Peak Evolution - Benefits Culture, Shrinking Brains, Are Human's De-Evolving?
Politics / Science Aug 05, 2013 - 05:06 AM GMTBy: Nadeem_Walayat
The spark for insights into arriving at final trend conclusions for financial markets and economic indicators can originate far removed from the technical studies of markets i.e. as a consequence of focusing on the key mega-trends, and none is more mega than that for the evolutionary trend of the human species and the probable direction that it is likely to trend towards, which is the focus of this article.
Even today, most human's defer humanities origins to a creator as this offers the promise of life after death, in which respect the creation of man based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve as created by God in his own image in the Garden of Eden of some 6000 years ago does not match the fossil and genetic record that primarily evidences a process of evolution by means of natural selection over some 6 million years, as our distant ancestor diverged from other Great Apes, evolving into the Homo Erectus hominids of some 1.8 million years ago that gave rise to many subsequent hominids, including brown african Homo Sapiens Sapiens (HSS), which emerged with a small population of less than 5,000 by 200,000 years ago in the rift valley of East Africa as indicated by Mitochondrial DNA (passed down through mothers without recombination, differing only due to mutations) as the sub species that all modern humans genes can be traced back to. Following which HSS for the next 100,000 years attempted many migrations across sub-saharan Africa that proved successful by between 140,000 and 110,000 years ago. Whilst the migration attempts to leave sub-saharan Africa only proved successful by a small population dating back to approx 75,000 years, which again is confirmed by the DNA of all human's outside of Africa sharing the same Mitochondrial DNA that dates back to this period, the importance of which being that humans evolved from a single region of East Africa and not multi-regionally from Homo Erectus archaic humans that had spread throughout the world long before HSS emerged as many chinese anthropologists still promote.
Human origins and migration's as indicated by Mitochondrial macro-haplogroups L0, L1, and L5
As HSS hunter gathers slowly spread over tens of thousands of years to replace the earlier mass migration's of hominid species populations both through competition (unable to adapt to the competition from HSS) and highly probably having been hunted and eaten as high calorie foods. Homo Erectus, that itself evolved from an earlier Homo Habilis that it also co-existed with for some time, giving rise to many hominids during its relatively long time-line (-2,000ka to -50ka), such as Neanderthals (-250ka to -20ka), Heidelbergensis (-700ka to -50ka) from which Homo Sapiens (archaic humans) evolved, and many others as isolated populations of Homo Erectus throughout Africa, Europe and Asia continued to evolve in response to differing environmental influences. Effectively by 20,000 years ago or 4 times the length of recorded human history, environmental changes and modern man had by then out competed or out survived the extinction of all other archaic human species such as Neanderthals as well as other Homo Sapiens sub species such as Cro-Magnon Man and Homo Sapiens Idaltu.
Homo Habilis (Handy Man) approx 2.5 to 1 million years - First to use tools, gave rise to and co-existed with Homo Erectus, in many ways was more inquisitive than many modern humans have let themselves become today.
Homo Sapiens populations continued to evolve during its 200,000 history as marked by the first successful migration out of Africa of a few hundred HSS some 70,000 years, following which these isolated populations would embark upon their own evolutionary paths over the subsequent tens of thousands of years as had earlier Homo Erectus populations as a consequence primarily of adaptation by means of natural selection (and lesser influences such as genetic drift and mutation) of advantageous traits to environmental differences being passed down to subsequent generations that results in the world we see today where modern humans of different regions have evolved into DIFFERENT living races that exhibit different characteristics in appearance such as facial features, skin tone, hair type, as well as differing in biological adaptations such as HSS living in the Himalayas for tens of thousands of years having adapted to the low oxygen environment, or more recently when human's started to switch from hunter gathers to farming which gave selective advantage to those humans who could best digest new foods such as animal milk beyond childhood. Which also illustrates the tendency for separate populations to undergo similar adaptations despite not sharing their genes i.e. to become lactose tolerant during the past 10,000 years.
