The End Of Human Evolution - The Case For Digital DNA
It could be said that the pinnacle an organism can evolve to, is to get to a point whereby it invents technology that makes evolution obsolete.
The human race has set itself aside from all the other animals on the planet, by putting its faith largely in technology to further its existence on earth.
Take smallpox for instance, a disease that medical science helped eradicate. Perhaps in a few hundred thousand years we might have developed a natural immunity to it. However in just a few years we overtook evolution and left it in the dust.
So is this it? Is this the death knell sounding for evolution? Are we really just going to throw away 4.5 billion years of R&D?
What Has Evolution Ever Done For Us?
John Cleese in the timeless classic; 'Life Of Brian', famously asked; "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
Of course the comedy came as an endless list of lifestyle improvements was reeled off as Cleese's character get's more and more flustered.
Clearly we could do a similar sketch when we ask what has evolution ever done for us? Clearly everything; we quite literally wouldn't be where we are today without it.
It is not unpopular to believe that most of our evolutionary advantages were garnered millions of years ago and not much has changed since then.
This is largely true, however for examples of 'modern' evolution, look to the Tibetans and other indigenous peoples of the Himalayas.
The locals who live at such high altitudes tend not to get altitude sickness. An affliction that strikes when you ascend a tall mountain, and can cause nausea and at its worst, death.
Altitude sickness, is caused by lack of oxygen. Brought on by the thinning atmosphere and the body's inability to compensate its biology.
People born to families who have lived at high altitude for generations, have been found to have blood vessels in their nostrils, that are 15% larger than people at sea-level.
This mutation is down to the EPAS1 gene, inherited from a not too distant hominid species around 45,000 years ago.
The addition of the EPAS1 gene, makes living at altitude possible, it is a stark reminder to the harsh realities of natural selection; adapt or die.
However as our lives and environments become more stable and change less, so too does our evolution slow down.
Darwin showed us that creatures who have inhabited environments that have remained unchanged for millions of years, do not evolve much.
Whereas creatures who live in environments that are constantly in flux, either adapt to match their circumstances, or die out and become extinct.
The Techno Evolution
Technology has made it such that, there is no one thing on earth, that can wipe out the human race. Of course an asteroid might hit the earth, and if it was big enough it would get us all.
However there is every chance by the time one is coming towards us, we would have worked out a way of avoiding its deadly embrace.
We can definitely give three cheers to technology for putting us where we are today. I'm not just talking about modern inventions either, even decisions to stop living in trees and caves, and build shelter was a major one.
Living in trees and caves leaves you susceptible to danger if the trees for some reason die out, and predators decide to inhabit the same caves as you.
So along with having to cope with the slow, grinding progress of evolution. We are slowing our own evolution even further.
So is this it; is this the end for biological evolution?
Exploring The Void
Even though we often speak of evolution as if it has a conscious goal, it evidently does not. Their is no intelligence or driving force behind evolution.
If there were, then things like sickle cell, would not exist. A blood cell that is shaped like a farmer's sickle, cannot take on the malaria virus, however that also renders it inefficient, and dangerous to the carrier.
If you boil life down to its simplest terms, then our bodies, brains, and internal organs can be thought of as hardware and our DNA is the software.
DNA is wonderful in that it has lots of fixed rules within it, like what colour your eyes or hair were going to be at birth. However unlike computer software, how DNA manifests itself is down to environment.
So for instance a child who lifts too heavy weights when she is growing up, will not live up to the full height potential within her DNA.
Also we have to consider the huge elephant in the room; hereditary disease. Because DNA and evolution have no intelligence driving them, things that are potentially harmful for the organism, get passed on.
However it is not always so black and white, some times your genes tell you you will get a certain disease by a certain age. Sometimes they simply indicate the percentage chance of you succumbing to a particular ailment.
This is the area where science can help us. Genomics researcher, Jun Wang, founder of iCarbonX, is working on digitising human DNA and then modelling it within a computer.
In short, this means that you will be able to have a digital you, living out a multitude of lives and telling you in advance what you should be doing and/or avoiding, in order to prolong your life.
So at first our digital evolution will be a passive one, more a guide than a driver. However that will only be at the beginning.
Our digital evolution has started, Pandora's box is open, and nothing is going to shut it again. Will we cease to evolve 'naturally'? Maybe, but if we do, it is only because we have completely mastered our environment.
This way we can edit out all the bad, and keep all the good that evolution has done for us.
WHAT DO YOU THINK; WILL TECHNOLOGY HELP US EVOLVE FAR BEYOND WHAT WE ARE TODAY? OR ARE WE GOING DOWN A DARK ROAD MESSING WITH NATURE? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Hello @cryptogee
Interesting piece. I honestly technology would eventually lead to total destruction of this world (God forbid), yet is a likely reality. Take for instance, the rate countries are arming themselves with nuclear bombs. What's is happening in North Korea is a case study. I really fear for the future.
