it sounds fun all that would serve to do would be to decay humanity as a whole as we're no longer losing what should be lost as a weaker gene or create a potential group of longer lived people who would become increasingly fragile and require more and more care. I doubt it would be as effective as we could want and hope that such technology is used to keep the current lifespan healthy but not to elongate it

I can't watch the video due to terrible internets, but I gather it's something on transhumanism. The thing one must realize is genetic evolution was made effectively obsolete the second the human brain developed enough to realize that the product of ten minutes of sharpening a stick to a point was a better weapon than claws or teeth that took countless millennia to evolve. Human engineering has done more in the past two hundred years alone than came about naturally in the past two billion years. We stand on the cusp of being able to create machines that can do as much in two minutes. Genetic evolution is obsolete in humans, and any genetic failing will be reparable with medical technology in the near future.

Considering that the talk was apparently on genetically engineering humans to be better, I have to disagree with that too, though. Genetic engineering (on humans) does nothing for the living. Nanotech, and other medical technologies/technologies with medical applications, are what will improve living humans, long before we understand genetics enough to make genetic engineering viable in humans. All it would take to make humans functionally immortal (and perpetually healthy and productive) were a way to either stop tissue decay, or fully repair it on a regular basis, no need for tampering with genetics to get there.

My true concern is are we still evolving?

Has the media and commercialism changed what would once be considered an 'ideal' mate to he extent that we are breeding weak genes over strong?

Eg. Fat, bald, increased genetic chance of heart conditions... over tall, well-muscled, strong bones... heck, even some argue intelligence is genetic.

*ahem*

AvatarForm wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Azure wrote:It seems he was simply doing another round of future speculation for what was possible, which I was disappointed to realize. Regardless though, while it sounds fun all that would serve to do would be to decay humanity as a whole as we're no longer losing what should be lost as a weaker gene or create a potential group of longer lived people who would become increasingly fragile and require more and more care. I doubt it would be as effective as we could want and hope that such technology is used to keep the current lifespan healthy but not to elongate it

I can't watch the video due to terrible internets, but I gather it's something on transhumanism. The thing one must realize is genetic evolution was made effectively obsolete the second the human brain developed enough to realize that the product of ten minutes of sharpening a stick to a point was a better weapon than claws or teeth that took countless millennia to evolve. Human engineering has done more in the past two hundred years alone than came about naturally in the past two billion years. We stand on the cusp of being able to create machines that can do as much in two minutes. Genetic evolution is obsolete in humans, and any genetic failing will be reparable with medical technology in the near future.

Considering that the talk was apparently on genetically engineering humans to be better, I have to disagree with that too, though. Genetic engineering (on humans) does nothing for the living. Nanotech, and other medical technologies/technologies with medical applications, are what will improve living humans, long before we understand genetics enough to make genetic engineering viable in humans. All it would take to make humans functionally immortal (and perpetually healthy and productive) were a way to either stop tissue decay, or fully repair it on a regular basis, no need for tampering with genetics to get there.

My true concern is are we still evolving?

Has the media and commercialism changed what would once be considered an 'ideal' mate to he extent that we are breeding weak genes over strong?

Eg. Fat, bald, increased genetic chance of heart conditions... over tall, well-muscled, strong bones... heck, even some argue intelligence is genetic.

a) There's apparently some evidence that birth control pills have led to weak, effeminate males being slightly selected for (something to do with the hormone changes they induce mimicking pregnancy, which shifts the emphasis of "who I want to be near" from "strong, viable mate" to "caring supportive family"; of course, I got this off cracked, but they totally linked to news articles or abstracts or something that I didn't bother reading...), but other than that no, not really, or not more than any form of civilization has.

b) Any characteristics that might be selected for will become superfluous long before they can manifest in the population as a whole. We're only one or two generations out from the estimated computing singularity proper, to say nothing of non god-machine technologies like simple labor automation or improved medicine, which are much, much closer.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Azure wrote:It seems he was simply doing another round of future speculation for what was possible, which I was disappointed to realize. Regardless though, while it sounds fun all that would serve to do would be to decay humanity as a whole as we're no longer losing what should be lost as a weaker gene or create a potential group of longer lived people who would become increasingly fragile and require more and more care. I doubt it would be as effective as we could want and hope that such technology is used to keep the current lifespan healthy but not to elongate it

I can't watch the video due to terrible internets, but I gather it's something on transhumanism. The thing one must realize is genetic evolution was made effectively obsolete the second the human brain developed enough to realize that the product of ten minutes of sharpening a stick to a point was a better weapon than claws or teeth that took countless millennia to evolve. Human engineering has done more in the past two hundred years alone than came about naturally in the past two billion years. We stand on the cusp of being able to create machines that can do as much in two minutes. Genetic evolution is obsolete in humans, and any genetic failing will be reparable with medical technology in the near future.