In totality the number of adaptations between modern human populations has been put at more than 250, so differences between modern human populations is not entirely just skin deep of the past 100,000 years, as that is the approx time span for the maximum genetic difference or distance between all humans, and less than 40,000 years for all humans outside of Africa (divergence point between European and Asian populations), still these adaptations are not enough to constitute the emergence of different human species which would require separation by several hundreds of thousands of years as was the experience of man as recently as 50,000 years ago when the world was populated by many hominid species INCLUDING their progenitor homo-erectus.
Therefore during the era of recorded human history of the past 5,000 years there had been no evidence of other human species ether living or dead other than our own until relatively recent fossil discoveries, so it is not so surprising that mankind's religions painted a picture of man being different to all other creatures on earth because all other species of human had become extinct long before the world's major religions were compiled (following the invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians) at which time there was clearly a huge gap between modern Apes and modern man. Thus it was natural to assume man was created separately to all other creatures, whereas had other human species survived then we would not have had to wait until Darwin to understand the continuum of a series of evolutionary steps along the journey towards becoming human.
Though perhaps it was the fact that all other humans had become extinct by 20,000 years ago that allowed HSS to start to evolve towards great evolutionary step of developing a culture for settlement and farming as HSS had not done so for the preceding 180,000 years due to the fact that HSS would encounter many other distinctly different species of humans.
The key advantage of HSS over other hominids is that of having significantly larger brains i.e. Homo Erectus brain's have been estimated as being of 1/3rd less volume, which means that whilst exhibiting many of the characteristics we see in HSS such as tool making, use of fire, language, and being socially active hunter gathers, and with the benefit of certain advantages over HSS as evidenced by the fossil record such as being taller, stronger, and faster runners, against which HSS were able to out think, plan and manoeuvre Homo Erectus actions so that they were out competed into extinction, as took place with Neanderthals of which many modern european's share genes with i.e. implies mating was possible with Neandetheral's despite HSS common ancestor being more than 250,000 years distant.
The consensus view is that a larger brain is accompanied by greater intelligence, the advantage of which far out weighed the physical disadvantages that HSS had compared with other humans such as Neanderthal and Homo Erectus which tended to be far more robust, physically stronger.
Halting the Process of Natural Selection - Are Human's Now De-Evolving?
As illustrated above, humans arrived into existence as a consequence of the process of evolution by means of natural selection where those within a population of hominids that were best adapted to survive in response to a changing environment were able to reproduce and thus able to pass their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers onto the next generation's whilst those less able to survive would see their populations die out and thus the process of natural selection coupled and genetic drift, mutation, has led to the transformation of an Ape of 6 million years ago into today's modern humans.
However humanity over the past 10,000 years has began gradually eroding the impact of the process of natural selection as HSS changed its behaviour from that of hunter gathers to settled farmers which means many more offspring would survive into adulthood to reproduce so less selection takes place resulting in increasing populations. This process for the erosion of natural selection has greatly intensified over the past 100 years the consequences of which can be seen in the population explosion as for the process of natural selection to occur, then usually only the strongest, healthiest most disease resistant offspring's should survive into adulthood to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation, i.e. barely 300 hundred years ago only 1 in 3 babies would survive to adulthood, instead today 99% of babies survive into adulthood to reproduce, regardless of their health, so that effectively NO natural selection is taking place.
No Such Thing as De-Evolution?
Many may argue that there is no such thing as de-evolution because evolution is an ongoing process of adaptation in response to environmental changes . However, the point I am making is that evolution by means of natural selection for humans had already been slowing for many thousands of years as a greater percentage of humans successfully passed their genes onto the next generation, which has greatly accelerated with the advent of modern science, and its accelerating technological and medical advancements, and then the welfare states of the past 50 years have not only effectively brought natural selection to a halt but in fact put natural selection into reverse gear i.e. de-evolution, as in countries such as Britain we find that the least productive members of society tend to have many offspring, 4,5,6 or more children, whilst the most productive tend to have 2,1 or even none. This is natural selection in REVERSE, as the population of the least successful genes is far out reproducing that of the most successful genes which equates to evolution by means of natural selection in REVERSE - DE-EVOLUTION! This has only ever taken place outside of NATURE, by means of human intervention. However, I do recognise that De-evolution can only be a temporary state, for it is inherently unstable for any species to exist in i.e. to have NO other human species AND to be De-evolving as a consequence of the suspension of natural selection.
