Well given the fact that our sun will eventually burn out it's pretty safe to say that any earth bound species will not survive it. Man however, thanks to his intelligence, does have a chance. A chance that say the shark just doesn't have.

I cannot share your optimism, Baggy. We are are a test run of a blueprint very young in age, and despite our young age we managed to manouver ourselves already into a dead end. That does not sound very promising. Also, evolution is not a strictly linear process so that at any given time there is always the best of all designs so far created on display. Evolution does not have a goal, it just adds new stuff and deletes other stuff, and sometimes it is good stuff getting deleted and bad stuff added, and you certainly have samples of design studies from very different eons of earth'S history of life living simultaneously on this planet, like sharks and crocodiles and dragonflies and jellyfish living together with youngster like maritime mammals, and talking apes on land.

Man should really stop thinking of hoimself as a "crown of evolution". We are one sample amongst others. If we would understand that, maybe we would learn the modesty to save ourselves from extinction and stop messing up our life's environmental basis. Last but not least we are raping the planet becasue we think we have the right to do so: the right of the master of the house, the crown of evolution, the superior. If we are that superior I am wondering why we have so many existentially threatening problems now, all self-made. Is that a sign of intelligence? Or more a sign of a certain mental deadlock, a mental handicap that prevents true intelligence?

As a rejoiner to your observation, I must point out as well that sharks didn't try and manipulate their environment either during any of their evolution. So, was the further evolution of brain capacity, hence the development of "higher intelligence" in sharks effectively halted because they were able to strike a harmonious balance with their natural surroundings and did not require more intelligence? Something Man has not been able to do thus far...

Again, true enough IF Mankind can survive his own folly...

Who said that higher intelligence is a goal of evolution? Homo Sapiens' current status gives the opposite argument: that tool-based intelligence prevents ongoing evolutionary developement due to premature exitus. Sharks are not thta intelligent, but have an excellent sensor suit to react to chnages in their environment automatically (by reflex). 400 million years of history are a strong aergument that sharks are the more successful design. they did not get wiped out before man starting to wipe out himself by destroying his living basis (a symptom of it being that he wipes out the sharks).

Of course. But the chance still exists nonetheless in spite of Clarkes negative attitude... :D

Its interesting to speculate :)

Suppose man had stayed in africa rather than migrate to Europe and Asia. When the European and Asian explorers started visiting africa, they found things primitive. However, this primitive lifestyle worked. It worked wonderfully well, according to the study I've done.

We can argue that had man stayed in Africa then the development of higher intelligence would have stopped just as the shark's has. In which case, if humans were to wipe themselves out, we need to blame whatever it was that caused the earliest people to migrate!:D

On a similar but different note, I wish I knew just what made our brains work differently to those of the great apes.. just to see where the difference lies!

Just last night i watch on NZ 20/20 current affairs of groups in NZ who believe survival of the fitness is just around the corner, in a few years according to them. They went out and spent a few days with these people filming them acting out mock battles in the bush, living off the land getting ready for the 'End of Days' drama etc., Their were two grps in different parts of NZ with the same motive - survival. The more camo wearing gun toting with a bit of right wing beliefs to go with it totally failed in the survival code in my books.

1. When hunting a pig they missed 3 times before they got it and when they did kill it, it fell down a gully where they couldn't reach it as it was to difficult for them, so that night they went without dinner :lol:.
2. Next day they're all hungry so they go off to retrieve the pig by the time they reached it they were all huffing and puffing their lungs out even though the hill they climbed didn't look all that to difficult.
3. They were all overweight. Well that might help them not starve to sooner.
4. If they had it there way they would round up all the politians and give them a trial if found guilty they would hang them all! :roll:
5. They had no form of proper shelter, tents was the answer.


The 2nd grp looked like the kind i would want to side with if had too.
They weren't gun toting idiots but they owned guns and only would use them as a last resort. They weren't out to behead the politicians or point the finger at anyone who wasn't on their side. Their livestyle was on farming the land way out in the bush, they had their own animals/veges good shelter and far away from cities as they believe city folks will bear the burden with innocents mudered over food. When a major disaster hits, cities have only 3 days food after that its an eye for an eye. The leader of this group came to New Zealand from Sweden with his family has a good education a professor in science head pretty much screw on, with the purpose to set up a survival kind of livestyle here and any other who wanted to joinup and just live of the land. Pretty simple but most likely the ones that will survive.

Precisely, the system worked. AND, we could say it was working fairly well as those groups in Africa had potentially longer to "perfect" their cohabitation with nature. As well, the "higher" achievements of intelligence, say of writing (of a sort), art and music were in fact evident with these "primitive' people. I say this because Man would have needed the leisure time to develop non-essential skills, those skills unrelated to surviving day to day. Intelligence, in proper application and balance to nature worked... I guess the point I'm trying to convey is that these people didn't have to "over think" their lifestyles and could live full lives in harmony with the natural world.

That really is a tough question. Personally, I think one of the strongest urges in Mankind is that of population. It seems to me that eventually the pressures of an over-populated area would drive men to seek other lands. Devastating climatic changes, famines and disease would also figure in. So, movement is inevitable. Movement would have necessitated an application of more intelligence to cope and survive in areas that were not part of their normal surroundings.

An interesting question to consider as we still find "primitive" people around the planet who have satisfactorily survived the ages. What they seem to have trouble with is the encroachment of modern, enlightened men!

I love these kinds of predictions, where 'if we continue on the current trend then in a minimum of 20 years, all is doomed'. Nonsense. Absolutely, and utter nonsense. How many people can predict 2012 accurately, let alone 2030. Technology and the free market assure you that there will never let the world, or at least the west, go completely to hell.

