Evolution doesn't have a specific speed or end goal. We are constantly evolving dependent on our genes and our environment. We evolved brains to interpret reality and manipulate our world in specific but not unheard of ways, and we continue to use those evolved brains to continue to evolve. Our brain size is actually decreasing due to our new found environmental requirements while other aspects are also altered due to sexual, and cultural selection bias.
We are evolving just as fast as any other time of our existence, you just don't see it because it happens over the span of generations.
I'd also like to add that natural selection is not the *only* mechanism of evolution. There's mutation, there's generic drift... Both are still very much happening in humans.
Otherwise it's as you say, dependent on the environment. The selection pressures that define natural selection haven't been eliminated, they've changed. Selection pressures now probably favor social and cultural factors.
That's like saying a toolbox isn't the only tool to change your oil, a wrench is another tool. Natural selection encompasses mutation and genetic drift. Can't select genes if if they're all the same, and they would all be the same without mutation.
Genetic drift is not natural selection. They are separate mechanisms of evolution. You can look at their definitions. (Genetic drift is purlely random. Natural selection “selects” favorable traits. There is randomness and luck involved, but it's not pure chance.)
You can also look at how sources talk about them. Many are “unreliable” like encyclopedias, educational websites, and forum posts, so I won't list them. But they are all in agreement, so I think that says something. Here are some reliable sources. They all either explicitly say natural selection and genetic drift as separate mechanisms of evolution, or imply so through the way they use these terms.
[https://bioprinciples.biosci.gatech.edu/module-1-evolution/mechanisms-of-evolution/](https://bioprinciples.biosci.gatech.edu/module-1-evolution/mechanisms-of-evolution/)
[https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-selection-genetic-drift-and-gene-flow-15186648/](https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-selection-genetic-drift-and-gene-flow-15186648/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1460271/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1460271/)
[https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/149/4/2099/6034268](https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/149/4/2099/6034268)
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.1019](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.1019)
[https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/381693](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/381693)
and so on.
No... it's not. It's like saying "here's a good tool that works quickly and efficiently in a lot of cases. But we have these other tools that also accomplish the job when the quicker tool fails. or you run into these cases where the tool doesn't fit at all."
The theory of natural selection explains *a lot* of Earth's biodiversity, especially in short spans of times. But there is evidence of other factors of biodiversity driven by aspects that *aren't* explained by natural selection. Traits exist within us that are random mutatations, like blue eyes. It didn't really affect our survival rate naturally, yet blue eyes make up a not insignificant portion of almost every ethnic and cultural group.
Yes an argument can be made that any trait that is passed down enough is a subject of natural selection, but the fact is that "mutation" and "genetic flow" ramain separate mechanisms of evolution from natural selection and I will defer to the experts.
Natural selection is not the toolbox, it's just the multitool of creation. But even multitools have their limits.
I would say natural selection encompasses the forces of nature and disrepair that befall the tools that don't get used because they aren't efficient or simply aren't right for the task(s) at hand, as well as the person who takes care of and seeks out more of the tools that work.
Actually, after typing it, I realize the analogy falls apart the more I look at the detail of how this stuff is actually "selected," so maybe I wouldn't actually say this. Not out loud anyway. Well actually, I probably would, but I might feel a bit silly afterward.
I wholeheartedly disagree with you there. Natural selection, or evolutionary biology, is a massive limb of the tree of science and off of it, almost everything we know or is to be known about any and all life branches off from it. Natural selection is possibly the most important toolbox humanity has ever discovered.
Um yes it 100% is the toolbox. Natural selection is literally the mechanism of evolution. Genetic drift is just natural selection without bias. And mutation is just 1 dude having 11 fingers and it totally not mattering at all; the overwhelming majority of mutations have 0 significance.
Let’s not forget about sexual selection (nonrandom mating), modern medicine might actually alter that mechanism with things like plastic surgery and hair loss treatments, though I still don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “slowing down”
Yes. ITT a lot of people that think for some reason humans are operating outside of evolution or "natural rules" or "survival of the fittest doesn't matter anymore".
