I spent some time wondering about just that the other day - What if some sort of knockout mutation at one of the several evolutionary choke-points got rid of something really cool in the genome, that's now non-coding? There's plenty of sequences in there that used to do something...
I've wondered about that myself. What if verbal language sucks so much as an expressive tool because it's what we evolved to make up for having lost a faculty which made it unnecessary to express ourselves*? What if all our species' striving for better communications, everything from written language to radio to the invention of the Internet, were an attempt to regain that faculty which we've lacked for so long that we don't even realize we remember it? What if the occasional human ability to non-visually notice being stared at by another human, or similar things, is a vestige of that faculty -- sort of a mental wiggling of the ears? What if that's what the Garden of Eden and all the other fall-from-grace myths are really about?
* To express is to force something out of an aperture under pressure, which I find an unexpectedly apt description of how human language works. I suspect that telepathic interaction between humans would be fundamentally different, because it would be unnecessary for one person to get things out of their head
( ... )
(I'm thinking of Snow Crash, and the 'Sumerian language/Tower of Babel' hypothesis/myth that it's based on...)
The thing is, IIRC, Cain and Abel is one of the stories that was not only passed intact from the Sumerians, it was fairly pivotal, though it had a different ending - Though that may just be the losers talking. :) And, while we have artifacts, even clay artifacts, that are pre-Sumerian, I don't think we have any evidence of a language before then. Pictures (Lascaux and similar), but no words.
My guess is it'd start with the usual vanity stuff -- hair color, height, that kind of thing. Possibly intelligence if we can decode its genetic basis, but I don't think that's a given. Where it goes from there is probably as unknowable as trying to predict what fashions people will be wearing in 20 years...
The complication in picking the genetics of your offspring, of course, is that the person who has to live with the decision isn't the person who gets to make it. That gives me a lot of pause. It ought to stop people from doing anything too exotic but probably won't always.
Thing is, if you can sequence an entire human for $1k, even a cheap grant would allow you to round up a whole brace of geniuses vs. normal people and use large-scale statistical analysis to pull out the commonalities and differences.
I think Height in humans is actually more environment than heredity, IIRC, barring borderline conditions like dwarfism.
Follow the X-Prize link to Nature at the bottom of the page. - Even most of the in-field scientists don't seem to know where this would end up.
(Flips through catalog) - I've got Feelings, Rei Momo, DavidByrne and Look Into The Eyeball, as well as Fear Of Music, Little Creatures, More songs about buildings and food & Sand in the Vaseline(live double-album). Any interest?
That's no small order - At least animals share some of the same biochemical pathways with us... It might be possible to graft some novel mechanism into humans that inserts photo-derived energy upstream of the ATP gradient, and provide extra raw energy, but stepping completely away from food is probably going to involve a LOT of novel hardware to derive trace materials and proteins from whatever is digested. You could make an argument that something that could live without protein input might be far enough away from human to deserve a new name...
I need to read Beggars in Spain. It can't be any more frightening than _All My Darling Daughters_, right? Right? :>
Anyway, I didn't expect us to be able to live on sunlight alone -- that would indeed be some serious posthumanity. I had in mind something more like what you alluded to, where photosynthesis diminishes the need for, but definitely does not replace food.
Not having read AMDD, I can't say. Fair warning, that it does the libertarian/Incredibles/Randian stink of 'How dare our lessers hold us back' in spots. I seem to remember Kress doing a short story and a book-length version. I seem to remember the short story being better, IMO.
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The furry stuff is probably a LOT further down the road than run-of-the-mill tweaks - Though I'm sure it'll happen.
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* To express is to force something out of an aperture under pressure, which I find an unexpectedly apt description of how human language works. I suspect that telepathic interaction between humans would be fundamentally different, because it would be unnecessary for one person to get things out of their head ( ... )
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The thing is, IIRC, Cain and Abel is one of the stories that was not only passed intact from the Sumerians, it was fairly pivotal, though it had a different ending - Though that may just be the losers talking. :) And, while we have artifacts, even clay artifacts, that are pre-Sumerian, I don't think we have any evidence of a language before then. Pictures (Lascaux and similar), but no words.
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The complication in picking the genetics of your offspring, of course, is that the person who has to live with the decision isn't the person who gets to make it. That gives me a lot of pause. It ought to stop people from doing anything too exotic but probably won't always.
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I think Height in humans is actually more environment than heredity, IIRC, barring borderline conditions like dwarfism.
Follow the X-Prize link to Nature at the bottom of the page. - Even most of the in-field scientists don't seem to know where this would end up.
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That's no small order - At least animals share some of the same biochemical pathways with us... It might be possible to graft some novel mechanism into humans that inserts photo-derived energy upstream of the ATP gradient, and provide extra raw energy, but stepping completely away from food is probably going to involve a LOT of novel hardware to derive trace materials and proteins from whatever is digested. You could make an argument that something that could live without protein input might be far enough away from human to deserve a new name...
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Anyway, I didn't expect us to be able to live on sunlight alone -- that would indeed be some serious posthumanity. I had in mind something more like what you alluded to, where photosynthesis diminishes the need for, but definitely does not replace food.
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