Degenerate diseases don't kill you before you can have children.
"Those changes we predict for 2409 could be wiped out by something as simple as a new school-lunch program."
Stupid. African nations have both the highest birth rates and the worst nutrition. If anything, expected good health after reproductive age negatively correlates with fecundity.
"Uniquely in the living world, what makes humans what we are is in our minds, in our society, and not in our evolution."
If Steve Jones knows of some supernatural force that excludes the operation of the human body from physical reality, he should describe that force and submit it to a physics journal. Otherwise, yes, minds are minds, but minds are not magic: they're meat.
"Those changes we predict for 2409 could be wiped out by something as simple as a new school-lunch program."
Stupid. African nations have both the highest birth rates and the worst nutrition. If anything, expected good health after reproductive age negatively correlates with fecundity.
"Uniquely in the living world, what makes humans what we are is in our minds, in our society, and not in our evolution."
If Steve Jones knows of some supernatural force that excludes the operation of the human body from physical reality, he should describe that force and submit it to a physics journal. Otherwise, yes, minds are minds, but minds are not magic: they're meat.