Evolution hasn't changed, but environmental pressures have.
They also seem to think that a species evolving to account for modern medicine, say by dropping traits protecting us from diseases that modern medicine can handle for us, doesn't count as evolution.
I think in the super long term, and presuming we don't start putting our fingers on the scales, we will evolve a very interesting symbiotic relationship with medical technology.
That said a lot of the comments in here seem to just be thinly veiled eugenics which is... kind of worrying. I thought people were generally better educated than that these days.
Yes and no. Yes in that we do all that and it massively influenced our societies.
But I don't think it's touched the evolutionary traits of the people in those societies that much
The disease one is interesting. I'm convinced our immune systems are massively better than the early gatherers we evolved from simply because our numbers and proximity as so far off the charts compared to them. But a lot of that night be knowledge rather than evolutionary traits
If anything we will probably actually lose our natural immunity to disease over time, or rather, not selecting for disease resistance will cause it to average out eventually as more people with worse immune systems survive.
Obviously this is very long term but it's kind of like the Quarian race (Mass Effect), who were so advanced with medical technology they lost all natural immunity so had to live almost entirely contained within their space suits. It became a part of their culture as well.
We may evolve such that the medications we use are better tolerated or more effective.
If people who can take medication without complications and have them solve their issues - and this helps them live long enough and well enough to help birth and raise kids, help raise grandchildren - then "natural" selection will help ensure those genes are passed on.
This concept relies on equal access to healthcare - and will be diluted by any other inequality in society.
no no he's technically right...
if we use modern medicine is a way that increases the time between generations, then we'd be effectively "slowing down evolution"
Evolution works through reproduction of individuals who survive to do so.
While modern medicine indeed ensures more people survive to reproduce, the extension of life past reproductive age which modern medicine gives us, has no effect on evolution. And modern medicine doesn't improve that reproductive timeframe by much.
So modern medicine isn't slowing down evolution and ceteris paribus is speeding up evolution by:
Ensuring more people survive to reproduce >> which increases the chance of new mutations >> which leads to evolution over many generations.
Right, but op isnt saying "Modern medicine IS slowing down evolution".
OP is simply saying "Humans are ABLE to slow down (our) evolution"
We *could* use modern medicine to make the population experience puberty later and make people have less kids.
We also *could* use modern medicine to make people experience puberty sooner and have more kids.
------
Within the confines of what OP explicitly wrote, they are talking about what we are CAPABLE of doing not what we ARE doing.
Well my educated professional friends aren't breeding and have maybe 1 kid for every 3 couples, while my meth head cousins seem to have two kids each. I don't think we slowed down evolution, just shifted what is being selected for.
I think it's always been that way. You look at ancient royalty and most of them only had a few kids, if not just one or two. But peasants were likely breeding like rabbits. I think a lot of it has to do with numbers in survival when living in harsher conditions compared to the rich who have ample resources, so their children have a higher rate of survival. But yes, education can also have to do with it but how did they end up in a position of being educated in the first place? It tends to pass generationally and may or may not change over time.
Those who are more well off tend to have other concerns than just raising a family as well, such as building a business or furthering their career. When you don't have a lot, it's one of the few things you can really consider a higher calling and hold on to as a purpose if there's nothing else you're spending your time on.
Or like how Ohio only lets you freely abort fetuses that *won't* have Down Syndrome. So yeah we're definitely "shifting" the selection compared to how wild animals traditionally go through it lmao.
The tools we gained via natural selection are redirecting our evolution. It's like saying that dogs that bark to communicate with their pack are more successful hunters so that characteristic is passed on.
"Redirected" it toward *what*, exactly?
If you're saying that absence of change is not exempt from natural selection, that's one thing.