Considering that the talk was apparently on genetically engineering humans to be better, I have to disagree with that too, though. Genetic engineering (on humans) does nothing for the living. Nanotech, and other medical technologies/technologies with medical applications, are what will improve living humans, long before we understand genetics enough to make genetic engineering viable in humans. All it would take to make humans functionally immortal (and perpetually healthy and productive) were a way to either stop tissue decay, or fully repair it on a regular basis, no need for tampering with genetics to get there.

My true concern is are we still evolving?

Has the media and commercialism changed what would once be considered an 'ideal' mate to he extent that we are breeding weak genes over strong?

Eg. Fat, bald, increased genetic chance of heart conditions... over tall, well-muscled, strong bones... heck, even some argue intelligence is genetic.

a) There's apparently some evidence that birth control pills have led to weak, effeminate males being slightly selected for (something to do with the hormone changes they induce mimicking pregnancy, which shifts the emphasis of "who I want to be near" from "strong, viable mate" to "caring supportive family"; of course, I got this off cracked, but they totally linked to news articles or abstracts or something that I didn't bother reading...), but other than that no, not really, or not more than any form of civilization has.

b) Any characteristics that might be selected for will become superfluous long before they can manifest in the population as a whole. We're only one or two generations out from the estimated computing singularity proper, to say nothing of non god-machine technologies like simple labor automation or improved medicine, which are much, much closer.

Fair enough. Got those links so we can have a read? Im genuinely interested.

Well, I guess this idea is *puts on sunglasses* not worth spreading!
YEEEEEAAAAAH!

Bring on genetic engineering - it is the future. Why change planets and environments to suit us when we can change ourselves to suit the environment?

Why condemn future generations to inherit our genetic defects, diseases and poor attributes?

We don't control our evolution nearly as much as we would like to pretend we do.

Who decides what are poor attributes? Who is going to get to decide the demarcation line will be on such thing?

I swear I've heard these arguments before.

They tried it in the '40, but i did not understand all about it, because it was all in german.

Ahtman wrote:Who decides what are poor attributes? Who is going to get to decide the demarcation line will be on such thing?

"Poor attributes" are things such as susceptibility to disease and other health issues, poor eyesight, increased uptake of fats and metabolic issues with processing them out of the body, etc, rather than being a slightly different skin shade

SilverMK2 wrote:

Ahtman wrote:Who decides what are poor attributes? Who is going to get to decide the demarcation line will be on such thing?

"Poor attributes" are things such as susceptibility to disease and other health issues, poor eyesight, increased uptake of fats and metabolic issues with processing them out of the body, etc, rather than being a slightly different skin shade

Would you agree that "three generations of imbeciles are enough"?

biccat wrote:Would you agree that "three generations of imbeciles are enough"?

Well, if there were quite a few of them in each generation I imagine you could use them to fill a ditch or something...

I am not sure where your quote comes from or how to respond to it if I am honest. However, if it were possible to genetically alter embryos (or whatever stage you want to begin alteration) to help raise the baseline intellect and (one would hope) help to lower the incidence of subnormal intelligence occurring.

Eventually I would hope such alteration would come as standard for all families on the NHS (or within whatever insurance policy you have in the US), with whatever the latest innovations in human gene advancement being brought into circulation as and when they occur, available to all.

SilverMK2 wrote:Well, if there were quite a few of them in each generation I imagine you could use them to fill a ditch or something...

I am not sure where your quote comes from or how to respond to it if I am honest.

It's a quote from a U.S. Supreme Court case upholding mandatory sterilization of persons judged to be "unfit," and included the mentally slowed.

While I would have no problem with parents genetically modifying their children, the history of eugenics suggests that it is unlikely that the government won't eventually step in and decide what traits are "acceptable." Especially if you've got a nationalized health system.

a) There's apparently some evidence that birth control pills have led to weak, effeminate males being slightly selected for (something to do with the hormone changes they induce mimicking pregnancy, which shifts the emphasis of "who I want to be near" from "strong, viable mate" to "caring supportive family"; of course, I got this off cracked, but they totally linked to news articles or abstracts or something that I didn't bother reading...), but other than that no, not really, or not more than any form of civilization has.