So, yes whilst evolution is an ongoing process, however putting natural selection into reverse also means evolution has been put into reverse, so that we are De-Evolving into a population of humans less adapted to survival than that which preceded us, on average getting weaker, more susceptible to disease, more obese, less mentally capable.
Welfare States Benefits Culture Means Survival of the Weakest!
If you don't use it you lose it! Therefore today's far easier more leisurely life styles as compared to our near 200,000 year existence as hunter gathers suggests that humans may be de-evolving both in terms of brain size and physical capabilities as human species appears to be diverging into Homo Sapiens Lazy-Fatticus. People today generally work less harder for food, than we did in the past as we are cushioned by welfare states and the benefits cultures which increasingly a greater percentage of the population comes to rely upon for survival in totality enabling passing on such traits to future generations, this is by design as politicians seek to buy the electorate with bribes (debt money).
As an example under the last Labour government, the benefits culture had gone completely out of control where people were rewarded for NOT working. The benefits culture where the aim exists to maximise benefits received by permanently non working parents by means of increased number of children who themselves will go on to perpetuate the self same behaviour of their parents and grand parents has dire implications for Britains future as the money for nothing generational benefits class that has no inclination for work has continued to grow far beyond the rate of the working and middle classes, therefore has lead towards an escalating unproductive tax on the UK economy. As the number of children born into the working and middle class averages less than 2, whilst the number born into the benefits class numbers more than 4, which given the fact that there is little incentive to educate will eventually lead to the dumbing down of society and a drain on future productivity.
Despite 10 Years of debt fuelled Economic Boom into the End of 2007 the Benefits Class had continued to grow relentlessly and now totals more than 8 million of those of working age against the working population of 28 million (29%!) as the Labour government had succeeded in creating a dumbed down voter pool that they can march to the voting booths at each election, however it has sown the seeds for the further destruction of civil society both in terms of monetary costs and soaring crime rates as we have seen the consequences of in numerous news reports of feral youth roaming the streets intent on crime and vandalism as those on benefits have children that they have no real intentions of raising into productive members of society.
I have touched on the economic consequences Britains' benefits culture many times over the years and is illustrated by the below graph of what Labour did during its 10 years of social engineering (22 Apr 2010 - Real U.K. Unemployment is 5.5 million, the Jobless Economic Recovery?).
During the Conservative boom cycle, real unemployment fell from the 1983 crisis high. However the same did not take place following the early 1990's recession where real unemployment failed to not only fall but steadily rose under Labours boom years as the benefits culture took hold and hundreds of thousands of foreign workers performed the jobs that unemployed Britain's were not prepared to do as they were far more comfortable living off the tax payer in Labours benefits culture.
Whilst not all of the 8.16 million economically inactive should be seeking work, however the figure does imply that at least 3 million of the 8 million form the core of the the benefits culture.
Therefore the 3 million that choose not to work but instead prefer to rely on tax payer funded benefits added to the official 2.5 million unemployed results in a total UK unemployment count of 5.5 million. Which is more in line with the recession experience of other similarly in-debted and structured European countries such as Spain that has an unemployment rate of 19%.
The bottom line is the benefits culture neither benefits the current nor future generations as it effectively results in the dumbing down of the next generation by passing on genetic traits for greater obesity, less physically and mental activity. Similarly it results in an dumbing down of society economically and socially as fewer workers support an ever expanding population of economically inactive the consequences for society will be seen long before this makes itself themselves manifest biologically in that of turning countries such as Britain into third world nations, which implies a far worse fate for today's third world nation's who's ongoing population explosions suggest a drift towards societal collapse.
Are Modern Man's Brain's Shrinking ?
It is highly probable that in reaction to safe environmentally sheltered lives (no predators, ample food for little or no work) that the human brain is in fact shrinking, as indicated by a study by Super Scholar excerpted below below that makes a convincing case for our brains having started to shrink in terms of cranial capacity 10,000 years ago that coincides with hunter gathering giving way to farming and settlement.
For the past 800,000 years, brain size has increased at a rate of about 7cc every 10,000 years. But in the past 10,000 years, brain size has decreased by 150cc. That’s over 200,000 years of brain growth lost in just 10,000 years.
