[extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution

[bradbury]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 1:41pm Harvey Newstrom <mail at HarveyNewstrom.com> wrote:
> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote,
> > > Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with 
> > > chimps and have live cross-species children?  I really
> > > question the level of scientific knowledge on this list.
> >
> > No, that's not the issue.
> 
> Good.  This makes me feel a lot better.  I thought we had taken a left-turn
> into the X-files....

I'm not sure who made all of the above comments.  I'll simply
provide my perspective.

When it was first asked whether humans might mate with
other primates my reaction was "No way -- the chromsome
numbers are different" (and I went to Google to check this).
Then after thinking about human trisomy diseases (again
going to Google) and how species evolved I realized that
my initial view was somewhat limited.  There has to be a
means by which species add, delete or combine chromosomes
and produce viable offspring.  It doesn't have to work often
but it does have to work from time to time.  I think the
redundancy that may be built into the genome may allow this
to happen more easily than one would expect.

So we (at least I) are trying to think rationally.  Whether
all of this advances humanity as fast as possible I don't
know -- one could make a reasonable argument that
people who might assert humans cannot or should not
mate with other primates might have retarded or
might retard (in the future) human development.
The topic seems to be very anthropocentric due to
its possible perspective that "modern" humans are
the best that evolution can do.  It would seem that
by definition transhumanism says that is not the
case and one should explore alternatives.  If one
avenue for exploration involves mating with other
primates then it seems reasonable to consider the
possibility.  You will not see me doing this anytime
soon but at the same time I would tend to object
to laws that prohibit it.

Robert
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