Evolution and natural selection are not mutually exclusive. If we stopped walking and used scooters or wheelchairs, we wouldn't necessarily stop having legs. If people with small and/or weak legs mated, then eventually their offspring (over MANY generations) will have generally smaller and weaker legs.

If global warming melts the icecaps and we are faced with a world where there is no choice other than to swim from island to island for sustenance, we wouldn't magically evolve webbing in our hands. What WOULD happen is that people whose hands were significantly more webbed than others would thrive while others would perish. Eventually, through all of those with more webbing on their hands mating with each other, this trait would become more prominent. Again, this would take generations.

There is no way to NOT believe in this. It's very simple, and it happens every day to both humans and animals. Another example would be if our ozone layer continued to deteriorate. Pale people who are much more susceptible to melanoma would die at a much faster rate than olive or dark skinned people. This could happen at a much faster rate, since it's not an advantage that is influencing survival and mating habits, but life or death. Less pale people in the gene pool would result in the human race as a whole developing a darker skin tone. Eventually, pale people would become extremely rare.

Researchers have conducted tests that show that women prefer taller males, hence the reason that the average height of a human is significantly higher than it was even 200 years ago. Same theory...

Damn those women and their stereotypes.

I keep hoping that our human race will evolve into something intelligent...

The same studies have shown that men prefer a distinct 3-2-3 body on a woman... the classic hourglass figure. So Damn us men too, I guess. But I'll never say that in public.

SH!T! I just did

It's not our fault, women programmed us this way. Damn those women and their stereotypes!!!

Humankind's future evolution will be at our own hands. This being the case, there is no reason to believe that all humans will choose to evolve the same way.

Some will go the cybernetic route. Exchanging body parts, or even whole bodies for mechanical replacements. These could be indistinguishable from traditional organic human bodies, or they could be any of an infinite variety of form or function.

Others will genetically engineer themselves in different ways. Getting rid of all disease and disability is just the beginning. Imagine your body as a canvas for your whim. Rewriting your genetic code to create a body that you want, not one that four billion years of evolution locked you into.

And that's only just the body.

Once we map the brain and understand how the mind emerges from this vast network of neurons and chemicals, we will begin altering it in many varying and subtle ways, and then ways that are not so subtle. We will begin exploring the infinite possibilities of consciousness.

Some may forgo bodies altogether, choosing the 'brain in a jar' route and existing solely in a VR environment enmeshed in whatever the internet is replaced by in the coming centuries.

But even the brain dies eventually, doesn't it? Sci-fi writers have envisaged putting a person's brain directly into a computer. But is that the original person? Or just a copy? The original person still dies eventually, don't they? How about connecting a computer directly to your brain and living with it for years as the functions of your brain are gradually moved into the computer. Eventually, all of your cerebral functions are done from the computer, and when your organic body, and brain, dies, you don't.

When this is mastered, there will eventually exist beings who were 'born' in the memory of a computer, with no history of an organic body.

We are not bound by our origins. We do not need to be chained to tradition or the evolutionary paths that our environment has dragged us through in past eons.

The only thing that limits us, in the end, is physics.

That's why I want F=ma on my headstone when I die someday, especially if I die in a crash of some sort.

midgets


they use a smaller amount of space, and need less food.
Think about it...it's so obvious that that's the way to go.

Why not go smaller? Nanohumans.

Agreed, that would even be better!

The only thing is that a nanohuman won't be capable of much. Little weak creatures.

Maybe we should be built differently also, apart from being tiny, so we could carry big things, that are multiple times our own weight.

we should become ants

I concur.
Now how to grow those neat antennae...

<<< I'm waaaay ahead on you when it comes to evolution. ;)

*L* I swear I didn't even notice those!