So What’s the Big Idea?
Climate
Around 800,000 years ago the earth started experiencing climate fluctuation which coincided with fast brain growth. Cold weather is survived by bigger bodies and therefore bigger brains. Warming trends in the past 20,000 years have favored smaller bodies and therefore smaller brains.
Nutrition
The advent of agriculture led to unhealthy grain-heavy diets (lacking protein and vitamins). Body sizes and brain sizes responded. Those with more energy hungry grey matter in their heads would die off, lacking nutrition.
Social Complexity
As complex societies emerged, those with smaller brains could survive with the help of others. A higher survival rate allowed smaller brains to populate the gene pool. Increased population density leads to increased division of labor. When population is sparse, brains grow because you need to know more to survive. With the division of labor you do not have to know as much. Mistakes in judgment are less likely to be fatal in more supportive societies.
Efficiency
The brain constitutes 2% of the human body, but it uses 20% of the body’s resources. The larger the brain, the more fuel it takes to formulate thoughts. As gene pools grow, the most efficient populations excel.
Domestication
As violence and aggression is bred out of domesticated animals, they lost brain mass. Animals that remain juvenile longer are easier to domesticate (like humans). Bonobos have brains 20% smaller than chimps. They act like juvenile Chimpanzees, and consequently function as domesticated chimps.
Common characteristics of domesticated animals include:
• Smaller teeth
• Flatter faces
• More striking range of coloration and hair types
For the complete research see - http://www.superscholar.org/shrinking-brain/
Possible flaws with the Study:
1. Advances in technology mean that today's humans have the potential to be far more productive than they were at any time in the past and exponentially so when compared to the productivity of average humans 10,000 years ago.
2. Whilst average human brain size may have become approx 10% smaller than 10,000 years ago, however, today there are 1,000 times as many humans alive and thus brain size is not uniform i.e. today there are far more people alive with larger brains than all of the humans alive 10,000 years ago.
3. And most importantly, the study measure's brain volume and NOT complexity of the grey matter, i.e. fossil record is unable to reveal brain complexity, thereof re today;s smaller on average brains could be more complex than that of 10,000 years ago by virtue of far greater and different stimulus than that which hunter gathers were subjected to such as intensive education, furthermore hunter gathering drivers in day to day survival have greatly diminished for the mass of humanity today, for we just don't need to go out on daily dawn till dusk hunts for wilder beast, which has been replaced by the weekly 1-2 hour supermarket shops.
The Future for Human Species Evolution
Humanity is primed both environmentally and culturally for explosive change in the number of different species that are likely to emerge over the next several thousand years than that which humans have ever experienced during the past 200,000 years, as today humanity is infinitely more widely dispersed than Homo Erectus ever was that gave rise to a myriad of different human species over the past 1.8 million years and so modern humans are likely to give rise to many new species at an accelerated pace for reasons stated below:
1. Large population size - Today's huge population of over 7 billion humans and still increasing is about one thousand times greater than that which had numbered at any time for 99% of human history. This large population has the potential to produce much variation due to mutations and regional diverging adaptations.
2. Divergence Between Productive and Unproductive Humans - As natural selection has temporarily come to a halt as a consequence of the benefits culture welfare states, resulting in 99% of all adult humans able to reproduce and successfully pass their genes on than would be the case under natural selection, so we are likely to see divergence in the characteristic traits of productive and unproductive humans who are supported by the state to reproduce in unlimited number, hence the ongoing population explosion.
The natural order of survival of the fittest has been turned on its head, where today the more stupid and dumb people are then the more offspring they are likely to have that survive into adulthood to continue the cycle, where many start even before leaving school, and then keep churning out children without any consequences as they seek to maximise state benefits and housing, expecting the state to step in to support them and their children's every needs, whilst the most productive, intelligent humans tend to maximise their productive capacity by delaying having children later and later in life and thus have fewer offspring which results in both a degradation of the general gene pool each year as the average intelligence of humanity is falling and a splintering of the populations between the classes.
This is one of the reasons why many western nations whist having experienced huge technological advancements, are instead immersed in economic depressions without end as a consequence of out of control welfare spending and public sectors in support of an ever expanding number of unproductive persons, which is heading towards a world in the not too distant future that will be populated by billions of dumb fat lazy people reliant on someone else to feed, cloth and house them from cradle to grave.
