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"2) Are we evolving on the right path? "
For all practical purposes human evolution has ended. The unfit freely contribute their genes to the pool. The most fit seem to have no reproductive advantage, in fact in western society the most fit tend to reproduce at the lowest rates. Perhaps that's evolution after all, just not forward going.
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I kind of hinted at this point in a roundabout way in my first post, and it is somewhat worrying.
I guess the way I look at this is that we have removed the traditional evolutionary pressures (being fit, being clever, being cunning, etc.) and replaced them with something else.
On the surface it is a pretty depressing thought; how will humanity ever move forward without this powerful, selective force pushing it. Either we will stagnate and regress or the forces will come from somewhere else. Somewhat surprisingly, a journalist at MSNBC wrote a story about this very subject that is both thoughtful and insightful (
here). The short of it is that already in the present day we are beginning to be moulded by technology and this process will continue.
Naturally some of the ideas in the article sound like scienmce fiction but both nature and humanity are very resourceful, so lets just wait and see what happens.
Well, we'll all be dead and buried by then, but let's just imagine we can wait and see what happens...