[jyl]

Conversation with a friend tonight.

Question is whether the evolution of human beings has stopped or is in the process of stopping, such that the physical and mental attributes of human beings will not change from now until the species expires?

One argument (mine) is that sometime within the past couple hundred years, an individual's ability to produce offspring ceased to be determined by his physical attributes (how strong, how fast, etc) or mental attributes (how intelligent, how creative, how fast-thinking). A weak, slow, not real bright person with bad eyes and a predisposition to cancer is as likely to have children as a strong, fast, very smart person with 20/20 vision and a low risk of cancer. Those children may not have a very good life and their parents may die prematurely, but as long as the genes get passed on, does it matter how good a life the carrier has?

Another argument (his) is that different races are mixing to an extent never before seen - 1000 years ago, what were the odds that a woman of French descent would bear the children of a Chinese male, yet here we are - which is creating new genetic combinations and may affect future human attributes.

What do you think? 1,000 years from now, will human beings be biologically - their bodies, their brains - different than today? Why and how? How about 10,000 years from now? 100,000 years?

Understand, we're not talking about what the humans of 100,000 years hence will "know". Maybe they will have knowledge and skills inconceivable to us. But if humans have not evolved, then a newborn from 2010 should blend right in, in the year 102,010, and should be able to learn all the same skills and knowledge as the other kids. If humans have evolved, then he'll stick out like a sore thumb.

Try, please, to refrain from doom-saying rants about how the USA is going to hell and this generation is so much worse than the last blah blah blah. I'm asking about evolution over time frames that make the USA irrelevant. In 1,000 years, the USA will be no more relevant than the Holy Roman Empire is today, and in 10,000 years, no-one will ever remember that the USA ever existed. Try to think big here.