In evolutionary terms, the productive humans will tend to become leaner, taller, fitter, and ever more productive in terms of output. Whilst the unproductive human population will continue to become more obese, and physically and mentally less capable of productive activity, with shorter life spans. As time progresses there will be less exchange of genes between these emerging populations within all benefits culture nations and thus eventually result in the emergence of separate species.
3. Changing Human Physiology
By some 200,000 years ago Humans emerged as tall lean running machines, as adaptations towards hunting and capturing high calorie foods to feed their big brains. Genetically the closest living humans to HSS of some 100,000 years ago (from which all modern humans are descended) are the bushmen of East and South Africa (current population 90k), as their Mitochondrial DNA shows evidence that they carry high frequencies of the earliest haplogroup branches in the human mitochondrial DNA tree. The most divergent (oldest) mitochondrial haplogroup, L0d, has been identified at its highest frequencies in the southern African San groups. Most of the bushmen remained as hunter gathers until quite recently having been forced to settle down by governments from the 1960's onwards.
A San Bushman of Namibia by Ian Beatty.
The world of modern man of the past 100 years has increasingly been one of trending towards that of a sedentary life style of excess calories and in-action so human physiology is changing towards that of becoming far more obese and less mobile and heavily reliant on technology to survive having lost much of the survival skills of the past 200,000 years that were honed on the savanna's of the rift valley. Therefore at some future point in time after a post civilisation extinction of modern man as we know the species today, then the bush men of East Africa may once more be called upon to migrate out of Africa and repopulate the world with Homo Sapiens Sapiens San as being the only time tested sustainable version of human.
Alternatively natural selection will seek to resolve solutions towards the obesity crisis as a new human sub species that is adapted towards being fat and inactive emerges from the obese population groups.
4. Technology Resulting in Loss of Brain Power - Humans are increasingly relying on machines to do the thinking for them, many of our day to day tasks have become black box push button exercises where most people have little comprehension of what goes on inside the box. This is resulting in the loss of intellectual ability as humans lose knowledge and experience of using their brains in terms of day to day survival as the world demanded barely until 100 years ago. For instance if electricity were turned off tomorrow, then within a month billions would be dead! Which illustrates that rather than modern man being robust is in actual reality very fragile in terms of its ability to survive.
5. Advances in Medicine allow those with defective genes to reproduce when they would not be able to do so as a consequence of natural selection, this has the effect of passing on the defective genes to future generations when they should have died out, and thus this continues to corrupt the general gene pool and result's in not only increasing occurrences of genetic disorders but further mutations in future generations.
6. New Religion's Revamping of the Creation Myths
Many of today's major religions creation myths hark back to the middle east centred around Palestine as to the origins of humanity some 6,000 years ago (Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden), but the truth is that they are not only off by several thousand miles but also by at least 194,000 years.
However one thing that religions are very good at is in re-inventing themselves, as we see in that all modern religions which are in large part a re-invention of the Egyptian book of the dead myth, in addition to the understanding of the world at their respective times of compilation. Thus we will continue to see religions re-interpret vague phraseology so that emerging human origins is said AFTER the FACT to match pre-existing ancient scripture, and thus we are likely to see the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden migrate several thousand miles southward and tens of thousands of years further in to the past.
Just as many who are controlled by their god gene's can re-invent scripture to conclude that the Big Bang origins of the Universe is alluded to by scripture, despite the fact that at the point of compilation of texts there was no concept of the sun's actual size, let alone galaxies as the time line for creation of 6,000 years can only match that of 14 billion years if scripture is corrupted to the nth degree to make it fit, that is what religions do. So no matter how conflicting emerging evidence is, religions will ALWAYS re-interpret themselves to imply that ancient religious scripture born of minds that had no real concept of the physical world as science interprets it today and hence everything is painted in terms of that which can be seen with ancient eyes, such as the Sun and the Moon appearing to be of the same size in the sky and so they were, and that they were always perceived as lanterns to act as a sign for the coming of night and day, rather than the Sun being actually perceived as an object that could generate heat and light that could light up the whole world which has always perceived as being at the centre around which all things including the Sun revolved.
