_homo_trans sapiens, request for comments

[Scott.Fahlman@SEF1.SLISP.CS.CMU.EDU]

          ...  There is no reason to expect or
          require that Homo sapiens will not undergo further
          evolution. The bio-historical trend indicates that the
          major evolutionary development in Homo is in the
          cortico-neural arena (i.e. increasingly more complex
          organization of the nervous system and the brain).

I think that this is a very shaky bit of extrapolation.  Perhaps the full
paper addresses this point in more detail, but I think that many observers
(including some of the more perceptive science fiction writers) have
pointed out the following: The very matrix of culture and machines that
give rise to your "trans-sapiens" has pretty much eliminated the selective
pressure that has driven evolution for the last couple of billion years --
at least for humans living in developed countries.  In fact, in such
countries, it is often the most successful people (in the intellectual
terms you are concerned with) who breed the least, so not-very-natural
selection may actually be working against this kind of success.  So, the
cultural matrix continues to develop, but the individual humans who make up
that matrix may, on the average, be less capable as time goes on.

It may well be that within a generation or two we'll have such complete
control over the genetic makeup of our human progeny that the old
mutation/selection machinery will be irrelevant.  Whether we will (or
should) choose to use this control to deliberately change the species in
certain directions is a *very* complex question.  But whether or not we
actively take control of human evolution, it makes little sense to predict
the future based on "bio-historical trends" of the past million years.  We
have recently crossed a discontinuity that changes the rules of evolution
in fundamental and not-yet-understood ways.  That change is probably
permanent unless the culture itself is destroyed.

-- Scott