After the theory of evolution and natural selection were created and studied for a number of years scientists came to realize that natural selection must occur in species but it can not predict the future. Meaning, natural selection is not going anywhere and it is not trying to make the perfect being, it is just trying to select the best features that allows survival in the wild.
That is natural selection, what about artificial selection? Can artificial selection attempt to predict the future and in so doing change natural selection into a construct that can attempt to plan for the future? (by selecting the best traits for now and later).
The classic view of artificial selection views it separate by humans selecting, I however consider it is the progression of natural selection and that it is still part of the same overlying theory. Nature is still doing the selecting and humans are still living in the wild (this wild looks a lot less wild then previously thought however). The same would hold true for species outside of this planet and for machines that are able to reproduce (currently we have not encountered any).
Questions that have arrived in my mind about this current process include: Do other sentient beings think in the same way? Will machines ever be able to think in the same way? Do animals think in the same way and have sentience?
The only answers I have to these questions are humans can tell that other humans carry on the same thought processes as themselves just by observing others using their five senses (plus outputs of speaking, drawing, and body language). It would be the same case in any being or object that a person would encounter.
The only thing that will most probably remove all doubt is if one were able to transfer thoughts. This would make a thought a tangible object, something measurable. This measurable “thought object” could be compared to ones own thoughts and in that comparison an understanding would take place that the two individuals are thinking about the same thing. I would like to consider that humans will one day be able to hold and comprehend more then just their own thoughts inside their brain(s).
