This is interesting, I had never heard an estimate that high:
A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers after the growth of human civilizations.
I would think colonization of other planets (or in the article's own terms, "invasion of outer space") would be a more likely and more comparable next step.
Hm, I know more about computer science than about physics. Sure, after reading countless science fiction stories, it is difficult to imagine that there won't be interstellar travel, teleportation and time travel one day, but aren't there physical limitations? OK teleportation seems doable (has been done I think), but what about the speed of light? Most sf stories seem to settle for some kind of handy worm holes, but what if we don't find them?
Not saying it is impossible, but the path to AI seems much clearer than the path to interstellar travel at this point, in my opinion. Like say in 100 years, do you think we'll be traveling to distant stars already? (Then again, with super intelligent AI, maybe we, or "they", will figure something out).
He doesn't have a wiki in my native tongue, so I had to chuck google translate at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scheele . The results seem to indicate he is a nobody, but I could be wrong. Also, could anyone provide a better translation of the book title "I am Jesus-fan: but how you become one?"? Without context from sources I've seen before, it's not clear that it's worth my time to read the page you linked to.
I ran into this same problem while trying to read a broad survey of Institutionalist economics papers--the amount of time I can spend reading is limited, and sometimes there's no way to tell if a heterodox work is worth the trouble. Sadly, my default is "no."
[+] [-] timf|16 years ago|reply
A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimates that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution. Many of the new genetic adjustments are occurring around changes in the human diet brought on by the advent of agriculture, and resistance to epidemic diseases that became major killers after the growth of human civilizations.
[+] [-] alanthonyc|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
Not saying it is impossible, but the path to AI seems much clearer than the path to interstellar travel at this point, in my opinion. Like say in 100 years, do you think we'll be traveling to distant stars already? (Then again, with super intelligent AI, maybe we, or "they", will figure something out).
[+] [-] scythe|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polos|16 years ago|reply
http://www.evolution-is-degeneration.com/index.asp?PaginaID=...
[+] [-] rwolf|16 years ago|reply
I ran into this same problem while trying to read a broad survey of Institutionalist economics papers--the amount of time I can spend reading is limited, and sometimes there's no way to tell if a heterodox work is worth the trouble. Sadly, my default is "no."