Scientists have a hard time deciding what Homo Futurus might look like. Will our evolutionary descendants resemble us? Will they be cyborgs, with robot limbs and A.I. brains, as futurists predict?
It’s hard to say: Part of the reason we’ve struggled to predict how, and whether Homo sapiens will evolve, is because our definitions of evolution and speciation have become maddeningly vague.
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Most of the time, when articles claim humans are “evolving,” in the Darwinian sense, what they really mean is that the process of natural selection is still at work….
Darwin’s ideas about evolution don’t lend themselves well to futurist discussions about the cyborgian future of our species because he strictly defines traits as heritable…Cyborg humans will probably be able to procreate, but there’s no way their robot qualities…can be inherited, unless CRISPR gets involved.
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There is only one surefire way to tell if you are face-to-face with a different species: Have sex with it, and if you manage to make a baby, wait and see whether your babies can make babies.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: How to Talk About the Future of Human Evolution
