Welcome to Gaia! ::

As the article suggested, this prediction was already made by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine. It has merrit, though his theory makes assumptions that aren't so certain as they at first seem.

Medical technology allows people who are otherwise unfit to survive and reproduce, and the technology will continue to allow otherwise fatal gene combinations to be carried over to the next generation. This will result in a lot of negative mutations surviving, weakening the species as a whole until genetic technology allows us to screen out those bad genes on our own.

The researcher's own fantasy seems to be showing through. He assumes that people with the traits he's positing will be more likely to reproduce, and more prolifically than those with other traits. This seems like it reflects his own views on what is attractive, and thus he assumes it's what everyone finds attractive, meaning more oportunities for these people to reproduce.

The trouble with that theory (other than the personal bais on what is attractive) is that really, it's not neccissarily the ones with the most oportunity for sex who reproduce most, but the ones who have least access to birth control and fewest things besides sex to modivate them. Basicly every person who reaches sexual maturity has the oportunity to reproduce, but from there, the issue is who is more likely to have children and pass on their DNA.

His predictions, all his predictions, are predicated on the assumption that this society will continue to exist in its current form until the year 12,000. A species can only adapt to an environment which is largely static over a significant period of time. Our society is transfoming too fast for our bodies to truly adapt to it. How long have computers existed? How long before computers are shown up by an even fancier and stranger technology? If human technology doesn't plateu, the world will change too quickly for us to evolve naturally to adapt to it.

The only advantage in a constantly changing world is adaptablity. The end result will be basicly a hodge podge of potentially positive mutations, likely centered around mental flexibility. Whatever physical developments occur, as long as we continue to improve in our ability to adapt mentally, and our ability to adapt our environment to suit us, those traits will be an advantage.

That's my take on the matter. Anyone with a better background in evolutionary biology should feel free to demolish my assumptions and put forward something better.

This is all assuming that we haven't destroyed ourselves by then ..... I mean really, the TV channel Bravo funded his study .... what is he basing his assumptions on??

It's not just HG Wells who speculates about a future with a clear divide between the intelligent and some sort of stupid underclass. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley describes a world where people are genetically engineered to be either the intelligent elite or the laboring, mongoloid underclass.

In the recent movie "Idiocracy", everyone in the world is a moron. The president of the US is a professional wrestler. Everyone should watch this movie BTW. I can totally see this happening.

And there is short story called "The Marching Morons" (lemme know if you find it, k? It's out of print), where most of the world is the moron underclass, who unwittingly live their lives serving the rich, intelligent 1%. Sound familiar...?

And then there is "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. where everyone must wear devices that handicap them, because no one is allowed to be better than anyone else at any particular thing. Ballerinas wear weights around their ankles, etc.

The way the world is going right now, I can see any of these situations happening, easily.

Thanks for the heads up. I hope I didn't make it sound like I have read "The Time Machine." It is sitting on my shelf right now, but I have never touched it. Maybe I will pick it up now.

All the others I have read, though. Or watched. xp


It sounds kind of optimistic to think that the lower class will some day have control over the upper class, I think. Maybe control through sheer numbers, if people keep breeding the way they are. I know too many baby mamas... Then again, who goes to trade schools? Being a plumber, an electrician, those aren't white collar jobs.

Anyway, watch "Idiocracy". It's a silly movie, but if things go pretty much the way they are for the next thousand years or so...it seems pretty plausible to me, sadly.

But if we're lucky, maybe climate change and/or a natural disaster will wipe out the human race before we get to that point...

Interesting point about the social upheaval. Part of it too, I suspect, is that just plain not enough time has elapsed for there to be any tremendously noticeable shifts. We still have that vestigal appendix, after all, and the ever useless muscles that raise our arm hairs up when its cold outside. If only we still had a nice, full furr coat to use in the winter!

I watched a documentary on race, actually as part of one of my college courses. I forget which one... I think it was social psychology actually. In basic, though, it presented undeinable evidence that race is actually a social construct and doesn't have a genetic basis. A black person could be more closely related by genetics to a white person than to a fellow black person. Interesting that? Skin pigmentation really IS only skin deep, even from an evolutionary standpoint!

People attribute more things to race than just skin color; that's the part of it that is a social construct and really doesn't have a genetic basis. It has a cultural basis more than any genetic basis. But we have all these assumptions about what a particular racial group is like and often we assume it's genetics. It's not. It's more culture than genetics; hence a social construct rather than something founded in genetics. Of course skin pigmentation is genetically determined, but a ton of othere stereotypes based on race are not at all genetic. Sorry I didn't make that clear.