Can We Predict Evolution?

A

alteredperception

I know not what I do
Registered Senior Member
I have heard leading evolutionary scientists (Stephen Jay Gould) speak of how we cannot possibly predict how we will evolve.

Can we predict how natural selection will cause us (other species) to change? I'm talking millions of years, to the point of speciation. Can we know what future species humans are headed towards?

I think in principle we can predict this. We would have to figure out what type of human is reproducing the most viable offspring. And take into account how the environment is causing us to adapt.
 
alteredperception said:
I think in principle we can predict this. We would have to figure out what type of human is reproducing the most viable offspring. And take into account how the environment is causing us to adapt.
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But adaptations are based on random mutations. To a degree, these could be predicted statistically, but even a single instance of some mutation may propogate to the whole population given time, and such instances are unpredictable.
 
Pete said:
But adaptations are based on random mutations. To a degree, these could be predicted statistically, but even a single instance of some mutation may propogate to the whole population given time, and such instances are unpredictable.
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well put.
 
Evolution is pretty specific to circumstances, especially if it's adaptive. Since we haven't a clue how the earth will look in a million years, we have no idea of the force behind potential speciations.
 
If we knew every variable of any problem we could predict the outcome, knowing every variable and how they effect each other is the hard part.
 
Richard Dawkins wrote a computer program for creating shapes on the screen determined by 9 "genes", values which determined angle, thickness, number of branches, etc. Each gene could hold a value from -10 to +10. Every possible shape he could evolve might be regarded as living in a 9-dimensional array. The total number of possible different evolved "creatures" in his little program was just under 800 billion. Having successfully evolved a shape that looked like insects, he found it all but impossible to find them again, having not taken note of the steps and not (in his first version) having a way of saving the genetic values he had "evolved".

In the same way, since DNA is a digital code (with four possible values for each digit, as opposed to two for binary coding) every possible configuration is somewhere in a billion-dimension array, the vast majority of which could never begin to hope to be a living creature. But amongst them are the ones which have existed in teh past, which exist now and which could exist in the future. But there is no way of predicting the actual path through genetic space that the actual genomes will take.
 
Some basic patterns could be predicted. That is why different species evolved similar forms in an analogous manner. But if you look passed the general form they are very much different.

The basic patterns are the same because the environment dictates similar adaptations in form and physiology.
 
Since evolution is a response to environmental pressures, we can predict what that response might be depending on how well we understand what the environmental pressures are.
 
Well, our brains have been getting bigger. The painful birth process is an example, also the rapid growth of the brain during puberty, so we might expect this to continue.
 
alteredperception said:
I have heard leading evolutionary scientists (Stephen Jay Gould) speak of how we cannot possibly predict how we will evolve.

Can we predict how natural selection will cause us (other species) to change? I'm talking millions of years, to the point of speciation. Can we know what future species humans are headed towards?

I think in principle we can predict this. We would have to figure out what type of human is reproducing the most viable offspring. And take into account how the environment is causing us to adapt.
Click to expand...
Forget about evolution in the past as prediction of how it will occur in the future. Genetic evolution by slow change, adaptation, or even punctuated equilibrium spurts of mass-change, is not the rule for even the very near-future. Millions of years will not be required to evolve man beyond the last-man and into something trans-human or post-human. Biology is merely natural technology and this will blur together with the non-natural [man-made] technologies - this is the future of evolution; self-guided change.
 
Good point, Itopal,
Evolution has evolved to such a degree that the product of evolution is able to determine it's own direction, or at least understand it's own mechanisms. The forces that have guided evolution so far- other animals and plants, and the climaxed ecosystems they live in, are fast dying off. Nothing like civilization has ever happened before in the 3 billion years of life on Earth, so the direction we are headed is extremely uncertain.
 
Nothing like civilisation has ever left signs of having existed in the three billion years of life on earth and nothing like it appears to have reached a level to leave permanent signs it existed in the universe. These two facts reduce the uncertainty, i'm afraid.
 
Thersites said:
Nothing like civilisation has ever left signs of having existed in the three billion years of life on earth and nothing like it appears to have reached a level to leave permanent signs it existed in the universe. These two facts reduce the uncertainty, i'm afraid.
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Human technology/civilization spans only a second of time in a geological record that’s 4.5 +/- billion years old. We are newcomers to the surrounding scenery. It is quite possible that this is the first incursion of space-time [and if not, non-local eruptions therein the void, and past big-crunches are irrelevant from this current vantage - anyway]. From the bronze age of man until yesterday is a history of a mere few thousand years. In that respect man’s technology/civilization has already exponentially out-preformed nature, and you can expect the speed to increase.

The only thing implied is that [possibly] alien intelligence is non-existent - that the alien-intelligence traveling to other worlds will [in the future] be us humans seeding countless worlds with life [evolution]. The beginnings and ends may be something uniquely human and from that post-human or trans-human.
 
The possibilities I was thinking of were that if there were intelligent species in the past intelligence was no more useful in helping them survive than size was for the dinosaurs, and that any intelligent aliens either did not survive long enough to leave signs of their existence observable by us or that it is impossible for them and us to leave such evidence
 
I guess I just don't understand your point on this particular concept, and in my mind I rearrange it to thus:

Possible intelligent creatures might have died out somewhere in the universe - well I guess anything is possible; but it doesn’t seem reasonable to associate non-existence [of evidence] as evidence; and less so to associate it to the fate of the dinosaur, which most likely died-out do to an environmental catastrophe. Actually size in this case may not have been an advantage, but an extreme disadvantage in a possible environmental-winter [caused by a massive comet impact] where food is scarce.

So maybe your uncertainty of the future of man [even what man will become] is manifest in this idea; that maybe intelligence does not guarantee survival.

On that I would agree - there are no guarantees in life or reality, but add that total extinction is just another possibility [a limited one at that] and as sure as the dinosaur died-out a close-relative of it did not, and the parrot in my home is proof that life is self-similar and unique at the same time. Man is unique and yet self-similar to nature. The future past the last-man will contain beings that are simply more aware and have greater complexity of mind. As you are an increase of self-similar natural components giving rise to the emergent quality called mythically consciousness - so shall the trans-human be a self-similar increase over the last-man.

I would also disagree with any assumption of unpredictability, in terms of future human evolution. The only things on the chopping-block that feel uncertain - are all the myths associated with being.
 
In principle, we can genetically alter ourselves to whatever ideal entity we wish to be. This, of course, is something that will require huge advancements in our knowledge and technology. In principle we could alter our DNA as to eliminate random mutations (or correct any mutations that occur) thus ending natural selection. Until we reach the point where we can determine what we want to evolve into, I would argue evolution is still unpredictable. (Of course we could naturally guide our evolution through eugenics, but this would never happen due to its unethical nature).
 
Even if we do start altering ourselves, this does not somehow put us outside the realm of evolution. Our choices in genetic change will still be affected by a changing envrionment. For real evolution to take place, for humans to occupy an entirely new niche, will take time. Simply because we can modify our genes to fight disease or comabt aging at an accelerated rate does not eliminate evolution occuring over long periods of time. I would posit that our ability to modify our genome is not much evolutionarily speaking. When an insect metamorphizes into an adult, do we call that evolution?

I have a feeling that we are very attached to our humanity, and will make no conscious decisions to move away from it.
 
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