What other cognitive abilities might evolve?

[His Noodly Appendage]

...and I'm not talking about woo-woo telepathy or global consciousness or the like.

There have been several major milestones in the evolution of human consciousness, with fundamentally new modes of thought (symbol-abstraction, theory of mind, discrete-combinatorial linguistics, etc) that have radically changed the human experience and lifestyle.

Given the information we are exposed to, what qualitatively different ways of processing it might plausibly be selected for?

[RBH]

Lemme see. What are the properties of "information we're exposed to" that are different from, say, 40,000 years ago (the milestones you mention were likely all in place by then). Mostly rate and frequency, no? More info at higher rates and via multiple media. That suggests something like parallel processing of multiple input streams across sensory systems (mostly vision and audition) without the vertigo and disorientation that mismatches between sensory system now often induces. (I'm particularly interested in the vertigo thing at the moment, having recently had a day-long episode of vertigo due to a vestibular conflict with vision caused by an ear infection. No fun.)

[Linus]

Lemme see. What are the properties of "information we're exposed to" that are different from, say, 40,000 years ago (the milestones you mention were likely all in place by then). Mostly rate and frequency, no?
Interpreting the question broadly, I think there is another important factor: Thanks to e-mail, phones and communities like Facebook, young people these days have many more friends and acquaintances than previous generations. Also, people live in cities/towns rather than small tribes, so the number of people you must manipulate, impress or outshine in order to reach a high social status has also increased. So if this situation continues, the underlying genetic influences on our ability to understand and manipulate others may slowly follow.

And going back to media, maybe also the type of information has changed a bit. It seems to me that advertising, propaganda and biased news coverage all have the effect that people nowadays are faced with much more manipulative kinds of information than they used to 15,000 or 5,000 years ago. I imagine a sort of evolutionary arms race (cultural evolution) between consumers and producers of this manipulative information. If that continues long enough, the genetic make-up of humanity may follow.

Finally, maybe none of this will happen, because most of the world's population is still quite poor and consumes much less media information than the rich Western world does.

[His Noodly Appendage]

RBH: it needn't be a novel source of information to process - it could be a long-felt need that never found a useful mutation to fulfil.

I guess I'm asking what a mind *could* usefully do, but doesn't.

[seebs]

I am pretty sure that some cats (but not all cats) have theory of mind.

I'd say that there's a huge benefit to good analytics that may be in some ways more pronounced now; we do a lot more things where you have to repeatedly think things through, rather than figuring them out when you're 15 and using them for the rest of your life.

Hard to say.

[Patient Skeptic]

We may evolve more cross-sensory processing abilities. You know, like how some people process smells visually, where they actually see colors associated with smells. Apparently, this can happen with any of the senses. You may hear sounds, but they get processed in the taste area of the brain. It seems like that would improve overall sensory abilities.

Also, we might evolve to see in ultraviolet or infrared. How cool would that be? Some insects see in ultraviolet, and their world of flowers opens up tremendously. Apparently, the flowers advertise to the insects with bizarre designs only visible in the ultraviolet. Infrared vision might get annoying, though, because there's just so much out there giving off heat. Anyway, I'm using the ultraviolet vision in a sci-fi story I'm working on.

[Monad]

I think the next milestone is probably going to be the incorporation of memory backup and additional information processing and maybe also sensory modules of a technological nature. I think our future evolution is more likely to be the self directed, transhumanist variety that Julian Huxley envisaged.

[David B]

Lie detecting is a faculty that I'd suggest has evolved, and continues to evolve.

Ditto the ability to counter lie detection developments.

