🚀 go-pugleaf

hoopes@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (John Hoopes) wrote:

>As an archaeologist who regularly deals with human cultural 
>phenomena over broad spans of time (500 years is not a daunting 
>chunk), I am far more optimistic about our ability to formulate a 
>pretty good idea of what things will be like a thousand years in the 
>future.  In fact, anyone with a genuine interest in the distant future 
>would do well to consult an archaeologist.  We are among the only 
>scientists seriously concerned with social and cultural trends that 
>extend over periods of as long as a thousand, five thousand, or even 
>a hundred thousand years.  While our models are based primarily 
>on evidence of what has happened in the past, they apply equally 
>well to what may happen in the future.

>I think that it is a big mistake to confuse access to information with 
>"intelligence" (despite its newspeak C.I.A. definition).  People in 
>the future will be no "smarter" than they are today, or than they were 
>10,000 years ago, unless reproductive fitness becomes more tightly 
>linked to the genetic components of I.Q.  So far, that has probably 
>occurred only in small and isolated instances which we still don't 
>understand.  (Is there a Darwinian selection of people smart enough 
>to escape pogroms, concentration camps, "ethnic cleansing" and 
>other genocidal situations, or are intelligent individuals the ones 
>more likely to have been killed?  Historical circumstances may have 
>made these balance out, since genocide generally begins with the 
>intellectuals.)  Given the many different factors at work, trends in 
>intelligence will remain random and nondirectional.  How much 
>does reproductive success in humans have to do with intelligence?  
>It depends on what one defines as "intelligence".  Improved access 
>to information, which will be the biggest contribution of 
>cybernetics, will always have to pass through the bottleneck of  the 
>human brain.  That is unlikely to change much given that biological 
>evolution has been pretty much halted by access to modern 
>medicine.

I have to disagree here. Medicine has definitely not halted evolution,
but I see where you are coming from. I used to believe similarly. In
reality evolution never stops as long as a species continues to
propagate itself. The development of medicine has merely changed the
selection pressures. We are probably no longer evolving better immune
systems to deal with many diseases due to antibiotics, but even this
is only temporary as the bacteria have evolved resistance faster than
we have evolved new treatments. 
There is still pressure in terms of physical and mental
characteristics though, such as being taller or more attractive may
get you a mate easier and thus make you more likely to produce
offspring than a short dumb person. Of course just the opposite may be
true. If you are smarter you may decide not to have children for
financial reasons, but if dumb you may not even consider the burden of
another child.
Anyway I just wanted to make the point that evolution never stops and
cannot be stopped because it really isn't going anywhere except where
the environmental pressures that be direct it towards.

>It is important to realize that improved computer technology will be 
>used by only a tiny fraction of the world's population.  Even today, a 
>surprisingly large number of people make their living with 
>technologies that are at least a thousand years old.  The telephone 
>was invented in 1876, yet more than a hundred years later it is 
>nonexistent in most households on this planet.  It's true that one 
>finds radios and cassette players even in the poorest villages.  
>However, the infrastructure to provide massive information 
>bandwith (and the energy sources that provide it) will always be 
>accessible to only a small and wealthy minority.  The one trend that 
>we can be certain will continue for the next thousand years is that of 
>social differentiation--an increasing distance between the richest 
>and the poorest individuals.  High-end technology is now, and will 
>continue to be, completely beyond the imagination of the majority of 
>humans.  Writing first appeared over 5000 years ago, but many 
>people still wonder what it means to be able to read.

>People with high-end access to information flow will not be more 
>intelligent, or even more enlightened.  In fact, a substantial number 
>of the wealthy techno-elite are likely to use it for leisure activities 
>that give positive pleasure feedback to the ancient limbic sectors of 
>the human brain.  That is, for non-reproductive sex and recreation.  
>The majority of people will continue to satisfy these needs with 
>simple solutions that have been around since the beginning of 
>humanity.  They will remain primarily concerned with food, shelter, 
>and social  interaction, not information.  Their happiness will 
>depend more upon trends in values and ideology ("the opiate of the 
>masses") than trends in high-end technology (the opiate of the 
>elite?).  It's really not so odd at all.

>						John Hoopes







Cuscus bids you well in your journeys