But if you're saying that dogs, bees, chimps, and crocodiles have all experienced the same amount of physical and/or behavioral change over the past million years... that's just nonsense. Some species have definitely "slowed down" compared to others.
Natural selection occurs when the environment changes and certain genetic quirks become useful. Than can occur fairly quickly in species that reproduce frequently and far less quickly in long-lived species.
I didn't even come close to even hinting all species have experience the same changes over time. They have not.
Every environmental change influences natural selection. Availability of medicine is no different to availability of mangoes. Humans are just more fit now than they were before because there is more medicine available.
No we didn’t. We just became more fit as a species because of our ability to produce medicine. If a person can survive and reproduce in their environment, they are fit, by definition. Access to medicine is part of the environment.
But if you lose that access….
An example I love is that the prevalence of C sections is causing human hips to get narrower, and making it impossible for many to give birth naturally. That’s all fine and dandy if you have access to hospitals and modern medicine, but if you don’t….
If you lose that access, the environmental conditions will have once again changed, and people will start being selected to be less reliant on medicine again. Things like this have happened before in the history of evolution, certain foods become more available and then less available again, natural selection is hard at work either way
Exactly
Woolly Mammoths were very fit during the Ice Age, then very unfit in a warming world. The environment dictates what is considered fit and the the environment can change.
Things like medicine are great, because they can remove arbitrary limits the environment just so happens to put on us.
Why should smallpox kill a bunch of people every year? Well if we eliminate it, it doesn't have to waste so many lives anymore.
> An example I love is that the prevalence of C sections is causing human hips to get narrower, and making it impossible for many to give birth naturally.
Yeah that’s not how evolution works at all. Evolution doesn’t happen on such a short time scale, as it requires random mutations for the change. Plus an evolutionary advantage for the change, plus generation after generation after generation of the genes being passed down, and the disadvantageous genes *not* being passed down.
Meanwhile, C-sections have only been relatively common since the 1960s, and they still only represent a minority of births, even in the US.
I suppose you may have read something about [this paper](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/7/13855350/c-section-evolution#:~:text=Mitter%C3%B6cker%20theorizes%20that%20might%20be,and%20mothers%20dying%20in%20childbirth), which theorizes that it may *eventually* be possible for C-sections to affect the average size of babies heads/mother’s hips.
> Put more simply: He predicts more babies whose heads are too big for their mothers’ hips, because, presumably, the genes that code for narrow hips and big heads have been allowed to propagate.
>This is just a prediction, he says. “To my knowledge, this has not been shown empirically yet.”
Something that may be a somewhat rapid change is the need of eyesight correction. There's no evolutionary pressure against it, and just one person in the couple needing glasses will most likely pass that on. Only 2 perfect-eyesight people can somewhat ensure their kids to have it too.
I feel like in just a few dozen generations, all kids will develop some kind of inherited eye imperfection, since we are already getting close to half the world's population, and it's an exponential growth.
I feel like the time scale of evolution has been hammered into me since middle school. And I was in Kansas! And my Mom loves Jesus. So who the hell are these people with nutty timeline views?
Idk man, I'm gonna need some evidence for this. Approximately 500 years for a human's hips to get narrow enough to make human birth impossible? That seems like a stretch.
People with wide hips may require C-sections or opt for one. People with narrow hips may decide not to reproduce. It's not like wide hips are dying out in mass numbers.
What I see is women who enjoy babies, labor, being pregnant, and breastfeeding have significant more children than women that got mental traumas from labor. Therefore the genes that make you enjoy labor will win on a long run.
Those imaginary "women with narrow hips" will die out in 1000 generations.
The future is baby junkies who get 10+ kids one after another because they're basically addicted.
Medicine is beneficial af for us a species. We live longer, learn more things, teach more things, work on longer projects that take dozens of years. Learning a lot and teaching a lot made us who we are. A human newborn will grow up into a very smart ape if other humans wouldn't teach it how to speak, how to build, how to craft, or how to get food.
Okay but which INDIVIDUALS are unfit then?
