It's not like that
Does progress make a person weaker and stupider?
Vladimir Voskresensky, IA "Rosbalt"
Science fiction writers believe that in the course of physiological and genetic changes in the next thousand years, a person can change beyond recognition: we will become asexual, hairless, toothless and weak creatures with small brains, poor memory, big bellies and flabby muscles. A person of the future will have infrared vision, a flexible cartilaginous skeleton, very long fingers (to make it easier to use gadgets), a useless immune system and will not be able to step a step without medical technology.
Is this really the case? Alexander Markov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Head of the Department of Biological Evolution of the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, told Rosbalt about this.
– Alexander Vladimirovich, scientists disagree on whether the biological evolution of man continues. Are we turning into anyone at all, or have we already achieved perfection as a species?
– Of course, evolution continues. It is extremely difficult to stop it, one might say impossible. Evolution is any changes in the gene pool of a population. This process will go on all the time: in the form of random fluctuations, genetic drift or purposeful changes under the influence of natural selection.
– Can I clarify how you understand this selection?
– Please. Selection is when individuals with some traits reproduce more actively than individuals with other traits. If the number of children somehow depends on some characteristics of their parents, then the selection works.
– I see. And what will we become as a result of such a selection? They say, for example, that people of the future may have a weakened immune system. Because new medical technologies and antibiotics will significantly improve the overall health of people and their life expectancy, but at the same time make our resistance to infections much more sluggish.
– Quite a reasonable assumption. And such a process is certainly happening. When antibiotics appeared and epidemics stopped mowing down millions of people, the selection on the quality of the immune system also weakened. It is possible that it will degrade further. Simply because it is no longer so important for survival and reproduction – whether you have a good immune system or a bad one. For example, the smallpox virus has been defeated. Accordingly, no one needs innate resistance to him anymore: whether it exists or not, it does not affect anything…
As long as we have good medicine, all this does not harm us. But if it does not exist, then we will face big problems.
– Will we become more and more dependent on medicine?
"Quite likely. When some external threat is removed, the selection that maintains the protection systems against it in good condition ceases to work. Already now we are more and more dependent on medicines. If this goes on, then over time our bodies will stop "thinking" for themselves, and instead will rely entirely on medicines to perform the basic functions of the body. Thus, people from the future can actually become slaves of medical technology. A person will become so "hooked" on medications that the body will lose the ability to independently resist even a common cold.
– But, on the other hand, perhaps the body uses some resources of self-preservation? Or will medical technologies be stronger? Maybe if medicine begins to take over the basic functions of the body, it will reject such methods and technologies?
– I'm afraid that there are no mechanisms that would allow the body to give up some momentary benefits for the sake of remote prospects. Natural selection does not know how to look ahead, think about the future, it is short-sighted. If there is some kind of medical device that improves the quality of life, allows you to cope with diseases and defects, of course, people will use it. And their offspring will inherit these corrupted genes.
– Anthropologists have found that over the past 25 thousand years, the human brain has begun to decrease in volume. And especially with the advent of computers in our lives. The reason is seen in the fact that we shift brain functions to them. So, in general, we don't need a lot of brains. As a result, the reverse evolution begins, the degradation of the convolutions in the skull…
– Indeed, modern people underuse their brains in most cases. In order to live normally in today's society, a person no longer needs to understand anything much. That is, you can have a poorly functioning brain, but at the same time live in peace and leave offspring. Selection for the maintenance of a large brain has sharply weakened. And this, apparently, did not begin today, but in primitive times, when people began to receive more and more knowledge in a ready-made form from relatives. According to anthropology, the maximum brain volume was in our ancestors – 20-30 thousand years ago, in the Upper Paleolithic era. Since then, the human brain has shrunk slightly.
– They say that our memory will be greatly harmed by dependence on Internet search engines. Why memorize information if it can be easily found on the Web? Therefore, the brain will start using the Internet as a backup memory. As a result, the intellectual level of a person will decrease.
– That's right. But for biological evolution, it doesn't matter what we humans need and what we don't need to remember. It is more important who gives birth to more children: someone who has a good memory, or someone who has a bad one.
The fact is that the economic and social success of a person in modern society is not so much related to his reproductive success. In fact, since the second half of the 19th century, dependence in developed societies has been reversed: more successful and richer people on average give birth to fewer children than less fortunate ones. This means that there is a selection for an innate tendency to reduced life success.
At the same time, judging by the results of recent studies, people with a hereditary innate genetic predisposition to higher education and the development of high intelligence give birth to fewer children. And vice versa. If this trend continues, humanity will gradually become stupid. And this, together with the lack of physical activity, will lead to muscle atrophy and mass obesity.