I slightly doubt that given that almost no-one in Japan uses the pill, but they have come to be plagued with "herbivore" men.

Ah, I see.

Yes, that is a worry and obviously no matter what you are trying to do the government will have some hand in determining what is and what is not acceptable (whether it is genetic engineering, or trying to sell a car). However, government reflects society and can be held to account for what it does (either through elections or more direct actions such as civil demonstration, insurrection and revolt, etc).

However, something that affects everyone in such a fundamental way and involves so many people at so many levels as genetic alteration would be hard for the government to adversely meddle in without societies consent.

Argh argh argh another evolution thread full of misconceptions!
I usually don't bother posting but what the heck, I've got a few minutes.
Evolution is the process by which natural selection increases or decreases the prevalence of certain genes in a population, leading to the gradual change of the traits of a population of organisms over time.

The value we attach to these traits is SUBJECTIVE. Evolution does not "care" if you are smarter, or stronger, or faster. It is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether or not you pass on your genes and they become prevalent in the population or not. That is all. Humans have not "stopped evolving", this is not possible for any population of organisms interacting with the environment. Just because we have gained a measure of control over our environment does not change the fact that selective pressures are still acting on us. Just because we have reduced previously important selective pressures to be practically meaningless in the first world does not mean there are no others which are determining successful reproduction.

Furthermore, "defects" sometimes come with hidden benefits. For example, people with allergies have immune systems well adapted to fighting off particular strains of parasites. People with sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. Should the environment change, the traits which are beneficial also change, and the gene dynamic of a population can shift.

Are we clear?

Da Boss wrote:Are we clear?

We are clear that you have mistaken this for a thread about evolution, rather than genetic modification, yes

They tried this in Germany. Didn't work.

_Tim?

*actually, Hitler, the hero of really nutty eugenics supporters, would have been deemed unfit by those that think you can say who lives and who dies. He had only one ball. AND a Jewish great-grandmother. Ahhh, hypocrisy.

biccat wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:Well, if there were quite a few of them in each generation I imagine you could use them to fill a ditch or something...

I am not sure where your quote comes from or how to respond to it if I am honest.

It's a quote from a U.S. Supreme Court case upholding mandatory sterilization of persons judged to be "unfit," and included the mentally slowed.

While I would have no problem with parents genetically modifying their children, the history of eugenics suggests that it is unlikely that the government won't eventually step in and decide what traits are "acceptable." Especially if you've got a nationalized health system.

You also have to consider the ramifications of lost biodivesity within the population. What is a genetic weakness in one generation, could be a saving grace to another when a new disease comes out. Then there's the problem of cost. What's the social stratification of genetically engineered individuals vs non-engineered.

M_Stress wrote:They tried it in the '40, but i did not understand all about it, because it was all in german.

Exactly.



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SilverMK2 wrote:

Ahtman wrote:Who decides what are poor attributes? Who is going to get to decide the demarcation line will be on such thing?

"Poor attributes" are things such as susceptibility to disease and other health issues, poor eyesight, increased uptake of fats and metabolic issues with processing them out of the body, etc, rather than being a slightly different skin shade

Why do you think we have health issues? We live longer now than ever in history.
Why do you think we have poor eyesight? We live longer now than ever in history.
Why do you think we have metabolic issues? We live longer now than ever in history.

LordofHats wrote:You also have to consider the ramifications of lost biodivesity within the population. What is a genetic weakness in one generation, could be a saving grace to another when a new disease comes out. Then there's the problem of cost. What's the social stratification of genetically engineered individuals vs non-engineered.

Indeed, with the advent of tailored genes it would be increasingly easy to design diseases which attack those artificial genes (ignoring here all natural disadvantages of having an increasingly genetically singular humanity).

However, a point or two to counter this, if I may:

1) Genetics, like all areas of science, will continually evolve (no pun intended) - bring with it new genetic sequences which will differ from previous alterations.
2) People breed - usually whether you want them to or not. Their offspring would be subject to mutations, random genetic swapping etc as per normal. When taken into account with point 1 there will be hybrid offspring within 1 or 2 generations (not to mention they will then possibly undergo further adaptation with the most "up to date" recoding).
3) Humans are already remarkably genetically similar - as within most species the genetic diversity is not as large as you might think.


