Re: Necessity to monitor current and future trends in human evolution
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:54:49 -0500 (EST)
No offense intended, but almost each and every sentence of the message
beginning this thread causes this layman a problem, so let me take it
problem by
problem:
<project.isolation@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:en11jv$1ga2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As technology and ways of storing information has progressed we will in
the next 1000 years witness many trends and phenomena's of evolution.
Much data has been gathered up to now, so there will be no "change" by
virtue of the fact that
there will be much data gathered over the next 1,000 years... provided we
humans find ways to,
and cooperate with one another in, avoiding some of the "hitting the wall"
environmentally
that current trends, when projected, predict.
While all knowledge up till now is based on uncontrolled experiments or
salvaged evidence from the past.
(Gramatical error ignored, and this layman makes more than his own share of
them... but,
looking at what this incomplete sentence implies...) Controlled
experimentation has been
around for centuries. And to say that *ALL* knowledge, to date, is based
upon uncontrolled
experiments is simply wrong. Furthermore, to say that data is "salvaged
from the past," is
rather hazy to me. While it is true that no reliable evidence has been
found to ascertain that
humans (as we know them now) were present during the days of dinosaurs,
archeologists,
together with comparative anatomists, geologists, biochemists ... etc., have
put together
things presently "doable" with *controlled experimentation* with an
abundance of items
of information from what is tantamount to a forensic diary of the worlds
bio-history, to
arrive at much useful data about past and present *natural processes.*
Through
convergences of both this veritable diary, and current controlled
experiments, we can now
discern processes which have gone on, are going on, and shall continue to go
on, for as
long as there is life as we know it.
Our current technology allows us to
store this information and make it available for future researchers.
Scientists have been storing information for quite a long time now. We
still have data
recorded by such individuals as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Careful
observation and
data organization and recording has been going on for longer than that,
even. In fact, the
data observation and recording aspect of "science" is the bulk of the work.
Great
synthesists come along rarely, and pull together large amounts of
accumulated data into
succinct models; and they get a lot of acclaim for that. They could not
draw their giant
leaps of synthesis, however, if not *provided* in the first place with an
abundance of
disparate reliable data to pull together. In short, the process of
accumulating reliable
data is not some new, peculiar invention of today's scholars.
We
are also able to create experimental setups which are much more
favorable for the future researchers to interpret.
As technology has advanced... and to the extent that no metaphysical or
political
leaders have succeeded in *squelching* what it new technology reveals (as
for example,
some religious leaders tried to muzzle what even they could have seen
through a new
telescope, but wanted to keep secret, because it contradicted their teaching
that
all above Earth was "the heavens," and therefore, they felt they had to
insist that all
planetary orbits had to be perfect circles)... the revelations of ever new
and improved
technology has ALWAYS served to provide much more favorable data for
rigorously
thinking synthesists to work with. Thus this, too, is not something novel,
nor something
peculiar to this time in which you and I live.
perfect, and the orbits of the spheres therefore perfect circles... and such
things)
While the former
method is already in progress, very little effort is being made in the
latter method.
Methods cannot be divided into two segments, namely the "former method" and
the
"new modern method." Progress in science -- which has been very much
characterized
BOTH by the overcomings of biases and denials of many, as well as by the
discovery and
synthesis of ever new, in-flowing data -- is in some respects merely the
continuation of
a process (of discovery, of syntheses which coalesce raw discoveries, and of
overcoming
ignorance that tends to otherwise be self-perpetuating). In short, yes,
progress has been
occurring, is now occurring, and shall continue to occur. But where we who
live today
compare ourselves to those who lived in a more naive past shall not be
viewed by
future ages as "special," any more than to pick out from among us some
heros, just as
we pick out an make heros of our Aristotles, Newtons, Einsteins and such.
(And
without the unsung data gatherers, those heroes, like heroes from our time,
would be
at a loss without the work of many who gathered and organized and recorded
much raw
data. It has been, is, and ever shall be... to the extent progress is not
curtailed by unforeseen
circumstances... a team effort.)
The Current Human Condition
In the past human technology was primitive and this ensured some level
of isolation among the settlements.
Everything that has happened, right up to the very second I am writing this
sentence, is "the
past." And by the time you read to the end of this message, if you do, your
reading of it
will be in the past. Nothing in nature exalts or makes special OUR
generation, OUR
geographical location, OUR political, metaphysical, philosophical
orientation, or OUR
accomplishments as being pivotal. None of us can do more than Newton
alluded to, when
he said "...but for the shoulders of giants." We are just one link in a
long chain of human
acquisition of so-called knowledge. And no link is special, but by virtue
that it has more
contributions of giants in the past... near or distant past.
However now technology has
progressed and it is no longer possible to have pockets of isolation
that could lead to speciation.
We, of this here and now nexus in human history, are not the apex of an hour
glass, whereby
the future ego-centrist will look back and view us as being even half so
"important" as he or
she shall -- as you are doing -- view their own age to be the truly
enlightened one, the defining
one, the one at which progress has arrived at a destination that is special.
This means that from now on human
evolution is a mass movement.
It never has NOT been a mass movement.
Re-absorption of mutated entities will
average out the kind of evolution that occurred in the human journey so
far.
I do not follow your meaning here and cannot tell if you merely intend to
wax poetic, or
to launch into metaphysics or reincarnation. Please forgive if this sounds
derogatory. I
merely mean to communicate that you seem to have gotten Scotty to beam you
up here.
The new round of human evolution will be depended on the condition
of the entire population.
