Wheres the human race headed

jetski

Curious question,

whats the general aim / common goal of the human race, are we just here to reproduce and sail along or are we heading somewhere....

AnonoBoy

The Pub! Yay! \o/

petes

Survival.

DrumSteve

that way

---

> to PI.

Wibbs

Pretty much as insurgent said. We're evolving genetically faster now than at any other time in our history as a species. At the gene level we're quite different in many ways than we were 20,000 years ago. Localised appearance is one example. White skin is relatively recent. Blonde hair and blue eyes even moreso(AFAIR only 10,000 years old as a look in humans). We're even very different in certain areas than we were 6/7,000 years ago(mostly to do with adaptations to diet). The bigger the population involved the more mutations and genetic drift will occur. As we're not likely to see any serious isolation happening, I dunno how likely speciation will be and a "new" human may come about, but it's possible.

genericguy

not really sure where we're headed, but i hope africa catches up with the rest of us, cos I'm sick of being asked to donate money for them to spend on machetes to kill each other.

El Siglo

I believe we're heading for something like this...

johnny_knoxvile

...to cock-block Bertie. (i have no idea what i mean by that)

Hazys

Wibbs wrote: »

Pretty much as insurgent said. We're evolving genetically faster now than at any other time in our history as a species. At the gene level we're quite different in many ways than we were 20,000 years ago. Localised appearance is one example. White skin is relatively recent. Blonde hair and blue eyes even moreso(AFAIR only 10,000 years old as a look in humans). We're even very different in certain areas than we were 6/7,000 years ago(mostly to do with adaptations to diet). The bigger the population involved the more mutations and genetic drift will occur. As we're not likely to see any serious isolation happening, I dunno how likely speciation will be and a "new" human may come about, but it's possible.

Im not too sure if this is what u said because u used a lot of big words and me no like big words but isen't white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes slowely going extinct. I heard somewhere that in 50 years the only place we'll find a person naturally born with blonde hair is in Scandinvia? are doing a full circle?

genericguy

johnny_knoxvile wrote: »

...to cock-block Bertie. (i have no idea what i mean by that)

if by 'cock-block' you mean 'elect as uachtarán na hEireann', then yes, the idiotic irish part of the world is heading that way.

El Siglo

johnny_knoxvile wrote: »

...to cock-block Bertie. (i have no idea what i mean by that)

Like this?

Boskowski

Down the swanny - as they say. Almost inevitable at this stage I would think.

Wibbs

Hazys wrote: »

Im not too sure if this is what u said because u used a lot of big words and me no like big words but isen't white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes slowely going extinct. I heard somewhere that in 50 years the only place we'll find a person naturally born with blonde hair is in Scandinvia? are doing a full circle?

Possibly. Ditto with the gene for red hair. They're all relatively recent(though red hair may be a neandertal thing as they were redheads(and white), though it seems to be a slightly different gene). They're recent changes and in what was an isolated bunch of people, so with enough interbreeding it could well die out as they're recessive AFAIR. Then again there's not that much interbreeding going on. It looks like there is, but that's just because there's more of us. I reckon we'll ahve blondes and redheads around for a while yet.

K-9

The finishing line.

jebuz

jetski wrote: »

Curious question,

whats the general aim / common goal of the human race, are we just here to reproduce and sail along or are we heading somewhere....

Well sorry not all of us can afford boats

BraziliaNZ

Headed to Doom!!! We have overpopulated the planet far too much and everything else is dying. So unless we take action and stop having so many kids and using so much stuff we're doomed. It's too late now anyway so i dont care, i doubt i'll have kids though. I really don't know why people like Miriam O'Callaghan are being lauded as Supermums because she has 8 kids, she's a disgrace to the planet, should be shot in the face, imagine all the waste they will produce??? God i hate her...
Anyway i'm not a fan of the movie but i like this quote from the matrix, is god's truth!

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

Blazer

We're headed to a majority population of gingers.
Then we can take the piss out of blackheads, blondes, brunettes etc as they'll be in the minority and inferior to us..

Don't believe me? It happened on South Park

genericguy

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

I really don't know why people like Miriam O'Callaghan

because she's a fookin' ride. that is why.

Wazdakka

Running at an unstoppable speed toward this.

BraziliaNZ

genericguy wrote: »

because she's a fookin' ride. that is why.

with 8 kids she must have a vagina so big the whole universe is imploding into it

Euro_Kraut

Kilkenny. Back on Monday.