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Frazzled wrote:We live longer now than ever in history.

Longer life span has very little to do with many of the health problems of those pre 40 years old.

SilverMK2 wrote:
Longer life span has very little to do with many of the health problems of those pre 40 years old.

Historically we didn't have 40 year olds. Everyone was dead by then.

Frazzled wrote:Historically we didn't have 40 year olds. Everyone was dead by then.

True, however, 40 years old is a reasonably healthy age in terms of our built in genetic "death clock".

Eliminating a lot of the killer factors of "ye olde timese" (lack of knowledge about disease being a major one), most people would easily be able to reach the age of 40 with no difficulty. It is only beyond 50, 60 and 70 that the body starts to break down faster than it can repair itself.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Historically we didn't have 40 year olds. Everyone was dead by then.

True, however, 40 years old is a reasonably healthy age in terms of our built in genetic "death clock".

Eliminating a lot of the killer factors of "ye olde timese" (lack of knowledge about disease being a major one), most people would easily be able to reach the age of 40 with no difficulty. It is only beyond 50, 60 and 70 that the body starts to break down faster than it can repair itself.

1. There's still no evidence we're backtracking here.
2. How exactly are you going to "evolve" this?

@Silver: Hah, well, there were some posts at the start that I was responding to. As to genetic modification, I think that it's not circumventing evolution at all, it just alters certain variables.

What will the effect on society be? That's a more interesting question. I could see modification becoming more common in the next century, definitely. Whether that will have any detrimental effects, well I reckon it would just be another thing seperating the rich from the poor, more than likely.

Frazzled wrote:1. There's still no evidence we're backtracking here.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this.

2. How exactly are you going to "evolve" this?

Well, there are a number of studies into how life expectancy is limited by genetic factors. A very simple example would be that each time your genetic code is replicated via cell division an extra section of code is added to the strand. It is thought that this in some way determines just how long someone can live. By altering the genes so that this no longer occurs (possibly by altering the transcriptors so that they don't keep adding code to the strand, or coding the strand itself so that the end sections somehow prohibit the transcriptor from adding extra code), it may be possible to increase life expectancy.

Please note that I am not a geneticist (though I did a number of modules on genetic engineering at university it is not really my field of expertise - mine was all done on engineering applications such as using bacteria to produce fuel, eat oil spills, create medical drugs, etc...) and I am sure there are better examples of how changing how the body functions would increase life expectancy.


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Da Boss wrote:@Silver: Hah, well, there were some posts at the start that I was responding to. As to genetic modification, I think that it's not circumventing evolution at all, it just alters certain variables.

It certainly moves the goal posts. It does not change evolution, it just gives us a new starting point to monitor evolution from. For example, say a single generation of people are engineered to have X gene that is identical through the population. When they breed, the vast majority of their children will have identical copies of X gene as well, and so on and so on. Gradually mutations will occur and creep into the population and the "evolution" of this particular gene will continue.

However, if each generation is altered to have the same genes (say genetic science progresses that far then for whatever reason decides to only ever give the exact same modification to everyone), then evolution will effectively be halted as far as those sets of genes are concerned.

If each generation benefits from advances in medical science and gets different alterations, you get a situation similar to above, however, rather than the genes being the same for all time, you get a steady change in the genetic makeup of the population as new advances are coded into the population artificially.

If there are several different types of alteration active at any one time and altered parents with different alterations decide for whatever reason not to alter their child, such children would have a hybrid genetic code, containing a mixture of 2 different sets of altered genes, as well as the more normal mixture of parental DNA and evolution has taken an interesting step sideways.

What will the effect on society be? That's a more interesting question. I could see modification becoming more common in the next century, definitely. Whether that will have any detrimental effects, well I reckon it would just be another thing seperating the rich from the poor, more than likely.

I would imagine it would be similar to many things such as plastic surgery - originally just to help people who suffered from deformations/etc, it gradually spread to the rich, then trickled down to the middle classes and finally is cheap enough for the vast majority of people to afford.

Alternatively it could eventually be seized upon as the next "arms race" as each nation tries to get the best genetic modification to its population and more or less makes such alteration a part of everyday life.

What I would like to see is something similar to what I suggested above, where agencies such as the NHS give out alterations to people who wish for them as a normal part of the pre-birth healthcare treatment, with advances being worked into the modifications as and when they come about.