Starting some time in the next 10 years genetic testing will enable embryo selection that will start off the trend toward healthier, sexier, and smarter offspring. That trend will accelerate in the 2020s and 2030s. Therefore in the 2040s and beyond we (at least those of us who live long enough to get rejuvenation therapies that make us young again) will witness a trend toward higher attractiveness. People will become more perfect-looking and more able. Parents will generally want children capable of achieving more success. This will tend to select for intelligence, looks, height, stamina, and motivation. The choices made to get these desired traits will select against genetic diversity in the humans species.It is safe to say that this sort of speculation has been around since the 1960s, when the progress of DNA modification was first thought to have potential. I even remember encountering it in an Archie comic once.There are problems, of course, with this simplistic assessment of future evolution. First, traits such as "intelligence" are polygenic, and much is unknown about how intelligence forms. It has been, after all, only a short time since the Forkhead Box P2 gene was discovered that seems to help drive language capabilities. Other genes are pleiotropic, affecting a range of traits. How do you influence one and not others? Even sophisticated gene therapy has a hard time homing in on one trait, and that is if it is not pleiotropic or polygenic. Second, people are remarkably funny about what they want. In many polls, it has been found that the women that men find most attractive usually winds up not being the one they will marry.
It is possible that we might be able to decrease the genetic load of the population but even this will be slow. Many diseases, such as MS and Parkinsons, are post-reproductive and their genetic basis is still largely a mystery. All of these factors (and others I am sure) have largely been responsible for the fact that humans don't look appreciably sexier, aren't healthier and don't have more motivation than their precursors 50-60 years ago.
In many polls, it has been found that the women that men find most attractive usually winds up not being the one they will marry.
ReplyDeleteBut that doesn't necessarily mean men don't marry based on beauty. What men find attractive is, to some extent, homogeneous. So the woman I find most attractive probably has more suitors, which lowers my likelihood of marrying her.
humans don't look appreciably sexier, aren't healthier and don't have more motivation than their precursors 50-60 years ago.
I'm not so sure. I'm tempted to look at movie stars of the 1950's versus today. I think they're a lot more attractive now. But then we run into a few confounds. Fashion tastes influence our assessments of attractiveness, and those tastes have changed over the years, so it's not an apples to apples comparison. Also, we've probably gotten better (and more demanding) about using physical fitness, photographic techniques and cosmetic surgery to enhance a star's looks. The demand for sexiness may also be higher now than it was back then, which changes the composition of the two samples. Or even if it hasn't changed, movie stars aren't a random sample of the population, so it could be that attractiveness is only on the rise in the top tier of the species.
But all of that aside, I compare my parents (in their 60's) to pictures of my grandparents at roughly the same age. There's no comparison; my parents look much younger and more attractive. Shoot, Jim, I think I even mentioned a while back that based on your photo I assumed you were in your 30's. This may not have a big genetic component. Maybe environmental factors are the big player here. But I do think that the human race (in industrialized nations, at any rate) is looking better and better in recent generations.