[ExI] People are the same?

[Dan]

Oh, mine was a minor quibble here. I don't see, as I've said, rapid evolution in humans now.
 
Of course, that doesn't rule it out -- even absent nano-fairies. As in the Ashkenazy example you cite, a small group might be forced into the evolutionary pressure cooker and that could make a big difference. But I'd still be careful about too many broad claims here. And it's likely that any changes will be noticed afterward -- not whilst they're in process.
 
Regards,
 
Dan
From: David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] People are the same?

Dan wrote:

> Whilst I don't see much evidence for rapid evolution happening amongst human in the last few centuries, it does seem to be the case that there was some amount of evolution from fifty thousand years ago. In particular, it seems that the ability to digest milk in adulthood arose and spread to most of the species. Also, blondness seems to have arisen in the last six thousand years ago. Granted, these are minor changes, but there are probably others that just haven't been uncovered as of yet.

More significantly, I am an Ashkenazic Jew of statistically abnormal
intelligence. My tribe is much smarter now than it was 5000 years
ago, let alone 50,000. There are competing hypotheses as to why,
but the reality remains.

But I take Eugen's core point -- that the changes aren't dramatic.

And I agree with his thesis: We can't sit and wait for the nano-fairy
to sprinkle us with transhuman goodness. We must, in particular,
achieve self-sufficient off-Earth enclaves as soon as possible.

-- David.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110729/e03ef00d/attachment.html>