In the process of evolution, those signs that are no longer needed disappear. One of them may be muscle strength. Comfortable transport of the future, exoskeletons and other machines and tools of our ingenuity will save a person from the need for walking and physical exertion. We have already become much weaker compared to our ancestors: we have grown bellies, we don't move much. Now it is no longer necessary to have good health in order to safely give birth to children. But these are not genes yet, but lifetime changes. You can get everything back by doing, for example, sports. If the fashion for a healthy lifestyle spreads, humanity will gradually get stronger.
– There is an opinion that with the help of genetic engineering, a person could make his bones more flexible – as, for example, in sharks, which have a lot of cartilage in the skeleton.
– It's hardly a good idea. If it were such, then there would be many similar species with a cartilaginous skeleton among terrestrial animals. Evolution could well create an unlimited number of them. But no: everyone has normal bones.
– They also say that people will have less hair, teeth, toes, etc. Because, they say, in the world of the future, all this will be superfluous. Is it really true?
– As I have already said, any directional changes occur due to selection. Everything will depend on which people with which eyes, ears, hair and fingers will leave more or less children. If all women decide that it is necessary to give birth to children only from bald men, we will have a process of baldness in a series of generations. But I haven't heard anything about such selection factors.
Fortunately, the diversity of marital preferences will continue to persist, so of course there will be no such distortions. Today, the most important evolutionary process is the accumulation of harmful mutations that spoil the work of our body systems. And this burden will increase.
– Is it true that due to the constant use of keyboards and touch screens in gadgets, the number of nerve endings in the fingers will increase, and the fingers and hands themselves will become long and thin?
– This logic is wrong. This will not lengthen the fingers. Such things are not inherited. Our fingers will become longer only if those people who deftly work with screens and keyboards, for some reason, start leaving more children than those who work worse with gadgets - users with short, fat fingers. But this is also very unlikely.
– According to one version, cloning, parthenogenesis and other wonders of reproductive technologies can make fertility in the traditional way a thing of the past. And this, in turn, will finally erase the boundaries between a man and a woman. Gender will cease to matter, and in men, sorry, due to a decrease in sexual activity, the corresponding organs will also significantly decrease…
– I can only repeat that they will decrease if men with small genitals begin to leave more offspring than their competitors with large ones. The same principle works here. If representatives of the LGBT community begin by some miracle to give birth to more children than people of traditional orientation, then the genes that increase the likelihood of non-traditional orientation will spread in the gene pool. But this is unlikely to be the case.
– Will there be a mixture of nationalities and races, and, as a result, a general averaging of facial features? People are already actively migrating and moving from mainland to mainland, the place of residence is becoming a variable.
– This process is going faster and faster. The mobility of the population has grown enormously in recent centuries. For example, 200-300 years ago, the average distance between the places of birth of a husband and wife on Earth was very small: only a few kilometers. That is, figuratively speaking, they married people from their village, well, or from a neighboring one. Accordingly, the mixing of gene pools was low. With the advent of railways and the development of transport, this distance began to grow dramatically, and today it is hundreds of kilometers.
Mixing of the human gene pool leads to smoothing of genetic differences. There is nothing bad here: it is rather good for the health of the offspring.
As for cloning and gene technologies, everything is unpredictable here, since it will depend on the development of science. For example, if we learn how to edit our own genome qualitatively, this can lead to serious evolutionary consequences. But science is still very far from such a breakthrough, and at the first stage we can only talk about the correction of some gross genetic hereditary diseases. And so to manipulate the genome in order to get, say, a talented child, a brilliant musician, etc... we haven't figured ourselves out that much yet. Although already now, for example, it is possible to get something remotely resembling the early stages of embryo development from stem cells in the laboratory. And hope in the foreseeable future to create viable animal embryos in the same way. And there it's not far to a person.
– Will we become cyborgs? Maybe a person will stuff his body and brain with electronics so much that he will be able to wirelessly connect to the Network, control the keyboard with the power of thought, watch videos on his own palm, and so on?
– If they invent something that can be usefully inserted into their body, and everyone will like it – why not. Progress cannot be stopped, including in the area of human–machine fusion - it doesn't matter whether someone likes it or not.
– Over the last 1000 years, man has not changed. Maybe global changes won't happen over the next millennium either, and we will remain the same as we are today?
– There are really no external changes. But who knows what innate mental abilities people had 1000 years ago? Some biologists suggest, for example, that the stupidity of humanity at the genetic level is going fast enough. And if it were possible with the help of a time machine to take some ancient Greek little children in our time, raise them and give them a good education, then they would grow up to be such geniuses that they would outshine all modern geniuses and discover things that we never dreamed of. In other words, 2000 years ago people were much smarter than us.
Maybe. But we can't verify that.
I think people are unlikely to change that much in 1000 years. And if the problem of genetic degeneration becomes really serious, they will surely figure out how to deal with it.
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