"Human species 'may split in two'" Topic

…I look down on him, and I look down on him.

…I look up to him, but I look down on him.

…I know my place!

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6057734.stm

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

…the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative …

It's me, it's me, it's me! I am the body beautiful. I am the new upper class.

And remember …NO RIFF-RAFF!

And no short-arses!

Be off with you, Morlocks! Come back in another million years when I'm completely docile.

I read this today, and thought I'd heard this before. And of course I had when I read it back in 2006. Sometimes old stories on the site go back into the top ten list; I don't know why, possibly the link gets sent around and suddenly takes off.

Also the final line is the most instructive;
"He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo."

My mom says I'm handsome.

A speciation among humans is actually long overdue, considering the way we have been diversifying environment and diet for so long and the fact that we have merged and split several times before. All it takes is a dozen or so mutations and the breeding barrier goes up.

Rock wallabies, who exist in about 8 species, overlap territory and habitats so much people wondered why they were even seperate species; In their case, a virus had changed their genomes enough to prevent breeding and speciation occurred. Something like that could also happen to humanity.

Will humans even be around 100,000 years from now?

Already happened.

I'm sure the current educational system can accomplish that in far less time………..

Idiocracy? :)

Will humans even be around 100,000 years from now?

Are "humans" around today!?!

I think it was William Gibson who wrote that the very rich are no longer truly human. Which explains a great deal…

Dear Mako

Already done.

Hostely… if I look around I can only think two things:

a) we already seem to have this dim-witted underclass. They seem to spend their days on soap operas, dayly talk shows and "reality" TV. They take no interest in things like history, politics or books.

b) I really doubt that humanity will not abuse this planet so much that there will be anything alive here in 100.000 year except cockroaches (which supposedly survive anything).

I use this theme sometimes in SF RPGs…

Damon.

I never thought of the rich as X-men.

I agree with Uruk Hai – just visit WalMart

Wow, just frak'n wow.

I've worked out and worked in Gyms most of my life … believe me … they're heeere ! … And they like to frequent Wal-marts, 7-11s, Mall food courts, etc. … Oh, and guys like Tim LaHaye … needs therapy … and meds … lots and lots of meds … or booze … lots and lots of booze …

@VCarter – I don't think Gibson intended it as a compliment! In the context of his novels, the very rich are able to afford all sorts of things, both medical and cybernetic, that remove them even more from most ordinary people than they already are. The problem is that the process dehumanises them…sounds exactly like the tabloid fodder we already see all around us!?

Why does the "underclass" look female??

So now anyone that "the elite" (which some of you obviously think you are) consider to be less attractive, less intelligent or God forbid, a Wal Mart shopper, is to be considered a subspecies? That's a dangerous slope gentlemen, and I don't think that the path it leads down is a good one.

We are already becoming a dehumanizing culture. What happens when we decide that a certain segment of society is literally non-human?

If you notice thru out history humans have been a dehumanizing culture … Just look at what is happening in places like Syria, or among moslems in the ME and SWA … today … and they are all generally the basic same ethicity … Not to mention what is done to others who are say … Western/non-moslems … Humans is getting better, but still many have left their humanity in the rear view long ago …

"I don't think Gibson intended it as a compliment!"

Neither did I.

Will humans even be around 100,000 years from now?

I'm not taking any odds on that!

So now anyone that "the elite" (which some of you obviously think you are) consider to be less attractive, less intelligent or God forbid, a Wal Mart shopper, is to be considered a subspecies? That's a dangerous slope gentlemen, and I don't think that the path it leads down is a good one.

We are already becoming a dehumanizing culture. What happens when we decide that a certain segment of society is literally non-human?

Frack, we went there back during the slavery days!

Sounds to me like a typical professor type who wears cords and dreams of being one of the big muscly guys he sees on construction sites who his students are always drooling over. Years of inbreeding among a class has already been done, look at the European royal families. Hardly a sign of good things.
As wal mart offers the same products for less in many cases, doesn't not shopping there show a lack of intelligence? Spoken as a once regular wal mart shopper who never saw any of the trailer park stereotype everyone loves to go on about.

Hi Vince, I'm now trying to remember whereabouts I read that bit from Gibson. I think it was in "Count Zero", but I might be wrong – frustrating !

Hi Vince, I'm now trying to remember whereabouts I read that bit from Gibson. I think it was in "Count Zero", but I might be wrong – frustrating !

You have a good memory!

"And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human."

- William Gibson, Count Zero

link

the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

Sunderland.

Won't the Singularity have an effect on all this?

Ha! A likely story. Just look at the current old etonians- upper class and thick as two short planks. And as for tall and slim, even Darwin would need to stretch his theory if he saw Boris Johnson!

Thanks, Steve! It was a few years ago…

100,000 years time? I should care!

Personally, I doubt the human race will last 10,000 years never mind 100,000.

Mako 11, Von Ted, and O Schmidt have it figured out.

…There may be two or more genetic classes of people, but they all seem to be getting rather stupid.

For example: They think they can predict the genetic future of the human race…

Naturally, the enlightend class will have to make sure humanity remains 'genetically healthy'… sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Of course some have already broke it down to "Haves" and "Have Nots" … And if health care and food costs continues to rise, only the "Haves" will be able to stay healthy and alive. And large numbers of "Have Nots" will continue to die from starvation, disease, etc. like in much of the Third World today. Not to mention all the sick and hungry in 1st World places like in US urban and rural locations …

Isn't it splitting already – into

"those who aren't happy queuing to get into Salute! at 10am"

and

"those who arrive a little later and are prepared to grab a coffee first"

?