Therefore as evidence for human origins continues to emerge, religions will act to re-order the meaning of their creation myths by relocating human creation to be centred around the sub-saharan rift valley of East Africa. Therefore as a head start for those who are religiously inclined (active god genes) , with a deep inbred desire to worship the past, would be best advised to redirect prayers towards structures of the sub-saharan rift valley of East Africa, from where stories can be re-invented as being the original region of Adam and Eve and their descendants to have inhabited, who were subsequently ordered by God to migrate out of Africa some 75,000 years ago, despite the fact that was never the first nor only human population as illustrated earlier by the Mitochondrial DNA evidence.
Nevertheless, I can imagine in the too distant future for many 'holy places' to emerge in the South East African region where new temples of worship will be erected in honour of the revamped creation myths, especially around any signs of ancient habitation, around bones and where other artifacts are found, just as that which the Major religions created such locations in the middle east. Thus, I am sure Sub-saharan East Africa will eventually emerge as focal point for pilgrimage for both existing religions as they morph towards and many new religions coalesce towards that are conjured into existence by the likes of future L Ron Hubbard wannabe's, in reaction to emerging scientific evidence for actual human origins.
7. Designer Babies - The Elite's Genetic Advantage- The elite will continue to seek comparative advantage against one another, and genetic engineering offers them an opportunity to go far beyond that which the likes of buying the best schooling has thus far achieved by engineering advantageous characteristics in their off springs.
Already babies can be designed by sex, eye and hair colour. With many more traits to be added over the coming years such as height, and the most desired that for an increase in intelligence, children who on reaching adulthood will then go on to seek prospective partners with optimum genetic characteristics, whose offspring will further be enhanced by the latest genetic technology which will result within a relatively short space of time in the emergence of several separate elitist human species that will be far more capable in ability to rule over ordinary humans.
8. Genetic Slavery - Today's slavery in the west takes the form of controlling most of the population by means of debt and wage slavery. In the future slavery will be based on what is written in our genes. What you can become in your life will be limited by what is contained within your genetic code, in which respect most humans will be resigned to remain as low pay wage slaves as a consequence of an analysis of their DNA as they will be deemed to be less worthy of long-term investment in terms of education and professional development by profit motivated corporations. The separation on the basis of genetic codes can only intensify as the cost for genetic engineering falls so will many parents seek to enhance their children with a view to better being able to compete against a growing population of genetically altered humans that will have basically made ordinary humans obsolete, a genetic slave under class.
9. Military Genetic Arms Race - The military is nearly always first to make use of new technologies the truth of which we only tend to discover many decades after the event. Thus the world's militaries will already be seeking ways of using genetic engineering towards military advantage that will amount to a new genetic arms race between nations that will ultimately result in new species.
Therefore, Humanity looks set to experience an the emergence of many multiple species of humans, where in the far distant future (if humanity survives), then people will not be able to imagine a world where there only existed one species of human.
Dangers to Humanity As a Consequence of Halting Natural Selection
Whilst humans have suspended natural selection as a consequence of technological advancements that has resulted in a large population of 7.2 billion humans, as many diseases that would have prevented humans from reaching adulthood have been cured or are under control. However natural selection is constantly taking place at an exponentially faster pace with virus's from where there is always an ever present threat for a series of virulent virus's to emerge that wipe out a large chunk of the human population that is unable to survive the virus's onslaught, such as that which took place during the 14th century when the Black Death wiped out about nearly 2/3rd's Europe's population, and reducing the entire world's human population by 1/3rd.
Therefore humans may think themselves of having halted natural selection, but nature has a way of re-exerting the process of natural selection in sometimes a violent and deadly manner, for which we only need to look for signs for in the Avian flu out breaks that sow the seeds for future pandemics that has mortality rate of 33%, similar to that of the black death.
In regard to the probability for a future pandemic, most scientists state that it is not a question of if but rather when.
Going Beyond Being Human
Whilst humans may be biologically de-evolving as a consequence of technological and environmental influences suspending natural selection, however, another consequence of ongoing technological advancement is for humanity being at the very beginnings of a process that could in a matter of less 200 years rather than several thousands, result in a large section that labels itself as human effectively no longer being human.
