[olalonde]

I believe we are at a juncture in human history where technological progress is so fast that it will eclipse any natural evolution that would normally occur. On a 250-million-year scale, we're nearing breakthroughs in halting aging, manipulating DNA on demand, printing body parts, and potentially even achieving mind uploading. Natural selection will soon have run its course for our species. We will keep evolving but it won't be driven by random DNA replication errors: it will be driven by technology and culture. I agree however that "they" will be completely unrecognizable to the modern us.

[alex_young]

Written language popped up around 5 thousand years ago. https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/

Human language was invented ~100 KYA.

50 KYA we were painting pictures of mammoths on cave walls. Before that we were a population of ~200 for many tens of thousands of years in Africa.

Our earliest upright ancestors lived around 3 MYA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)

65 MYA the dinosaurs dominated our world and our ancestors were small rodent like animals.

It’s very hard to imagine that anything we do will stop evolution for hundreds of millions of years in the future.

[olalonde]

If 65M years of random DNA mutations caused small rodents to evolve to homo sapiens, what do you think 65M years of human technology can do? Hint: technology progresses a lot faster than natural evolution. Think about how much of an impact evolution had on us in the last 1000 years vs how much technology did. We will probably become capable of editing DNA within a few generations. Death by aging will become a relic of the past. And I'm talking about what will happen within a few generations, not 250M years. In 250M years, DNA-based life will probably be mentioned in museums.

[Brian_K_White]

Tomorrow people will be better at remembering passwords and navigating virtual environments, by exactly the same process as any other organism adapting to it's environment.

[olalonde]

My point was that the "same process as any other organism adapting to its environment" won't continue for very long for humans. Once you have people that don't die, DNA that can be edited at will, or even entirely non-biological bodies, you no longer have the ingredients required for natural selection.

[RetroTechie]

Even non-biological bodies are subject to accidents, disasters, sheer neglect, or perhaps willful termination (for personal reasons, as punishment, kill for hire, ...). Everything dies at some point - no exceptions.

So essentially that would mess with the timescales. But you'd still have evolution somehow. Perhaps even fashion in what's considered desired physical format. Everybody bio/tech enhanced cyborg one year, everybody flying around as a drone the next year.

[olalonde]

Indeed, by natural selection I meant evolution based on random DNA mutations. Of course, technological and cultural evolution (aka memetics) will persist.

[defrost]

Of course you do.

The most likely scenario for some time is at most a few thousand people that don't die a natural death, that can afford to edit DNA, and perhaps even transfer their mind into a tin can ... along side some greater than a few billion others who continue to practice natural selection.

How that works out in the long term will be .. interesting *.

* for some value of 'interesting'