To quote Cheney "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

The only concern I have about the future of the world is the final category. It's the stuff no one seems coming that will spell doom for humans, none of this, oh blah blah on current trends impending doom stock up on survival gear blah blah. :roll:


(And if the **** REALLY goes downhill, as long as they don't nuke where I live, I can't imagine ever going hungry or without shelter. You'd have to have lived in the city all your life, and become so grossly deformed through weight or injury as to be unable to do much for yourself in the first place to die here.)

Why waste your breath talking about evolutionary trends. Humanity is over, mankind is on the way out. Have you forgot there is nothing we can do to stop global warming. Go rob a bank it doesn't matter anymore. The planets surface temperatures are rising, polar ice caps are melting, forest fires, sea levels rising, lands disappearing.

Don't you know nobody can stop global warming now. The consensus has long been known, we are all doomed! Doomed I say HAHAHAHAHA. yes doomed HEHEHEHEHE HAHAHAHAHHA POO POO

For a moment I thought you were serious.

Then i nearly wet myself:rotfl:

I think you guys overestimate the harmonious nature of primitive life. Survival was anything but guarenteed. You limit human "range" to such a small area and you vastly increase the risk that war, overpopulation, famine, disease, climate change or any number of other disasters could wipe out the entire species in the space of a generation.

Besides, just because European and Asian explorers found Africa fairly primitive it doesn't prove that had Africans been left unmolested they wouldn't have had their own industrial revolution at some point. One might make an argument that harsh environments retard advancement but I see no evidence that it would stop altogether.

No not at all. Tougher environments would compel the people to devote more time to practical survival skills and less to other intellectual pursuits like writing and art. So exercises leading to the development of greater intellect would be lacking and neglected.

But, it still begs the question; Has Man's superior intellect (at least when measured against the rest of the organisms on this planet) really proven to be a "be all , end all" tool for survival. Or, will it just be more the matter of time running out and finding that "being smarter" than the sharks eventually led to his demise after all (barring supernovas, large asteroid impacts or global natural cataclysms).

Is Man really as superior as he thinks he is? Only time will tell...

Add "...but so far it has" to that and i'd agree. :up:

Ah, I almost waited for it - two of the three magical things, technology and free market, to delay, to prevent, to block, to doubt any critical analysis, any self-questioning, any self-changing - always and forever. Now we just need somebody referring to the miraculous healing power of "unlimited growth", and the trio infernale is complete again.

It has been argued by historians that europe'S historical lead in developing technoloigy and science, diversity of arts, etc, came from geographical facts that separated the diffreent ribes and people inEurope for long, and then led them to trading with different things while needing to compete at the same time. the mixture of being confronted with foreign, new things while at the same time needing to compete with these, led to a climate that helped to increase creativity, original thinking, self-questioning.

I think if you have a hgarden Eden where no effort and no challenge is laid in man'S shoulder and he gets what he needs without needing to worry with how to get it, there would be little or no developement, but instead just stagnation. That'S why I am against utopias like communism and socialism that want a guarantee for everybody being seen as of the same value like any other, and getting all what he needs/wants for free. To a certain level, needing to compete is helpful in creating creativity and originality. It just shall not be allowed to go completley unregulated and unlimited in scope and reach. totally liberal free market that are run by total self-regulation only I oppose as much as I oppose socialistic utopias. the truth lies in between, and I would label it as capitalistic competition with a strong sense of social responsibility and a strong link to the social community in which it is embedded; and as a materialistic ideology that capitalism is, it must also be counterbalanced by a general awareness for the non-material value of life and non-material qualities, that can best be supoorted in the population by a general education for all that does not focus on the technical needs of the busienss world, but that trains young minds in what in the West we call the humanistic tradition of culture and education.

Yup, I have to agree with you there. Faith in science and rational market forces is nice, but where it may be leading us is not a nice place.

The one concept missing in this thread is what of the role of predator. The shark had no predator until man. Now, if through an evolutionary process it could gain the intelligence to either negate this threat or avoid it that might ensure its survival.

If one is to take the roots of mankind as being in Africa then he had many, many predators to contend with once he left the safety of the trees and walked upright. Short of acquiring the ability to run fast it could be argued that intelligence was for him the quickest route to survival. Try and negate the problem by first trying to move away from it. Hence the migration north.

The role of predator in all its forms, from the lowly praying mantis in nature to the CEO of the largest bank in modern society cannot be ignored or underplayed in the impact it has on the life course of any species - be it modern man or animal.

An interesting observation... And one, IMO, that is certainly applicable to the current state of affairs of Mankind.

Seeing as we've subjugated all the less intelligent species on the planet, we prey upon ourselves. A quick glance at any newspaper headline or Internet media website lately surely confirms this. The newest developments in the Congo, the ongoing genocides in the Sudan, the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, plus numerous other incidents through history all tell the tale of Man's "intellectual" rise to world domination.

So, the question is in my mind this: Is Man intelligent enough to "reason" his way past this brutality or are we just another animal trying to survive?

To a certain extent I would say that the problem also isn't just how we live, but how many of us are here. It is obvious that if the human race had less fertility and we were only, say 10 million people all around the earth, there would not be such a huge problem in abusing a bit the environment. But the problem is that we are 6000 million, and from what you can see in China and India, all hoping to burn their share.

We can use our intelligence to solve certain shortcomings and succeed in sustaining a population that would in any other species inmediately die of hunger, but we can't pretend that there are no limits. We are living in a limited world, a finite cosmos from which we can't exit, and when we reach those limits we will be subject to the same laws as all the other species: Massive extintion until balance is recovered.

It has happened many times with other species, they grew so much in number that they depleted their resources and then the majority starved. The fact that our technological intelligence allows us to put that limit higher doesn't mean that there is no limit at all.....and from up there the fall will be harder.