Ask A Genius 449 – The Future of Cultures (2)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/20
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Rick Rosner: Although, there is room for variation on that. There are plenty of gay people among humans and a certain gayness among animals. That may or may not – gayness – add to the reproductive fitness of a species.
But it certainly doesn’t detract by much. If it were really a hindrance to the reproductive success of a species, it might get evolved out. But it hasn’t. The people who will have the easiest time in human society, at least until recently, would be heterosexual reproductive couplings.
That is where evolution gets its oomph. Family, tradition, culture, religion, and communal life have all arrows pointing towards this. If you live by the dominant forces, the structures living by dominant forces become extinguished when those forces change; and, we’re about to see a huge shift in what the dominant forces shaping human society and transhuman or post-human – whatever you want to call it – will be.
The shift away from the purely biologically and evolutionarily determined forces, and towards market forces combined with technology. It is already happening. It seems weird because we live in a highly sexualized society stuffed with porn.
But people are having less sex than they did in the 60s. People are having fewer kids than before. People are less preoccupied with hooking up and relationships, because there is so much other compelling stuff being generated by our media plus our social media in combination with our increasingly powerful technology.
We have talked about this before. As we get closer and closer to replicate consciousness, we will be able to augment ourselves; we will be able to build other powerful information processing entities.
All these will be able to change what our base drives if we wish to. All these forces will erode the old forces.
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