[Bioman]

Translated from a European current affairs magazine that asked leading intellectuals to "formulate the most important idea for the future, which today seems strange, but which you think will certainly become reality".

Speaking is Jean Paul Van Bendegem, professor of mathematics, logics and the philosophy of science & technology:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Man's great disappearing act

Our DNA, the genetic information of our bodies and the workings of our brains are being mapped and understood better and faster every day. This makes it all the more likely that we will begin to engineer ourselves. [he lists useful applications like treating diseases, growing new organs, etc...]

But there is no reason whatsoever why we should want to stop at this point. In all likeliness, we will design entirely new human beings, from scratch. In Europe, many a family has a cradle for a designer baby standing by.

My peverse brain now predicts the following. If we are capable of intervening and engineering all aspects of the human body, we will do so equally when it comes to its "metric" characteristics: size, tallness, volume, circumference, thickness. We will use these purely metric interventions to solve world problems.

Once we succeed in intervening in the metrical matrix of the body, it is obvious that we will radically choose to design small people. Small people can use small cars, small houses, small trains, small airplanes. Tiny people use far less energy than big people. The advantages are enormous. Social and economic decisions will be driven by our capacity to scale down. If we make ourselves smaller, the planet can carry more people. Just imagine the joy, more souls make more happiness... Trillions of souls, make a lot of happiness.

Now the eternal pessimist will state the obvious and say that, even with more but smaller people, the planet's maximum carrying capacity will be reached pretty quickly again. But in the new world, this is a false problem. We can just make our small people half as small once more, and we can go on.

A fantastic man-made evolutionary symphony of scaling down will then perpetuate itself: man, tiny man, mini-man, micro-man, nano-man, pico-man, femto-man and, eventually, vanished man.

Mathematicians will understand that at the limit our numbers will be indefinitely large, but we no longer pack any space, we no longer consume any resources, we are gone, but at the same time there have never been more of us than at any time in the history of the cosmos.

We will do this. Now I only have to find reasons as to why such a future would not be pleasant. Is there anything wrong with being, without really being there?

[master_rb]

i know that where it comes to IQ it's the ratio that matters and not the size of the brain but there has to be a point where brain will lose its power where it's small and the ratio is kept the same

so i'm wondering if/when this comes true, what's the smallest size that we can get humans to shrink without losing the IQ

[AWPrime]

I do find the furture engineering of the humanbody likely, however i find the direction invisioned by Jean Paul to be counterproductive.

I think it is more likely that we find a way to have our own bodies produce electricity for our MP3 players or give ourselves larger manhoods. As well, the population of female blonds will increase.

[ColossalContrarian]

I've notice practicing yoga has engineered my body to be much more efficient than it's ever been. I feel like my body is in balance and my weight is usually always within two pounds of normal.

I eat only what I need and it tends to be on the more "green" side of things versus my old ways of red meat nearly 7 days a week.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('master_rb', '
')so i'm wondering if/when this comes true, what's the smallest size that we can get humans to shrink without losing the IQ

[MrMambo]

Thats one nutty professor. We will NEVER make a nano man. Not even engineered super efficient synthetic neurons can make up a signifficant nettwork on a NANO-scale. You need som real space in the x,y,z directions to be able to set up a neural nettwork able to perform mental tasks on human level. Nano meters are not part of the possible scale range. And this so called professor is talking about just engineering the dna.

Although the smallest possible scale for an organic neural network capable of performing tasks on human level might be a bit smaller than todays brains You will never get a human-level organic brain within 1 cubic cm, forget about it. Having this this professor talking about nano-scale men, he just shows off his comic-book level understanding of science.

Using some future available nanotech I can envision the possibility of making a synthetic neural nettwork with the same performance as a human brain (but maybe at much higher operating speeds) in scales of cubic cm to cubic mm.... But then again, why make the human mental capacity the benchmark. If you can engieneer synthetic neural nets of such high complexity why not engineer even higher complexity to create super human intelligence?

And because of humans preference for humans I expect that the engieneering of extra intelligence will first be used to increase the performance of priviliged individuals.

Maybe 100 or 200 years from now it will be obvious that traditional organic brains are the lowest performing and most vasteful part of an average persons intellectuall capacity and the trend will thus be towards discarding organic brains altogeather.