That trend is one of technological augmentation to enhance every aspect of human biology, that will result in hyper natural selection, as the most advantageous human characteristics will be enhanced at a pace that is many thousands of times that natural selection would have achieved, such as the use of cyber technology to replace limbs and internal organs and nano-technology to replace and enhance the neural pathways of the brain.
We are already enhanced by technologies such as computers and mobile phones that act as extensions of ourselves, therefore it won't be many years before these technologies integrate directly with our nervous systems and migrate to within our bodies to take over many aspects of processing, communications and memory storage, thus allowing humans to function far beyond that which nature selection has delivered as coded in our genes.
Ultimately this will mean that at some point in time the distance between man and machine will become blurred as we will have dispensed with much of that which is biological in favour of technologically far more superior alternatives and thus effectively be no longer human, especially as our genetic codes will have been altered to make such transformations from birth far easier to incorporate, i.e. many of us will have become genetically altered / designed to only be able to survive as man-machines.
The question posed by such a future is how will these man-machines perceive non augmented humans? Will man-machines treat wholly biological humans as equals or as we treat the likes of the Great Apes today, to keep small populations of in Zoo's and on reserves for entertainment and research purposes.
Therefore in terms of attempting to capitalise on humanities' mega-trend's, then the focus should be on investing in companies in sectors that are at the cutting edge of genetic engineering, augmentation and artificial intelligence, many aspects of which I covered at length in my most recent ebook Stocks Stealth Bull Market 2013 and Beyond (Free Download)
Possible Solutions to the Consequences of De-Evolution
Whilst the elite and the rich may escape what lies ahead as a consequence of technological intervention in their biological makeup. However the future looks bleak for the vast majority of humanity that will be immersed in a world that faces the consequences of approaching twice today's population due to the reversal of the process of natural selection. However changes made today by societies and individuals can reverse in large part the path we are on by -
- To seek to phase out the benefits culture. The state should cease supporting baby making factories for the good of societies present and future. Tough decisions need to be made in the present to prevent far worse consequences in the future as implied by today's societies systems encouraging and favouring reproduction by societies least productive members over that of the most productive.
- As well as teaching children technological skills, children also need to be taught practical basic skills such as how to grow food, real life social interaction, and that of the underlying process of that which supports their existence i.e. how the city they live in actually functions.
- To teach children the dangers of becoming trapped into slavery, which is the direction an over populated world is heading towards, and that to be free they need to aim to maximise personal productivity by living within their means by not becoming reliant on debt or state benefits.
- To make university education free for all so as to maximise intellectual capabilities, no more student debt.
- Compulsory national service that will instill discipline and the work ethic literally into the DNA of the youth, that will not only benefit the current generation but all future generations.
- Those out of work for more than 1 year should be forced to work for benefits. Idleness should be perceived as being abhorrent by all members of society.
- People with genetic disorder's should not be helped or even discouraged from reproducing so that the genetic flaws are prevented from reoccurring in future generations, instead of the current situation where as a consequence of intervention they reoccur in increasing numbers.
- To seek to phase out socialism that infects many western democracies, with bloated unproductive public sectors. Instead the focus should be in greatly limiting the size of the public sector in favour of the competitive productive private sector. So that economic natural selection can be allowed to play out.
- To end social housing because it encourages people to spend decades on waiting lists rather than to seek to increase their productivity capacity to achieve a property of their choice through hard work.
- To condition people to become physically more active through taxation i.e. for target behaviours by citizens such as being within a healthy weight zone, level of physical exercise, to be rewarded by paying a lower tax rate than those who are obese and live a less healthy life style.
- On the plus side genetic testing offers the possibility of counseling those with defective genes not to reproduce but rather to seek to adopt.
Whilst many of these suggestions may seem rather harsh, however if we do not make changes in the present then there will come a point when natural selection will make far more severe choices for us as a consequence of the collapse of civilisation under the burden of a large dumbed down unproductive population that would be ripe for extinction.
Perhaps scientists instead of searching for the missing links should instead work on strengthening the weakest links.
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Nadeem Walayat
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Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of four ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series.that can be downloaded for Free.
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