All you had to do was look at those pitching up for the Marathon and those pitching up for Salute on Saturday to see we have split already :-)

Madaxeman you have it exactly!

They will split into the 'government sustained' and the 'government sustaining'.

"Won't the Singularity have an effect on all this?"

Yes, it will. The government will only have to sustain the memory of those to be sustained.

To deal with the question seriously-- (I know that launches onto very shaky ground from the beginning). I think what is "our species" has been around for about 195 thousand years ago, and he last nearest neighbors or branches died off 30,000 years ago (Neanderthal). That's not very long compared to other epochs.

But it's been slow going and our species' biology is not all that robust compared to other species and I suspect it's problematic if we shall survive. Some species are subjects of mass extinctions or huge-die-offs for no apparent ecological reason and it may be that such may be more likely than a split into two sub-species. Indeed, it seems that the explosion of variation in a species takes part in the ORIGIN of the species, and that several completing sub-species exist in the EARLIEST part of their history with the branches, once set, (and not interbreedable) dying off. Thus we are for example the last of the phyla of the original homo sapiens, which itself was the last of other phyla etc.

These are large level observations not really backed with any amount of science. However we have seen that in a species like our own, ecology is only part of the story. With our technology and culture we are able to side-step many of the limits and dangers in nature-- up to a point. But we are also very cultural, very thinking very mental creatures, and very SOCIAL creaturs as well, and we do not really know how important that sociability is important to us.

If states and cultures are any indication the trajectory of our past civilizations may hold an answer. Civilization are not always directly supplanted by others, nor people by others. Sometimes population can decline for no apparent reason except, perhaps Ennui.

Certainly if we had any of the classic SHTF or TEOCAWKI much beloved and eagerly anticipated by the Survivalist, we would loose a significant part (perhaps 70% of the worlds population. Add in what seems even more likely ( a nice big world-wide natural disaster like another Xichshulub (the meteorite that toasted the dinosaurs) many of the rest could be extinguished. Could the remainder form a sustaining community even on a low grade tribal level? Would the mental disorientation be too much?

The problem with the thesis of the bifurcation of the human species is that the superior branch would almost inevitably extirpate the inferior. The inferior would be a competitor for resources AND more particularly, form a danger in interbreeding, which would create a middle-race. This is problematic of course. At some point such inbreeding would not be desireable.

the classic problem of course is the incredibly intelligent, powerful over-species with the incredibly stupid and usually deformed and ugly under-species who form the "hewers of wood and carriers of water" for the former. But the question, with the advent of technology, is how much wood and water is there left to be hewed and carried?
That is, what tasks would these creatures fulfill, and if they had no tasks to fulfill, why would you keep them around. On the other hand, let's take the other classic dichotomy, where the super-intelligent overclass has a somewhat unintelligent but supremely beautiful underclass as sex partners and slaves. The problem here is fine, but that's really like having sex with a rather fetching sheep, or more pointedly, if we have all the technical marvels at our hands today, and in a few decades would have gene and DNA manipulation, the intelligent and powerful could remodel themselves to be a beautiful as they wished.

I suspect the biological danger to mankind is not a bifurcation of the species, but that when it comes down to it, and in spite of all the "conventional wisdom" that the human species real enemy is infertility.

on years, which is not that long compared

As others say, I think we've already split into two differing types – those who are sustained & those who do the sustaining.

"Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge."

I can just see his wife, standing over him with arms crossed and a raised eyebrow, saying to him "And which one am I again, dear…?"

OSchmidt, some good points.

Kornbluth wrote about this in the early 50s, in his story "The Marching Morons", and what was interesting about his take on it was that the intellectual ostensibly superior subspecies was effectively enslaved to the moronic majority because they had to work overtime to maintain the technical world the morons could only use & consume.

Kornbluth's "final solution" was scary indeed.

OSchmidt, some good points.

Yes … he usually does …

But in the Time Machine, it was the short, ugly Morlocks who fed upon the beautiful, but dim-witted Eloi…

So we may split in two?

It's the only way I'll ever lose weight.

PhilBenz, yes, Kornbluth nailed it – he also had a mechanism that certain imitators ( *cough*Idiocracy*cough*) and many other critics miss; the machines of the society had become so sophisticated that they effectively hid how lacking the "morons" where in their work in general – a quote from the story " A talented typesetter could do perhaps a page in twenty minutes, while a person with poor spelling and grammar, before the keyboard of a full setting and arrangement machine, can do three pages in the same time. Why have talent when much of that is built into the machine? Selection failed to weed out the less than competent . . . "

And of course, intelligent people would still be born, even to less smart parents, but they would be misfits in the society unless specially schooled and selected as we do with those with learning disabilities today.

It already has.

Proletariat and Bourgeoisie right?

Right?

I'll get me coat now. The people's coat.

I don't think the "upper class" will breed enough to be sustainable, and if by "upper class" we really mean the professional class, there's lots of mixing going on. If by "upper class" we really mean the upper class, I don't think they have any genetic adaptions that will help with long-term survival.