Future possibilities of Human evolution

I've heard of the pinky toe one! I don't know about hairlessness though; while body hair is seen as less attractive (at least in females), there is still a great deal of attraction given over to hair on the head and I can't see that trend changing. Same with eyebrows; not only do humans without eyebrows find themselves considered strange, but we also use them for communication. Actually many women use scalp hair for it too (flipping hair to flirt, etc), so I don't know if I agree with that prediction.

Getting taller and muscle atrophy... I'm picturing a lot of very weak giants XD, though anyone wanting to explore space would be more muscular as part of the program to get ready to go and to be prepared for wherever they landed (unless those explorers used cryogenics to sleep the trip away).

Neat list! It's so interesting to see what the distant future could look like.

I had jaw surgery when I was 16. In preparation for it, they wanted to look at my xrays (obviously) and check things out. The dr. informed me I would not be getting wisdom teeth as he should have seen something in my jaw...and now 27, no wisdom teeth! I am living proof! :P

That's pretty much what I was imagining too!

At this point, humans are capable of using technology to overcome most things that would be selected against in nature, so I doubt they will be dramatic changes. Most of the changes we've seen have been adaptions to our lazy lifestyle, less wisdom teeth as we use forks and process more foods, overall less muscular, less intelligence, etc.

First off, nice link Ninerbuff! Looking at these always gets you to think.

Second off, these are just my opinions. I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm just putting it out there as I see it. I've been wrong in the past, and will probably be wrong on a few of these points due to being an imperfect person.

Many of those make me cringe from the lack of scientific data backing them up properly, or the way they take a microtrend and extend it 200,000 years into the future.

10. Monoethnicity is highly unlikely. We will see a trend moving towards that as mores are broken, racism is reduced and international borders dissolve. However, nature has a tendency towards difference. I'm at a loss to remember the name of the scientific theory that talks about a perfect evolution, but the root of a perfect evolution is that it would implode because of such a monoculture. A fungus or plague would come along and wipe us all out in the blink of an eye.

9. Weakened immune systems - I'd like to see the science that backs this up for it to be an evolutionary change and not just an environmental one. I find this highly unlikely as an outcome.

8. Muscle atrophy? Nope. More likely would be a general adjustment to the new (relatively speaking) diets everyone has now. Basically the body's answer to the paleo diet.

7. Increased height is plausible, but the article goes into the current trend of increased height. They fail to mention that a good portion of the increased height is caused by diet.

6. As we move towards, but not into, a more monoethnic society we will generally lose some hair. However, it's unlikely to go away completely. However, our hair may evolve, similar to how scales became feathers, which became hair, or vice versa. It may evolve into something else? The genes for hair or scales or feathers have been with pretty much all animals since we climbed out of the primordial soup.

5. Brain rewiring is definitely happening. This is obvious to see. Those who can think in today's society succeed.

4. Yes, our teeth are getting smaller. However, we might not lose our wisdom teeth for the same or similar reason we probably won't lose all our hair.

3. Less toes aren't going to happen. We still use our pinkie toe. The two smallest toes may web and eventually merge, but we will still retain some remnants of that bone. It's in the genes. A bird's wings still effectively has five "fingers" within it. The wing still hinges at the "elbow". I don't see us losing a digit. The fingers may get longer due to the way we use them, but we're not going to lose a toe.

2. An increase or decrease is possible, but I don't see any reason for it. If they're talking about capacity, then maybe, but we still operate at a higher capacity (as far as we know) than pretty much all of the animals with larger brains than we do. If I remember correctly, we may get more wrinkled brains, but not larger ones. However, if we did get bigger skulls I would bet women's hips would widen to accommodate it. They used to be called "birthing hips" for a reason.

1. Self improvement - Yes, we're already doing gene therapy and limited "selective breeding" by way of sperm banks. You pick a bio of someone donating, right? That's effectively some level of genetic selection. You're not going to inseminate the sperm of someone with Tay Sachs. I don't see why this won't continue and grow.

The article reads as if the author has a very rudimentary (and naive) understanding of evolutionary processes. Just because something isn't 'needed' in the sense of every day convenience, doesn't mean it's going to go away. We'd be just as likely to gain more toes if it isn't a determining factor in reproductive success. The absence of selection pressure on a locus or phenotype allows a larger variety of mutations to exist and thus produces divergence/variety/polymorphism rather than an 'everyone loses their little toe' type of result.

They also ignored simple/obvious things such as the fact that germs are also going to evolve in response to increased use of various technologies to fight them.

Exactly. People think of evolution as "survival of the fittest" (which is just a tautology anyway) and then proceed to imagine what "fitness" means in terms of convenience and pain and happiness and other feelings, and things defined by cultural norms as good or bad, none of which have anything to do with how many copies of which genes are likely to exist in future generations.