@eurogee
I've seen the future; and it works :-)
Cryptogee
What is R&D? You made a valid point about small pox. Wonder how it will be to eradicate all diseases and also find a cure for aging. I set that one aside because its debateable to call aging a disease rather than a natural course of life's cycle. I would say at the rate we are aging it is a disease due to many variables. I believe humans have the innate ability to live centuries. The computer DNA can definitely help if created by a knowledgeable scientist. And we all know technology gets better and better.
Hi @blockgators,
Thanks for your comments and questions, I shall try and answer them for you.
R&D stands for research and development.
Digital DNA will be able to eradicate all diseases simply because as computing becomes more powerful, we will identify more and more genes responsible for diseases, that we either inherit from our parents/grandparents, and also ones that we are susceptible for.
In the future, we will identify all of these genes, and edit them out of our genome.
Ageing is a tricky one, this is because we know how to arrest the ageing of a cell, however we don't know how to do this without creating super cancerous cells. I have no doubt we'll figure it out. In the meantime, just having super healthy bodies will enable us to live longer.
We do not have the inate ability to live for centuries, because of a thing in our cells called Telomerase. This protein sits on the end of each strand of DNA and allows the cell to replicate.
As we get older the telomerase gets shorter and shorter, when this happens cell replication is affected. Like I mentioned above, we have actually found a way of halting the decline of telomerase, however that just created cancerous cells.
Personally I believe that we need to find a way to allow it to shorten, and then grow back, so that we age, and then get younger in cycles.
By the way, I may have implied it by accident, but I too do not see ageing as a disease; merely an obstacle to overcome :-)
Cg
When Dolly the sheep was cloned back in the 90s, she had telomeres that were longer than a newborn, because of the method used to clone her.
In lab testing on the cells of mice, producing longer telomeres using similar methods to Dolly, produced super cancerous cells, ergo it is not seen as a viable anti-ageing method.
Cg
We lack comprehensive understanding of the process, as should be expected. Much research is ongoing that will undoubtedly suddenly transform that present certainty that it's never gonna work into unwarranted confidence that it's trivial to achieve, and exactly the solution to the problem.
Frankly, I expect there are myriad means of preventing, reversing, and obviating aging, and even death itself. Until we have a bit of room to roam in, they are probably unwise to effect, and absent comprehension of currently opaque sociohistory and ecosystemic interoperability, it's definitely foolish.
Digitized into the internet as some people say.
Yup indeed!
Cg
ongoing evolution hopefully always make human dont forget from where they come..
We won't forget where we come from, as we keep an eye on where we're going :-)
Cg
Thank for information from your story..
What information in particular did you find most useful?
Cg
how about our digital capabilities can prolong life and evolve
great post
Thanks
Cg
Natural human evolution via natural selection has indeed stopped. Society and technology has allowed humans to pro create with defects that would have in the past preveted them from doing so. It has also allowed us to be born with defects that would have killed us, these defects are now past on through generations rather than stopping at death. Survival of the fittest and advantagous random mutations no longer apply to the human race.
You just haven't been told, nor have conceived yourself, of ways in which 'fitness' is currently measured, evolutionarily. People that are less able to conform to society are less able to breed today, as they end up dead, gay, or in jail, where opportunities to breed are limited.
The evolutionary pressures still exist, and evolution is yet ongoing, only the rules have changed.
Also, temporary accumulations of recessives doesn't imply permanence. Things are rosy now, but after the EMP, when healthy, young people will have to scrabble to survive, those disabled by recessive genetic diseases will suddenly not survive in droves, and evolution will be working again, just like in the bad old days.
Don't count your chickens until the fat lady burns the bridge you need to cross... or something like that.
I also agree in the case of the Tibetans. I read an article recently and it is stated there that Tibetans also evolved with some immunity towards UV rays. There are also speculations that the Tibetans might be one of the few races to survive the next ice age. Your post is really interesting. Thank you very much for sharing thoughts as I really learned something from it. :D
Yes they are fascinating, as are any peoples who live in such extreme conditions. Thank you for your comments :-)
Cg
I expect that in the long run, after we have made many mistakes, this will be useful. First we're going to base our assessment of how DNA and epigenetics works on our woefully incomplete information, and then apply it to some offspring, that will prolly die, horribly.
Hopefully we'll do this to puppies, or kittehs, first, rather than actual people.
Quite recently scientists claimed that DNA was the only means of passing down traits. Epigenetics has come along, now, and made liars of them. Not so long ago, scientists claimed that 90% of our DNA was 'junk' that coded for nothing. Many still maintain this is so.
I don't want such short-sighted and hubristic people mucking about in the genepool.