MayoForSam

How do you fancy downloading your mind (shouldn't that be uploading)?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/singularity/

Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0.
It's predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity - we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely. Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines.
One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment - and whatever it brings - is inevitable.

No more humanity, just a few T1000's knocking about. No more bodily functions to worry about anyway.

tolosenc

MayoForSam wrote: »

How do you fancy downloading your mind (shouldn't that be uploading)?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/singularity/

No more humanity, just a few T1000's knocking about. No more bodily functions to worry about anyway.

Wasn't that from Friends?

mathie

To an apostropheless world.

Oh no wait were there already.

blinding

To hell in a handbag according to some.

Will that be an interesting journey amongst all the clutter.

IRockUrSocks

It's headed for a big pile of horse ****. Haven't you ever wondered why old people always say "Thank God I'm leaving this world and not just coming into it"?...It's because every year, this nanny state gets a greater hold on ours lives and the way we should live it.

Sometimes I wish I had the resources to fly to a deserted tropical island and chill with native woman, never to return to this crappy system we are forced to live within.

Calibos

I have little faith in humanity. Remember, most people are morons. A higher percentage of civilised morons in the West I'll grant you but as a whole, there are a lot more uncivilised morons in the world. Our modern soceity will eventually go tits up and ultimately we'll end up back in the stoneage or at the very least pre-industrial technologically. The problem is that we won't ever be able to advance to this level of technology again. Technology relies on resources. Our Soceity has used up all the easily accessible resources to get us where we are today. If we have to start from scratch again, there wont be a second industrial revolution because the easily accessible resources are gone and they'd need high technology to access whats left, but one needs the resources to develop that high technology in the first place.....so its a bit of a catch 22 for our future primative decendents.

As for a posters comment about Africa catching up with us...He's intimating 'Evolutionaryily' (Say that drunk ). Thats pretty racist tbh. I am no PC bleeding heart liberal but its pretty obvious from the antics of our own poor uneducated scumbags, that the problem with Africans isn't that they are any less evolved than us, just that the soceities they are from for various reasons make most of them 'Poor, uneducated and in many cases scumbags'. Its just our western soceities got a handle on moron control a while back and educated the scumbagbery out of a much higher percentage of us.

To finish off. While I can see the recessive Blonde and Blue eyed genes being bred out by the brown eyed brown/black haired masses, because lets face it, who doesn't want to Fcuk a Blonde, I can see the Ginger gene lasting forever. Although the Gene is recessive, the fact that only another Ginger would fcuk a Ginger means that the Ginger Gene will be perpetuated in the genepool for eons to come.

fintonie

space, they reckon in the next couple hundred years it will be possible to move the earth in any direction we want this will become our space ship,

dropping off the undesirables on the moon and other places on the way,

thats what they reckon.

blinding

fintonie wrote: »

space, they reckon in the next couple hundred years it will be possible to move the earth in any direction we want this will become our space ship,

dropping off the undesirables on the moon and other places on the way,

thats what they reckon.

Sounds good as long as you don't turf me off unless I want to get off or its really really for my own good and I cannot see the wisdom in it.

Oh The Humanity

MayoForSam wrote: »

No more humanity

Still here so I am ! :mad::(

meditraitor

We will be fine, no worries

My name is URL

Evolution has no goal, so neither does the human race

We'll most likely be wiped out by a virus or cataclismic event, then it'll all start over again

Baile an Locha

A major Battle Royale type scenario,
anarchy,chaos etc,
it'd be good craic.

Mr.Obvious

Humans are not evolving because there is no evolutionary pressure.

Even if we became overpopulated to the point where survival was no longer easy I doubt society would collapse completely and wealth rather than genes would determine survival. To get natural selection going again you'd need for us all to go back to the stone age.

Natural selection is primitive and cruel, thank god we have left that phase of our evolution behind us.

The era of artificial selection has already begun. Although whether we should make the leap from screening embryos to proper genetic engineering is massive issue for future politics and one that we should start thinking about now.

G_R

well can we not just stay here?

Poor Uncle Tom

to the finish line.....:)

walshb

jetski wrote: »

Curious question,

whats the general aim / common goal of the human race, are we just here to reproduce and sail along or are we heading somewhere....

Yes, somewhere beneath the ground never to surface again. I thought this would have
been obvious

Sea Sharp

have lot's o' sex and reproduce.
(Except ugly people, natural selection doesn't like them)

Splendour

jetski wrote: »

Curious question,

whats the general aim / common goal of the human race, are we just here to reproduce and sail along or are we heading somewhere....

