Evolution's Next Stage

[longknife]

Driven by technological advances, humans are changing faster than ever. Coming soon: our next stage, Homo evolutus.

By Steven Kotler @ Evolution's Next Stage | DiscoverMagazine.com

And, with cloning and genetic engineering, what will happen next? The skinny little guy with the huge head we've seen in scifi cartoons?

 

[waltky]

Granny tells possum to play nice an' share his balogna sammich with other lil' possums...

Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows
2 August 2013 > Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first. Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of "the prisoner's dilemma", a scenario of game theory - the study of strategic decision-making. Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us become extinct. Game theory involves devising "games" to simulate situations of conflict or co-operation. It allows researchers to unravel complex decision-making strategies and to establish why certain types of behaviour among individuals emerge.

Freedom or prison

A team from Michigan State University, US, used a model of the prisoner's dilemma game, where two suspects who are interrogated in separate prison cells must decide whether or not to inform on each other. In the model, each person is offered a deal for freedom if they inform on the other, putting their opponent in jail for six months. However, this scenario will only be played out if the opponent chooses not to inform. If both "prisoners" choose to inform (defection) they will both get three months in prison, but if they both stay silent (co-operation) they will both only get a jail term of one month. The eminent mathematician John Nash showed that the optimum strategy was not to co-operate in the prisoner's dilemma game. "For many years, people have asked that if he [Nash] is right, then why do we see co-operation in the animal kingdom, in the microbial world and in humans," said lead author Christoph Adami of Michigan State University.

Co-operating is key for evolution

Mean extinction

The answer, he explained, was that communication was not previously taken into account. "The two prisoners that are interrogated are not allowed to talk to each other. If they did they would make a pact and be free within a month. But if they were not talking to each other, the temptation would be to rat the other out. "Being mean can give you an advantage on a short timescale but certainly not in the long run - you would go extinct." These latest findings contradict a 2012 study where it was found that selfish people could get ahead of more co-operative partners, which would create a world full of selfish beings.

This was dubbed a "mean and selfish" strategy and depended on a participant knowing their opponent's previous decision and adapting their strategy accordingly. Crucially, in an evolutionary environment, knowing your opponent's decision would not be advantageous for long because your opponent would evolve the same recognition mechanism to also know you, Dr Adami explained. This is exactly what his team found, that any advantage from defecting was short-lived. They used a powerful computer model to run hundreds of thousands of games, simulating a simple exchange of actions that took previous communication into account.

More BBC News - Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows

 

[eots]

Granny tells possum to play nice an' share his balogna sammich with other lil' possums...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzNcY-gZdiA]Game Theory pt1 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[TheOldSchool]

I think we're going to evolve wings and huge dicks. And maybe 3 or more boobs per woman.