Thankyou for answering my opening post seriously. A considered reply is rare, much less one that is intelligent.
Unfortunately, you suggest that although you have this wonderful theory of evolution, which helps you identify things that look like a process that is responsible for who we are, you are actually unable to decide on the basis of that theory whether something will be good or not for who we are. That makes the thread slightly redundant... but not without making the theory of evolution look pointless (at best).
Not everything of value must have intrinsic moral guidelines. Let me give you an example. Aerodynamics does a wonderful job of telling us how objects interact with air while in motion. It allows us to do incredible things like build airplanes and such. However, it does not tell us what we should do with such knowledge. Aerodynamics also allows the production of missiles and other devices of war. Nothing about aerodynamics tells us that we should or shouldn't build them though.
Likewise, evolution does an excellent job of explaining how the genetic makeup of a population changes over time. It allows us to predict and prevent development of antibiotic resistance and helps with many other areas of development. The knowledge of how populations change may also lead to other advances that may have moral implications (I'd argue that the ones posed by you here are much more biotech than evolution though). Evolution doesn't tell us what we should do with the knowledge, it just gives us the knowledge itself.
Neverthless, on topic, I have to ask: how many people here would look at a technology that harmonizes (makes of one mind) a population of human beings as an advance in evolution?
It would be quite a breakthrough, but not in the feild of evolution.
As far as the potential impact of such technology on the evolution of the species, depending how such technology works, it may casue an evolutionary response, but would not be evolution itself.
Evolutionary responses are how populations are genetically affected by a change in the environment. The change in the environment could be either pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad. A new virus, for example, may cause such a response even though I think we all agree that such a virus would be bad.
PS. I never said prosthetics or even genetics was bad.
Ok, i wasn't sure of the extent of what you would consider implants and how invasive such an implant would have to be to be considered a change in design. I'm still not sure of the exact limits of what you find troubling though. Perhaps you could respond to the last part of my post where I asked about specific types of implants?
