Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection would somewhat indicate that in order for humans to evolve only some of the fittest have to survive, and how else are humans going to evolve outside of basic knowledge? Would it not only make sense for an almost apocalyptic event to occur on our planet that wipes out the ones that did not see it coming? I have no knowledge of what this event may be but in order for humans to move along in the natural process of evolution I believe an event of this magnitude will have to happen. We are not physically evolving due to the extended life and dominance over all other creatures, the only thing that humans can possibly do is to evolve mentally. Some may try to point to height but in reality this is also an inadvertent cause of a select group of people being smarter than the rest, mandating meals at school making sure students are provided with the most essential nutrients has dramatically increased growth rate in humans over the past thousands of years. Heights has increased as proper nutrients has, the smarter people get at understanding their body the more potential we have to be taller as a whole. This is an example of a contribution from a select group of elite. “Thinkers,” that make it possible for everyone else (via mass communication) to live life ignorantly and with no need for firing electrons. Sadly, I do believe that this way of evolving we have selected makes us very open to a potential great catastrophe, if our “thinkers” are eventually outnumbered by the “leeches” we may be looking at our greatest apocalypse. Directionally speaking, less and less jobs will be available as our world proceeds, the more and more we push to make a perfect artificial human. This is an obvious direct relationship, more robots → less jobs for real humans. Theoretically speaking, one day all jobs (outside of the programmers) could be a “task” or program performed by a piece of artificial intelligence. All you hear about in the average man’s day is the “repetition” and “monotony” of his normal day-to-day desk job, to me the word repetition sounds like a programmable task. Artificially created lawyers could generate the best way to attack a case based on all the previous court cases decisions this world has seen, doctors may just take a picture of your knee and dispense the perfect remedy. In a world of this sort what is there to notion that people will not, obviously, be getting dumber? With no need to do anything besides anything what will people be left to do? In my mind this world could very well be our reality far before any supernova. A place ruled behind the people that created it, the ones that made it possible for these machines to take over. What kind of company could ever have the power to do that? The technological wit and funding too, essentially, own the entire Worlds workforce. And if one company owns the workforce does this not in return mean that they also own all of the money in the world? The first company, naturally, that comes to mind would be Google. Google started as two people that wanted to organize the World Wide Web, the success that they had with this made Larry Page and Sergey Brin two of the most successful people in the world. What’s keeping their company from eventually creating the secret recipe? It will take the brightest mind the world has ever seen but I do believe one day it will happen. Man will create artificial man, better then man. I only hope my posterity has the drive to stay well informed. 
Great post. What you outline is inevitable. The best we can hope for is that one company doesn’t control it all 
. God forbid they patent the technology ! 
I think another very interesting question is what kind of rights will these machines have. If they are able to reason and think as humans do, don’t they at least deserve equal rights?
that’s not necessarily the case, but i understand how it would appear to be the case. here’s how i thought through this dilemma:
Say you’re a business owner of some large corporation, idk, McDonalds, and you realize that if you fire every person working inside a McDo store and make the whole store automated with machines, the cost of running McDo will be cheaper…so you do it, right? You fire like 95% of the employees of McDo and all McDos are run by robots now, at a cheaper cost. So, if this is as far as your thought process went in regards to the result of mechanized labor, it would be easy to think “more robots means less jobs.” However, it might be wise to go further:
Cheaper cost for McDo to run their stores means cheaper prices for McDo customers (They don’t have to necessarily lower their prices right away, but if they don’t and some other company also mechanizes and is able to lower their costs, McDo better respond in kind with lower prices, so eventually, if not right away, yes, lower prices). Hell, let’s make it easy and say THE WHOLE FOOD INDUSTRY has done this, mechanized farms, mechanized butchers, mechanized restaurants. So, 90% of people in the food industry are now out of a job, right? But the whole food industry is a lot cheaper as well. Here’s what happens: everyone who buys food (namely EVERYONE) and still has a job actually now has more money to spend than before. What do people do with excess money? They spend it on things. Shoes, art, music, whatever the fuck they want. More money available = more spending = MORE JOBS! YAY!
So, sure, there might be an immediate rise in the unemployment rate, but not a long-term one. Long term, cheaper food = higher quality of living. Those 90% of food industry workers don’t just stay unemployed for their whole lives, you see. They’re going to do things (well maybe some of them won’t, but there’s always people that don’t succeed, and that’s been the case since way before robots). They’re going to become trade workers, artisans, musicians, web designers, they’re going to do THINGS.
We already know this is the case because this already happened, you understand. When the printing press came out, what happened? What do we hear about the printing press? Do we hear “OH NO all the book writers who wrote by hand lost their jobs and society crumbled!” No, lol, we hear, “Books became cheaper and more people had access to them.” That’s kinda how it goes. That’s pretty much the story in every market that’s had a big technological advance (except medicine, but that’s mostly because governments have their dirty hands in it).
In this context, all that “fitness” means is the relative reproductive success (including survival ability) of one set of genes relative to others. So in a sense, if the fittest survive no more well than others, they are no more fit than those others!
“Evolution” does not necessarily mean an “upward” development. If humans would “devolve”, so to say, that would still be evolution. Like any other science, biology is not prescriptive. It does not teach that it’s “good” to survive or reproduce. It’s descriptive only. And fitness is relative to environment. So although in the case of an “apocalyptic” event, those that see it coming may be fitter than those who do not, in the absence of such an event the converse may be the case: those who are preoccupied with anticipating such events may have less reproductive success because they are less preoccupied with the things that raise fitness in the absence of such events (e.g., dating).
Genetic and mimetic evolution are two different things. And both happen all the time. Humans are physically evolving; it just takes time, as it usually does. You may be talking about revolutions in evolution rather than about evolution proper.
Flannel Jesus i think you brought up a very good point there that i had not thought of, what you stated is 100% true.
This was just a late night thought process that i had the drive to write down, thank you guys for reading it and responding.
Spencer.
Hardy-Weinberg.