I'm Heavenbound...:)

Calibos

Splendour wrote: »

I'm Heavenbound...:)

Well assuming your christian malarkey is true, how can you be so sure. Maybe God will be pissed off you followed the wrong branch of Christianity. Maybe christians were supposed to take Leviticus' warning about not wearing clothes made from two different cloths just as seriously as his warnings about the evils of homosexuality. Maybe you picked the wrong parts of the bible to take literally and the wrong parts to interpret as...'What the all knowing, all seeing Omnipodent, Ommniscient God meant to say was...."

Statistically speaking the odds that you got lucky to be born into/pick the one true religion and correctly guessed which Biblical rules to ignore and which to follow are very very long. Chances are, you are Hellbound my friend to roast in the hellfire for all eternity.......but remember!!

GOD LOVES YOU!!

Jesus Juice

I think we all know(Waterworld)

Turd Ferguson

As long as there is religion we are headed for nowhere. Once people realise that there are no "higher beings", we can all make peace and explore space together

Jesus Juice

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

As long as there is religion we are headed for nowhere. Once people realise that there are no "higher beings", we can all make peace and explore space together

Nare a truer word uttered.+1

K-Ren

Listen to ''Do You Realize?'' by the Flaming Lips.

Wibbs

Mr.Obvious wrote: »

Humans are not evolving because there is no evolutionary pressure.

Not quite as we are still evolving. More than we ever did in the last 100,000 yrs as a species, if the rate of change of genes is anything to go by. Big hairy things trying to kill you or large scale changes in environment are not the only evolutionary pressures. Plus lack of pressure is an evolutionary pressure in of itself.

Dietary adaptations are an obvious one. The vast majority of humans 10,000 years ago were gluten intolerant. Gluten the protein found in many grains was simply not in the diet until the advent of agriculture. There are still people around today that are gluten intolerant(medically, not some hippie food intolerance BS) and they are a holdover from earlier times. Ireland has a very high rate of the condition and some have theorised that our dependence on the potato, not grains as a primary source of food for centuries may have something to do with it(if true a very short time for a local adaptation). Milk/lactose intolerance is another one. It's much rarer in Europe where we've been ingesting milk for longer, when compared to India where it is very common. The ability to metabolise alcohol is much lower in cultures that didn't use alcohol until recently. American Indians, Australian aborigines, some Asian populations. They're all adaptations and recent ones too. Last 6/7000 years. Who is to say that our very recent increase in foreign foods and proteins in europe is not part of an evolutionary pressure. Things like soya which very very few europeans would have been exposed to a generation ago.

Modern human's bodyshape has changed in the last 30,000 years. Compare a modern european skull to a 30,000 year old european skull and you can see the diffs pretty easily. Our teeth have gotten smaller, as have our palates, we've become less robust over time.

Even if we became overpopulated to the point where survival was no longer easy I doubt society would collapse completely and wealth rather than genes would determine survival. To get natural selection going again you'd need for us all to go back to the stone age.

Again if wealth was the deciding factor it would become a factor too. The ability to become wealthy and the characteristics required would be selected for(cunning, risk taking, social intelligence, etc).

The era of artificial selection has already begun. Although whether we should make the leap from screening embryos to proper genetic engineering is massive issue for future politics and one that we should start thinking about now.

I agree its an issue alright. Interesting one too.

Poor Uncle Tom

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

As long as there is religion we are headed for nowhere. Once people realise that there are no "higher beings", we can all make peace and explore space together

very true, people might start to live their lives instead of waiting until they are dead to enjoy happiness, how sad a sentiment.

Gazza22

More Coke
More Hookers

Simples

stovelid

To this. With any luck.

Splendour

Calibos wrote: »

GOD LOVES YOU!!

And you!

mobius42

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

As long as there is religion we are headed for nowhere. Once people realise that there are no "higher beings", we can all make peace and explore space together

Oh great. You had to go and mention religion, didn't you? Now Jakkass is going to come in here and this'll become another 15 page argument about religion that will go nowhere.

gerry28

We're heading for big trouble.

The green movement of the last 10 years have got more and more ridiclous to the point where someone will 'tut tut' at you for throwing a crisp packet on the fire.

Yet the elephant in the room is the 6.8billion global population and rising. The world population doubled from 1950 to the year 2000. This is hardly mentioned by al gore and the rest of the greens.

Where will we be in another 50 years.... its terrifying to think :eek: