Next biggest leap

[tarak]

What could be the next path breaking discovery/invention that would effect the course of evolution of life on earth.

Now what were the last path breaking discoveries/inventions?

[tarak]

I feel that many of the creations which didnot exist 300-400 years back and those even with a small impact on the human well being and drastic increase in human population in the last century had aided in steering the course of evolution of life on earth with a more anthropocentric edge.Although man started long back ,some million years ago,the major activity of human race has started 500 years back.

[UncleAl]

What could be the next path breaking discovery/invention that would effect the course of evolution of life on earth.

 

Mankind recomb-DNA creates humans with high intelligence. Liberals squeal outrage while obvious problems are given their obvious solutions. It isn't that difficult!

 

Take any discrete decision. Assign all its possible solutions on a scale of -1 (purely awful) to +1 (purely wonderful). Now take a complex problem. It will have many, many components. Assign the same ranking tactic to all its fundamental aspects. Assign one dimension to each aspect. You now have an n-dimensional unit radius hypersphere. Its surface is the most extreme solutions good and bad, its center is pure compromise.

 

HOWEVER... As the given problem becomes more complex, as the number of dimensions increases, hypersphers have two curious behaviors:

 

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypersphere.html

http://www.mathreference.com/ca-int,hsp.html

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/comprom.htm

 

1) The volume of a unit hypersphere rapidly shrinks toward zero as the number of dimensions increases. Very complex problems do not have many overall solutions.

 

2) The volume of a hypersphere rapidly segregates toward its surface as the number of dimensions increases. Most of the solutions to complex problems are extreme solutions.

 

If we look at a large complex society we see two wildly divergent and incompatible trends - local control and central control. Local control addresses local issues while they are still small and simple. National goverment considers huge, broad, complex issues like central managment of education, retirement, healthcare, Welfare, taxation... and national goverment is mathematically constrained to FAIL. In fact, any attempt at compromise on a national scale is the worst possible strategem for finding a working solution. Example: The Soviet Union.

 

The next path-breaking discovery/invention that would effect the course of evolution of life on earth is to stop being nice and start being effective - the essence of evolution in action.

[TeleMad]

Take any discrete decision. Assign all its possible solutions on a scale of -1 (purely awful) to +1 (purely wonderful). Now take a complex problem. It will have many, many components. Assign the same ranking tactic to all its fundamental aspects. Assign one dimension to each aspect. You now have an n-dimensional unit radius hypersphere. Its surface is the most extreme solutions good and bad, its center is pure compromise.

 

HOWEVER... As the given problem becomes more complex, as the number of dimensions increases, hypersphers have two curious behaviors:

 

Of course n-dimenionsal unit radius hyperspheres are the FIRST thing I think of when someone asks a question about evolution.

[Biochemist]

Of course n-dimenionsal unit radius hyperspheres are the FIRST thing I think of when someone asks a question about evolution.

Silly me. And there I was wasting my time on hypocycloids. Go figure.

[tarak]

Domestication of animals and tending of plants and subsequently agriculture /during neolithic or before/has certianly laid a foundation for the establishment of humanrace and the course of evolution it has taken.Certainly this would have been one of the major breakthroughfor humanbeing and it's interaction with other living beings.

[tarak]

Uncle Al ..For a non-math person like me-the topology of the plane of thoughts you have presented has a complex dimension, nevertheless I understand that in all the permutations and combinations and all those vanishing probabilities that unfold over every series of events,we try the most obvious certain possibility.

It is very naive to say, vaccines and antibiotics and drugs(directly)and all other material and non material inventions(indirectly) have strengthened human survival in the past centuries and we inclusive with the nature have sustained its course of evolution.

What present day fields of activity further change this course. I feel that something will change in the fields of energy,communications food and medicine which will have some drastic implications

[Tormod]

Hm...tarak, do we have any evidence showing evolution in human beings over the past 10,000 years due to inventions? AFAIK we are still the same species and any evolutionary differences are very minor. In my opinion Uncle Al has a point in that evolutionary development will come from direct genetic change, not technical inventions.

 

This is an interesting topic...

[C1ay]

What could be the next path breaking discovery/invention that would effect the course of evolution of life on earth.

Now what were the last path breaking discoveries/inventions?

Man's ability to alter his genetic code directly. BTW, won't that be the first time man has altered his evolutionary path? Haven't all previous changes been the result of natural selection?

[tarak]

My understanding is a very obvious one. We always find golden periods,amphibians in carboniferous,reptiles in triassic etc..,there was a dominant species and others dominated by it.But there was an overall balance.I donot know the extinction rates of species in those eras and if anybody has info pl. throw some light.But what i strongly feel is that the advent of modern man in the past 500 years has steered the balance and course of evolution(not the genetic change per se) in altering all the cycles.For example the carbon cycle or the Nitrogen cycle.Although insects,plankton,molluscs, microbes,etc outnumber humans ,the rich terrestrial diversity is continuosuly vanishing due to human activity.Since man is also a part of the nature and has atleast a partial understanding of its function,a responsible evolution is the need of the hour.

[tarak]

I donot mean genetic change here.I was just wondering about those products of human endeavor which might have accelerated the course of evolution by adding the element of artificial selection to natural selection.

The course of evolution is inclusive of the changes in the process of natural selection,which is directly or indirectly affected by the technical progress.

So if agriculture has pooled up a group of genotypes to man and in that process eliminating several other plants (like weeds),similarly the progress of man has obviously tinkered with the process of original evolution and has certainly created imbalance.In this context there can be another great technical leap for the human being and a subsequent complex effect on the planet

[quantum quack]

What coould be our greatest challenge may not be so obvious. Mankinds creativity will peak in not to sooner time.

things that make life enjoyable such as fashion movies and music will all tend to wind down as creative pursuits. We are already seeing qa decline in teh movie industry as CAD moves through it's phase.

 

What music will be created 100 years from now is a real worry.

It could be argued that if anything causes the extinction of the human race it will be perpetual boredom and the lack of anything original.

Usually it has been demonstrated that when people get bored they get self destructive, and that i would suggest will be our gretaest challenge.

 

any way just another angle ..... :)

[Tormod]

tarak, I misread your first post - I took it to be about the evolution of mankind. I see your point now.