David B

[Monad]

Lying and lie detecting are both related to theory of mind and in particular orders of intentionality. This is indeed one of the key features of the human brain/mind - even animals like Chimps that can deceive and recognise deception with possible second order intentionality cannot handle the 4-5 orders of intentionality humans regularly deal with and yes, this is an area that is probably on the cutting edge of development.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Well, unless we take control of our own evolution (preferebly by genetic engineering: selective breeding is another alternative, but less ethical, as genetic engineering can in principle be made available to everyone)... then any new "evolved" traits need some means of spreading themselves through the population. Or at least a certain subset of it: if those with certain mental traits are preferentially attracted to others of the opposite sex who share those traits, then those traits can be reinforced and spread through that segment of the population.

I can see this happening if the trait leads to shared hobbies and interests which provide opportunities for couples to meet (especially as there are now more opportunities for like-minded people to meet online first). One possibility that springs to mind is the likely emergence of more women who share the traits associated with traditionally-male "nerds".

[Rilx]

By our existing cognitive abilities we already change our environment to fit ourselves, instead of environment selecting the most fitting ones of us. So I don't think that the traditional selection for surviving in changing physical environment would have much meaning. Instead, globalization and increase of available information - facts, beliefs, lies, ... and plethora of structures in which they are organized - may evolve "global man" whose ability to understand and manage all kind of information is radically higher. Maybe the size of brains doubles, maybe "subbrains" appear in other parts of the body ...

[David B]

By our existing cognitive abilities we already change our environment to fit ourselves, instead of environment selecting the most fitting ones of us. So I don't think that the traditional selection for surviving in changing physical environment would have much meaning. Instead, globalization and increase of available information - facts, beliefs, lies, ... and plethora of structures in which they are organized - may evolve "global man" whose ability to understand and manage all kind of information is radically higher. Maybe the size of brains doubles, maybe "subbrains" appear in other parts of the body ...

A lot of our current environment, and I think from a time early in the evolution of humans, is a social environment, in which there is competition for status and mating opportunities, which seem to me to be related.

Changing our physical environment to suit our selves doesn't change that.

There would appear to me to be difficulties with evolving brains to become bigger, as long as natural childbirth predominates. I'd speculate that brain size is pretty much as big as it is likely to get, given the current female body plan staying much the same.

David B

[Rilx]

There would appear to me to be difficulties with evolving brains to become bigger, as long as natural childbirth predominates. I'd speculate that brain size is pretty much as big as it is likely to get, given the current female body plan staying much the same.
I thought of the mutations in MCPH and ASPM genes which have increased the size of brains leading to evolution of our cognitive abilities. I don't think that female body is crucial, we spend only 5% of our growth time in the womb. Maybe our head takes the banana form. :banana:

[David B]

There would appear to me to be difficulties with evolving brains to become bigger, as long as natural childbirth predominates. I'd speculate that brain size is pretty much as big as it is likely to get, given the current female body plan staying much the same.
I thought of the mutations in MCPH and ASPM genes which have increased the size of brains leading to evolution of our cognitive abilities. I don't think that female body is crucial, we spend only 5% of our growth time in the womb. Maybe our head takes the banana form. :banana:

LOL.

One good thing about lay people like me indulging in speculation is that the better informed will join in and teach us something.

David B

[Don Alhambra]

Interpreting the question broadly, I think there is another important factor: Thanks to e-mail, phones and communities like Facebook, young people these days have many more friends and acquaintances than previous generations. Also, people live in cities/towns rather than small tribes, so the number of people you must manipulate, impress or outshine in order to reach a high social status has also increased. So if this situation continues, the underlying genetic influences on our ability to understand and manipulate others may slowly follow.

I'm not so sure about this. I have a lot of 'friends' on Facbook (go popular me!) but the vast majority of those I don't really care about. Not that I wouldn't call the fire brigade if their houses were burning down, but I'm just not interested in them as people. And I'm sure the vast majority of them would say the same about me.

The people I am interested in are my real friends. The only thing Facebook makes easier is keeping in touch with people, really, who otherwise you would eventually forget about after you left university (say). But I don't think that I'm any closer to them as people, or that I have many more friends than those who have never used Facebook.

