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Comment by Nicholas_C | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating. I wonder if this was learned through invention or through mimicking humans.

If only we could simulate evolution millions of years and see how chimps evolve.

> ...chimps that we can accelerate to near light speeds.

Isn't that the wrong way round? The first generation of chimps would return after hundreds of years [have passed on Earth] having barely appeared to have aged at all.

If you want to see the future, it is you who has to accelerate to near light speeds and then you will return to an Earth far in the future.

That idea is over 70 years old.nhttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God:

"A highly secretive and reclusive biochemist named Kidder produces inventions that transform human life, spanning every aspect of science and engineering. Unbeknownst to anyone, Kidder has developed a synthetic life form, which he calls "neoterics." These creatures live at a greatly accelerated rate, and therefore have a very short lifespan and produce many generations over a short period of time. This allows Kidder, by presenting them with a frequently changing environment, to "evolve" them quickly into highly intelligent lifeforms who fear Kidder and worship him like a god. Kidder can control his neoterics' environment, and thus force them into developing technology far beyond that of humans."

There was a Simpson's halloween homage to this.

Futurama also

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfellas

Other excellent stories in this genre: Blood Music by Greg Bear, Permutation City and Crystal Nights (http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/) by Greg Egan. Marooned in Realtime by Vinge had this a bit too—probably closest thematically to the GP's comment. A bunch of people wake up to a world that's been empty of humans for many thousands of years; the book spends some time talking about how some animals evolved.

Haven't chimps already been evolving in tandem with our last common ancestor for millions of years? Why should they suddenly fast forward their evolutionary progress now that we are observing them?

Perhaps we can ask them in a couple years.

I've heard (think it was from the BBC Life series) that human evolution has sacrificed a lot of jaw muscle and other skull-related ruggedness as compared to monkeys, making room for bigger brains. Since this was obviously not a worthwile tradeoff for chimps etc. in the past, why should it be now?

My understanding is that this is due to heating food after early humans learned to control fire. Cooked food is more nutritious, and easier to eat, and can last longer without spoiling. This leads to the ability to allocate resources in the body more effectively (to the larger brains, versus muscles for hunting) and removes the need for extremely powerful jaws.

Not only. We are generally far weaker than chimps. Their muscle fiber allows for much more strength than us. But strength is useless when you're smart enough to work around it.

This may be what you are driving at, but in case it isn't: The impression that chimps are suddenly rapidly evolving may simply be a consequence of us watching them closely. We may simply be noticing behaviors that have been present for much longer.

They may not be, as others have pointed out, but on the other hand, humans have disrupted their environment and put them under extreme selective pressure of various kinds. We have also reduced their population, creating a greater likelihood of inbreeding, which allows new variations to spread very rapidly throughout the remaining population.

So it isn't our observing them that is relevant. We may be putting pressure on them that is driving their evolution, and evolutionary change can happen very rapidly when the pressure is high.

If you accelerated your terrarium to a high fraction of c, time inside would appear (from our perspective) to slow down, not the other way around. What you want to do here is accelerate us to near light speed instead.

You're right, my mistake.

Does it really matter? Learning is pretty much always mimicking others, whether it is you learning from others before you or our ancestors mimicking their predecessors like Australopithecus, Neanderthal or others. That's essentially what evolution is, adopting characteristics of preceding organisms by various means.

Wouldn't we have to be the ones in the terrarium? Few years pass for the party zipping round at a large percentage of c, many years pass for those left behind on Earth.

Yup. Got that backwards.

> If only we could simulate evolution a few million years and see how chimps evolve.

Look around. I see no reason a primate so similar to humans would not continue to evolve along the same lines.

Because humans already exist, perhaps.

Point. But in that case ther is no wondering cause they will be exactly how we make them. I assume question was based on no interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dweN_7vhhk

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