We've got a long way to go before we can claim 'War is Over' regarding evolution. We presently have no real understanding of what the mind even is, or how it is created. Plenty of theories, and claimants, many contradictory, and a great deal of our behaviour is heritable, so messing with DNA will mess with minds, and it is our minds that make us human, not our fingernails, or other body parts.
It'll be a while, but this will prove useful, once we are schooled about hubris a few dozen (more) times.
Hmm, depends how you classify "quite recently". . . I think perhaps you have heard of it quite recently. Darwin in his tome; "The Descent of Man" talks about sexual selection over natural selection; which arguably is the first mention of epigenetics some 200 years ago.
Then around the 1940s studies into epigenetics continued once we had a bigger understanding of DNA.
As far as junk DNA is concerned they are talking specifically about DNA that is non-protein coding, or DNA that leads to RNA molecules that again are non-protein coding.
The process for working out DNA is phenomenally complex and requires vast amounts of computing power, so we will continue to make massive strides in those areas as our tech gets better.
Just because we don't know, or aren't sure of something now, does not mean that will always be the case. At one point we didn't know how to make flying machines, yet around 2 million years into human history, we did it, and now we have computers to help us.
Not so; you should read some books by VS Ramachnadran, in particular; "The Tell Tale Brain."
It's the whole kit and caboodle, if you were to do a genetic analysis of a chimp's fingernail and a human's, you would be able to tell the difference instantly.
Ultimately I'm a little more optimistic than yourself, but let's see what happens after about 2022 . . .
Cg
The problem isn't that we don't know, or that we think we may know, but that we are sure we know, when we don't. Science is essentially a history of wrong ideas, that were later disproved, and all too often hubris has produced misfortune intolerable suffering.
I do not disparage science even a mite. Rather the failure to consider our humble lack of capacity to understand, and to proceed with ill considered and devastating policies as a result of our foolish hubris.
There remain realms unconceived of by man that moderate every process we reckon we have thoroughly understood, and the perennial discovery of harm we do our posterity, and the examples of such harm span every industry, social program, and science, demonstrates amply how dangerous hubris is.
The very expectation that we might presently grasp the intricacies of what our minds are and how they operate may well be the penultimate example we could consider, as the implementation of social control programs by folks that reckon they know how it all works and intend to 'fix' society could well be the very end of humanity.
The words of Plato should be carved into the flesh of every demogogue and scientist: "I know one thing, that I know nothing.", so that the proud flesh might remind them of their own fallibility, and the awful human costs that have resulted from hubris throughout history.
First fun answer:
90% of the European population can drink milk because of domestication of caws 8000 years ago.
90% of the population of some Asian countries can’t because they did not have the tradition of using caws for food and milk.
So give us another 10 000 years and we will adapt to fast food and junk food and it will be no longer unhealthy :)
Now real answer:
Yes if we survive long enough there will be many human subspecies. Terraforming planet like Мars will be extremely slow (100 000 years) and hard. It will be faster to change the population (high resistance to UV light and low pressure).
The permanent population of space stations in the ring belt will benefit from resistance to low gravity and so on…
There is no question that technology HAS already helped us and can continue to help us, potentially even much more.
It is also very obvious that humanity is suffering in MANY ways because of disconnect with nature and this will likely increase in danger by the ways humans are currently living.
It is also possible that the greatest or most powerful technology that humans develop while possibly beneficial could also destroy humanity.....there sure are PLENTY of sci-fi movies about that....
What you say is very true; however I am (in case you hadn't noticed!) a techno-optimist. I believe that the dark side of tech will remain for the most part, in the movies. Whilst it will provide an answer for us all . .
For instance, it is technology that will finally free us from the bonds of fossil fuel, and it is through technology we will be able to clear up the mess we've created thus far.
I guess it's about willing, and that's where some of my optimism falls down. I watched a rather depressing documentary once about alternative fuel. There was this guy in Scotland in the '70s who came up with a design for an under sea turbine that sat in the bay near where he lived.
The big polluters were so worried, that not only did they lobby UK government. They all got together and ran a smear campaign on the tech, saying that it was somehow more dangerous than oil, gas and nuclear energy put together!
The public was turned against it, and 40 years later, he was asked to restart his research. He was lamenting over the fact that he had lost four decades of R&D because of greed and a lack of willing.
Apathy will be our greatest danger . .
Cg
Yes I totally agree.
The problem is NOT technology is is humanity/humans/human condition.
Yet if humans have the tech then they can only use it the way humans do....
I also am a big fan of tech yet it can only be used as its used and it can be use for "good" or for "evil" so far human have proven consistently to use it for "evil"
We have had the tech to be free of fossil fuels for quite some time...yet its just a "conspiracy theory"
hahahhahahahahhahahhahahahahaha