We cannot step away from evolution. Our genomes are always collecting mutations, and we are always making mate selections. Are humans preferentially mating with other humans who are tall? Blonde or not blonde?
We cannot step away from evolution. Our genomes are always collecting mutations, and we are always making mate selections.
Are smart people actually producing significantly smarter offspring, who end up making more money and ever so slowly outcompeting other families? Or is intelligence a losing trait, because highly educated couples tend to have smaller families, so when something goes wrong there are fewer siblings left to carry the genes forward? Or since highly educated men and women have babies later in life than those that don’t squander their best childbearing years in universities, do the babies of the highly educated enter the world with more trouble in childbirth, and are they prone to more subtle gene troubles that result from later mother and fatherhood? Cue the spooky music.
More likely than a future race of hyper-smart people who outcompete the rest of us is a strain of Homo sapiens that can beat a disease. Probably the most important evolutionary sieve that any future person is going to have to get through is going to have to do with germs and parasites. Recall that in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918–1919, some 50 million people were killed by something far too small to even see, let alone hunt and destroy. The Black Death of the fourteenth century may have killed up to 200 million. You and I are descendants of people who just happen to have the genes to fight off deadly viruses and bacteria. Those who survive into the future will probably have resistance to certain diseases that none of us have today.
