The next step toward skynet

[Moristans]

Religious matters aside, when you die, you are dead. There is no evolution for you. The best you can do is create another intelligent lifeform to continue on in your place after you're gone -- children.

If you are talking about Darwinian Evolution, individuals do not evolve at all. Populations evolve over concurrent generations. Darwinian Evolution does not require "advancement". All it requires is changes in allele frequencies. Speciation requires the aquisition of new traits.

The best any individual can do to participate in Darwinian Evolution is reproduce their own genes, or, have enough individuals in their immediate family to reproduce those genes for them. Remember, you share half of your siblings genes and a quarter of your first cousin's genes. If your family reproduces enough, they have effectively reproduced the same genes you carry.

There's tons of debate on whether or not modern humans are still "evolving". The fact of the matter is, when we achieved the ability to significantly alter our environment to suit our particular genotype, we effectively removed one of the most important variables driving changes in gene frequency and the establishment of new traits for Darwinian Evolution. Gene frequencies can drift, but there's nothing to really sort them out.

The problem is, our genetic variability between and within populations is already practically nil with 99% of our allele frequencies fixed. You can't push allele frequencies in any way shape or form if you do not have genetic variability to select upon.

Too bad Hitler ruined eugenics for us.

In all seriousness, Eugenics fails for the same reason throughbred breeding of any species has failed to produce anything resembling a super organism. You can't purge gene defects as long as recessive alleles persist, and you can't push selection for a hand full of traits in one direction indefinitely. Eventually, you fix allele frequencies and run out of variation to select upon.


What any of this has to with robots or AI, I have no idea.

I'm just waiting for my kids to finish an exam.