Guide - To direct the course of + One who shows the way by leading, directing, or advising.
We don’t need natural selection to guide the direction of our evolution today. Also, we don’t need to reinforce everything that natural selection has endowed us with.
Artificial selection is quite easy. As soon as the direction of evolution is guided by intent, it becomes artificial.
We’ve been artificially selecting for other animals for a very long time.
Ethics aside, all you need to do is control who breeds or kill those with whatever arbitrary trait you don’t value.
(this is not what I’m suggesting, there’s more ethical and sophisticated ways to approach the situation.)
Natural selection is simply a word for what emerges simply by what works.
If that working something emerges via intent, it is not natural - by definition.
So even as immortal Nazis, we’d still be part of nature - thus natural selection.
We’re talking natural selection as opposed to artificial selection. The terms would be useless if there was no alternative concept.
I’ve said for a long time I believe everything we do is natural, that man-made is a subcategory of natural phenomenon. But we’re talking about the difference between what happens with man’s influence, and what happens without man’s influence. Without = Natural selection. With = Artificial. It’s relevant to distinguish these and recognize the differences.
The products of natural selection will be inhibited by the environment that they inhabit. There are many things in the long term that may be relevant to an organism, but the steps to get there will not occur and be reinforced because those individual steps offer no immediate return. Natural selection demands immediate return - if whatever change happens has no bearing on the reproductive success of the species, it wont be selected for and wont remain long enough to evolve into whatever is relevant.
Natural selection is slow and crude. The results only revolve around a single bottom line. It has no foresight.
We can do better than that for ourselves. Natural selection has given us the capacity to surpass it’s shortfalls.