The things about cities is interesting, but anyone who's ever been to London (for example) knows that living in a city is really all about living in a smallish community of friends and acquaintances and alongside a huge amount of strangers you will likely never meet or interact with. Of course the potential for meeting more people is there, but it's by no means a foregone conclusion that people living in cities have a larger social circle.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

[llanitedave]

As others have suggested, I'm not sure that evolution in the "classical" sense is going to continue to apply. Technology and culture definitely puts us into a psuedo-Lamarkian mode for future evolution, in which the abilities we gain in the future will be those we choose to gain.

I see communications technology evolving to the point where "thought-to-thought" transmission over a distance becomes possible, with all the privacy and social complications that implies. The ability to merge technology and biology will allow us to engineer our bodies and brains in ways we can't really fathom yet -- but why not a "coprocesser" in the brain that allows us to do savant-style numerical processing, for example? Future biological abilities, both physical and cognitive, are likely to be "installed" rather than "evolved". The fact that these abilities, and their acquisition, is going to require some economic purchasing power will initiate another potential source of conflict between the "enhanced" rich and the "unimproved" poor.

And for those of our descendants who eventually learn to exploit and live among the comets and KBO's of our own (and other) outer solar system, the biotechnical implications are, again, too deep to even imagine yet.

[Monad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

[llanitedave]

Great link, Monad. Personally, I think that while "enhancement" of various kinds is inevitable (assuming the species doesn't collapse upon itself in the next few generations -- a fairly risky assumption, I know), the attempt to create some systematic and comprehensive "transhuman ideal" is misguided. What's more likely to happen, especially if humans succeed in colonizing bodies beyond Earth, is diversification. Not all possible enhancements are inevitable for every population group. Not all possible environments are amenable to all biotechnologies.

Think "founder effect" applied to cultural selection.

[Monad]

The person to read on Transhumanism is Julian Huxley who was also one of the founders of the New Synthesis in evolutionary theory. There's a nice Wiki of some of his main writings and ideas here:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley

I used to quote it to Supersport a lot as it's a great antidote to his fallacy that evolutionists have no sense of the wonder and beauty of the universe or of systems level thinking. Huxley argued that while human evolution has been a biological and quantitative process on a qualitative level it has involved a transition to a new phase of evolution and that we are the first member of the domain "Psychozoa" and that further evolution within this domain is likely to be an amalgam of self directed biological, psychosocial, cultural and technological development. It all fits neatly with some of Sagan's writings and Dawkins' concept of the Meme.

[llanitedave]

Huxley argued that while human evolution has been a biological and quantitative process on a qualitative level it has involved a transition to a new phase of evolution and that we are the first member of the domain "Psychozoa" and that further evolution within this domain is likely to be an amalgam of self directed biological, psychosocial, cultural and technological development. It all fits neatly with some of Sagan's writings and Dawkins' concept of the Meme.

Here's hoping the new phylum doesn't exterminate itself before it has a chance to diversify and get a firm foothold in the galaxy.

[Gagundathar Inexplicable]

Always assuming we don't suffer a worldwide tech crash, in the next 20 years or so, we will commonly be augmenting our brains with direct data input both sensory and encyclopedic.
This won't even require physical implants though those might be acceptable.

I think we will almost certainly direct our own evolution from this point onward either consciously or subconsciously unless (as I mentioned above) we fail as a tech species and revert to scattered tribes living off the landfills of our storied ancestors.

[Gagundathar Inexplicable]

Huxley argued that while human evolution has been a biological and quantitative process on a qualitative level it has involved a transition to a new phase of evolution and that we are the first member of the domain "Psychozoa" and that further evolution within this domain is likely to be an amalgam of self directed biological, psychosocial, cultural and technological development. It all fits neatly with some of Sagan's writings and Dawkins' concept of the Meme.

Here's hoping the new phylum doesn't exterminate itself before it has a chance to diversify and get a firm foothold in the galaxy.

Psychozoa is a new concept to me. Thanks!