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you are absolutely right. I can't guess,
because I don't
follow what this means. Would be interested in further explanation and
reasoning on
whatever is meant by it.
The Promise of Space
The old evolution will however continue in space colonization,
voluntary isolation or disaster which would reduce our technological
superiority.
Once again, I am unable to follow the meaning. If you mean that humans will
find
other planets that are precisely suitable for our survival there, perhaps
so. However,
unless we discover, also, some means of transportation to there, that would
cost
astronomically less than it would with current technology, we are going to
be hard
put to send more than a token number of colonists there, and supply them
with what
they will need to cope with differences there.
If the planet does not have very near the same temperatures, and temperature
variations,
and weather patterns to distribute rain as Earth, it is not likely we can
grow much of
anything the colonists would take along. And, just as humans could not
digest Earth
foods without certain micro-organisms in our guts, the colonists would have
to
introduce some of those micro-organisms, and other species or sub-species of
micro-
organisms required by any food animals taken along. Just to find a planet
that has the
same characteristics of Earth as found at ANY point in its ecological
history would
not be enough. We would have to find one that is at the same POINT in that
ecological
history. (If, for example, we could invent a time machine and send some
humans back
to when Earth's atmosphere had, say, fifty percent of the oxygen titre of
Earth's
current atmosphere, the colonists would be hard pressed to get enough of it,
and also
do all the other things they would have to do to survive. And plants they
would take
along with them would have to be planted in soil with certain
micro-organisms those
plants must live in harmony with; and the soil at the new planet would have
to have
undergone in advance much of the biological, geological and chemical changes
that
Earth soil has taken millions of years to acquire...
Gosh! Presuming all the variables that would be required for human
colonists to
survive -- much less prevail -- increases the statistical liklihood of
finding a compatible
planet to less than one chance in mega-billions. I don't mean to say it
won't happen that
humans will colonize other planets. All I am saying is that the chances of
finding the
Goldilocks planet for us to colonize render your chances of winning 300
million dollars
in a lottery quite encouraging, by comparison. But, perhaps what you have
in mind is
something akin to the Star Trek episode in which a biology-start-bomb was
dropped
on a lifeless planet, to atune all the myriad ecological parameters before
depositing
Spak's (spelling) lifeless body there... which, unexpectedly, came to life
amidst all the
rest of the biology bomb repercussions.
Again... this is not to say something of that nature will not become
possible. However,
if it does, the science enabling THAT will owe little hero worship to
anything WE
might have contributed (other than the shoulders of a handful of our
contemporaries
who add their shoulders to Newton's.
Until space technology develops we need to test the old evolution with
our modern technology.
That seems to be what is happening, all right.
It is important that we test on voluntarily
isolated simulated settlement for this purpose.
If you mean that we should artificially create isolations of species, and
manipulate the
ecological parameters of each... that sounds enormously expensive not only
in money,
but in labor hours, and in Earth-space for all the isolated experiment
settings.
colonization is delayed the impact of human convergence on our
evolution needs to be studied.
Colonozation will be dependent upon far more convergences of genetic and
ecological
variables than we can imagine.
The result of these findings could be
important for future decisions.
Findings significant to science always are important to decisions. Quite
often, however,
they are squelched by political or mataphysical interests which seek, rather
that as Dr.
Einstein did, to try to project himself into "nature's mind," (or God's, as
the case may be)
rather to IMPOSE upon nature's "mind" the perceptions and biases of our own.
The Experiment
We need land for the isolation project that is completely isolated from
the world.
I do not mean to be trite, but land -- for any purpose -- is getting rather
hard to come by
these days, what with not much of it being created, and a great amount of it
being
eroded from coast lines, or flooded with ice from Earth's rapidly thawing
ice caps.
We need voluntary communication isolation.
Hermit families?
The isolation
group should be large even up to a million people would be fine for the
experiment.
They should have access to our current knowledge but any
discovery we made after the project initiates should not be
transmitted.
I think I'm starting to get your picture now, I think: a sort of a mosaic
comprised of a
Swiss Family Robinson, Ted Kazinsky as the father, and a social structure
similar to a
a hippie commune with Captain Nemo as its leader.
Continuous Monitoring
To test the experiment the people outside should not be given
information regarding the isolationist the isolation must be two way.
Not even if they get hold of the recipe for making a nuclear bomb, and
decide that
they are the super race, and the rest of us should be exterminated????
This is necessary for the experiment to succeed.
How do we measure success?
But we can have a
third group of monitors who have information access from both the
groups and monitor data and take important decision that may be
important but cannot be known by either the mainstream or the
isolationist from their restricted knowledge.
What is this continuum, which has "the mainstream" at one end and
"isolationists" at the other? How does THAT compute?
They would be responsible
for deciding if any information exchange should be allowed to prevent
any problems but at the same time ensure complete isolation is ensured
and the project is being run smoothly.
If I have seemed to be stubborn or disrespectful in my comments, please
understand that I truly have read and attempted to follow the
thread-originator's
assertions and reasonings. Again, he may be right. He may be absolutely
right. I don't know, because none of the ideas strikes me as even credible
enough for a far-out class B science fiction flick. For a good science
fiction flick to make expenses, it has to have the capacity to allow at
least
somebody to suspend belief for purposes of escape entertainment.
Star Trek and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea have pretty much
exhausted the ideas proposed by the thread originator. However, this
layman is willing to bow to opinions of others who might see some
genius here that this layman has failed to appreciate.
g
.
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