# What will humans look like in 5,000, 10,,000 and 25,000 years? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 9, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061 "2018-09-09T19:27:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/41 "2018-09-11T22:28:17Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The idea that humanities problem solving capabilities will grow with time, and become vastly superior than they are now is a religious belief? Yep. It is a delusion based on ignorance of basic science. We are very near the _end_ of increases in computer speed, not the beginning. We will never have computers running at a bazillion-kazillion exoflops no matter how much you want them. (You also won’t get cars running 100,000 miles to the tank of fuel/carge, airplanes traveling at Mach 873, and cell phone batteries that last a million years between charges. All technologies plateau.) ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/42 "2018-09-11T22:39:52Z")
Anyone using current trends to project far into the future (or past) is destined to fail big. As Mark Twain put it so eloquently: > [@](#): > > In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. > > - Life on the Mississippi ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/43 "2018-09-11T22:47:44Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > [New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States - PubMed](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10842506) > > There is also the issue of international fertility, where places like Hong Kong, South Korea, Germany, China, etc. have low fertility while sub saharan Africa has high fertility. [Richard Lynn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn). > [@wikipedia](#): > > Lynn’s review work on global racial differences in cognitive ability has been cited for misrepresenting the research of other scientists, and has been criticised for unsystematic methodology and distortion. > > John P. Jackson Jr., of the University of Colorado, Boulder, disputed Lynn’s claim (in The Science of Human Diversity) that the Pioneer Fund was dedicated to funding objective scientific research. Jackson wrote that “…although the Pioneer Fund may not have endorsed any policy proposal officially, it has funded a group that is remarkably uniform in its opposition to school integration, immigration, and affirmative action.”[94] > > David King, the coordinator of the consumer watchdog group Human Genetics Alert, said “we find Richard Lynn’s claims that some human beings are inherently superior to others repugnant.”[95] Similarly, Gavin Evans wrote in the Guardian that Lynn was one of a number of “flat-earthers” who have claimed that “Africans, or black Americans, or poor people” are less intelligent than Westerners. He further wrote, with regard to Lynn’s claims that Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, “What is remarkable in all this is not so much that there are people who believe him - after all, there are still those who insist the Earth is flat - but rather that any creditable institution should take it seriously.”[96] > > The datum that Lynn and Vanhanen used for the lowest IQ estimate, Equatorial Guinea, was taken from a group of children in a home for the developmentally disabled in Spain.[97] Corrections were applied to adjust for differences in IQ cohorts (the “Flynn” effect) on the assumption that the same correction could be applied internationally, without regard to the cultural or economic development level of the country involved. While there appears to be rather little evidence on cohort effect upon IQ across the developing countries, one study in Kenya (Daley, Whaley, Sigman, Espinosa, & Neumann, 2003) shows a substantially larger cohort effect than is reported for developed countries (p.?)[7] > > In a critical review of The Bell Curve, psychologist Leon Kamin faulted Lynn for “disregarding scientific objectivity”, “misrepresenting data”, and for “racism”.[98] Kamin argues that the studies of cognitive ability of Africans in Lynn’s meta-analysis cited by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray show strong cultural bias. Kamin also reproached Lynn for concocting IQ values from test scores that have no correlation to IQ.[99] Kamin also notes that Lynn excluded a study that found no difference in White and Black performance, and ignored the results of a study which showed Black scores were higher than White scores.[100] > > Journalist Charles Lane criticised Lynn’s methodology in his article in The New York Review of Books, “The Tainted Sources of The Bell Curve” (1994).[101] Pioneer Fund president Harry Weyher, Jr. published a response accusing the reviewer of errors and misrepresentation; Lane also replied to this with a rebuttal.[102] > > In 2002 an academic dispute arose after Lynn claimed that some races are inherently more psychopathic than others, and other psychologists criticised his data and interpretations.[103] Psychologist Leon Kamin has said that “Lynn’s distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with the scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity”.[5] > > In 2010, on his 80th birthday, Lynn was celebrated with a special issue of Personality and Individual Differences dedicated to his work that was edited by Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg with contributions by Nyborg, J. Philippe Rushton, Satoshi Kanazawa and several others.[104] > > In February 2018, the Ulster University students’ union issued a motion calling for the university to revoke Lynn’s title as emeritus professor. The motion argued that Lynn’s title should be revoked because he has made statements that are “racist and sexist in nature”.[105] The university agreed to this request in April 2018.[106] ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/44 "2018-09-11T22:49:00Z")
No Idea what things will be like, all I can guarantee it will be different and that there will be a general concensus among the older population that things were much much better 4,970, 9,970, or 24,970 years from now before everything went to hell. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/45 "2018-09-12T01:30:48Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Anyone using current trends to project far into the future (or past) is destined to fail big. As Mark Twain put it so eloquently: xkcd - Extrapolating > **[Extrapolating](https://xkcd.com/605/)** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061.md?page=2)