Monday, November 19, 2012

Gary Marcus on Evolution

Gary Marcus focused his talk on the evolution of language and music. After his talk, I had the opportunity to discuss with him the possibility of further human evolution. Marcus doubts that humans will continue to evolve, primarily for two reasons: modern health care and birth control. Modern health care allows those who would have died in a "survival of the fittest" scenario to survive, and birth control slows down the rate of reproduction. 

This severely lowers the probability that the human genome will evolve with any species-wide consequences. Whether it is a good or a bad thing is open to interpretation. It is certainly good for those like myself who need glasses for any hope of seeing and asthma which probably would have killed me off in childhood if not for modern medicine. But it also closes off the possibility of further refining or improving human traits. 

If humans no longer evolve, is the model of human today what will remain in the far future? Or is there now a possibility of devolution? Only time (billions and billions of years) will tell.

1 comment:

  1. That is a very interesting point to be brought up! No doubt the advances we have made today are exceptional and completely useful, but it also means other things will not be able to progress. Things such as birth control will stop reproduction of the younger age, which will lower the population Therefore, I completely agree, only time will tell what comes from the advances we have made and the damage, or the benefits it will make on the society.

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