Are we still evolving? (Darwin, birth control, contraceptives, choice, evolution)

[Damori]

Hopefully in a thousand years we can become more rational creatures, or at least be able to access more of our brains.

[Lightkeeper]

I think we will access more of our brains. I thought of something interesting today. Picture bread in the oven baking. I thought, what if we are still being created, we aren't the finished product. Time is a human dimension, but there is no time in eternity. It reminds me of the Hansel and Gretel story. Maybe we are still in the lab.

[Druidus]

We already have access to 100% of our brains. We don't have anymore then we currently use. Evolution wouldn't create a large brain without reasons, as it takes a lot of calories to run. We only use 10% of our brain for certain tasks because we only need that much brain for that task. For instance, I don't feel my clothes on my skin unless I think about it. I'm not using my touch 100%.

[Ceridwen018]

Lol, evolution isn't an entity--it isn't 'planning' anything for us. It merely provides potential. The fact that we only use 12% of our brains is extremely interesting, though. I agree that future evolution of humans may involve increased brain activity. What do you guys think using more of our brains would warrant? ESP?

[Druidus]

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

The ten percent (or 12) myth is just that, a myth. Read the link.

[Lightkeeper]

Whatever you want to call it we have capacity to learn a lot more than we know. I don't think we use the full potential of our brains. And, yes, ESP could be developed. How about mind travel?

[Mr Spinkles]

Thank you, Druidus, for exposing that myth.

[Jaiket]

If evolutionary science is correct then I would ask how any living organism can escaping selective pressure? I personally view it to be likely that life can never stop evolving, it's part of life.

[painted wolf]

We are ofcource assuming that inteligence will continue to be the primary factor in our evolution... it would be nice but it is equilly likely that evolution will lead us away from it, or ignore it alltogether. Should the circumstances of our future evolution warrant it we could adapt away from the need for all this extra brain-power.
My guess is that we already have all the brain power we can resonably expect from evolution... we already need collapable skulls just to be born, wich places our infants at terrible risk untill the skull hardens. Any more and birth itself would become to dangerous. (we already have the highest risk births of any species both for mother and child, barring of cource speices such as salmon )
If we are to continue to evolve I would guess it would be in terms of our social evolution, unless by some fluke we were reduced back to pre-industrial tecnology.
Then we would continue to evolve to suit our individual environments as we had been doing for the past 30,000+ years.

wa:do

[Lightkeeper]

Sometimes we can look to science fiction to see possibilities for the future. Much of science fiction has shown brain power increasing. Many times the aliens are more evolved than we are. I see us using more brain power. As for size we have already created machines to do thinking for us.