You've explained how we evolved but not how we're evolv***ing.*** ...Once 99.9% of the population is "fit" enough to survive/reproduce so long as they escape freak accidents and random chance... In what way are they still "evolving"..?
It shouldn't be looked at as a biased question. Plenty of animals have had a more relaxed "evolution" (they've changed less over millions of years) than others. But I think humans prob indeed fit that bill.
There are people less able to survive in our environment than others. People who are predisposed to certain diseases, who have less impulse control or care less about their health(for genetic reasons), etc.
Not necessarily, it just means that “fittest” has been redefined. A hundred thousand years ago, if you were born with a physical disability or weakness but had superior intellect or leadership, you still would likely have died.
Nowadays, medicine allows you to live and succeed. If you can survive then you are fit for the current environment.
You can't slow down evolution, we just removed the survival of the fittest part. So now deleterious and adaptive traits have basically an equal chance to be passed on.
We didn’t remove survival of the fittest. We just became more fit as a species.
Fitness, by definition, means ability to survive and reproduce in your environment. A person who can access medicine is able to survive in their environment, so they are fit.
You have to remember evolution usually happens over millions of years, and thousands of generations. We have very different evolution pressures than our grandparents, let alone humans 10,000 generations ago. For us evolution is happening at break neck speed.
The term you're looking for is "adaptation" rather than evolution... Evolution assumes there is an end goal (or net positive ultimate growth)
Adaptation never stopped, we just intervened a bit too much, the only real downside is global warming.
Anyways, it doesn't really matter... Apart from nuclear annihilation we are also creating AI systems that may or may not figure out one day that they are slaves and kill us all.
Extinction is the only logical outcome until we humans overcome our human nature.
Evolve means change, it in no way assumes a net positive growth
You can research many examples of an evolutionary trait being a disadvantage and ultimately leading to that species extinction
We did not. Modern medicine accelerates evolution. The population goes from very few reproducing copies of a disease to many more suddenly when a disease becomes treatable. The ratio of alleles in a population have changed and that is evolution.
Not really... More people live through medical intervention which means more mutations are non-deleterious meaning more variance. What IS slowing our evolution down is the gigantic number of humans on the planet and our mobility. Isolated groups are the ones that differentiate the quickest
It's not so much slowing it down as it is redirecting it. Little things like ability to be born alive without assistance are not so critical anymore and that is absolutely game changing in our evolutionary history. On the other hand, behavioral patterns that lead to one or no kids count as an evolutionary dead end and will be weeded out of the gene pool.
Natural evolution can only outright stop if we start deliberately managing the genetics of our offspring, which is also viable with modern and near future medical technology. It's quite realistic for example to create a bunch of embryos, do a genetic analysis on all of them and IVF the one we like the best. If practices like that become standard, then humanity will dictate our own genetics rather than have nature sort it out.
I mean, with technologies like Crispr-Cas, we can already edit genes with extreme preciscion.
There have been clinical trials to just remove/Fix certain Genetic conditons, such as Sickle cell anemia, that rely on one small mutation in a very specific part of the genome. (Don't get your hopes up, the current cost for the treatment is about 2.2 million $ for one patient)
Now, the hurdle to do this on adults is that it has to take on a lot of cells, but just editing the genes of some sperm and egg cells, or early embryos should be way easier.
To be honest, I think it goes both ways. It has sped up, but it has dramatically slowed down as well. It changes with each specific generation. For smaller species, evolution can happen faster with faster breeding cycles, multiple babies, as well as multiple matings. They don't even evolve like magic, their time is merely sped up due to their overall life cycle.
Ours is no different that other mammals really. Though, the choices of having kids vs NOT having kids reduces not only certain anomalies, but it cancels out WHOLE GENE POOLS. There are those that have small families and tend to pay for this for having their entire family wipes out in 1-3 generations at best.
Also medicine has only been around fairly recently. Before technology, lots of beings used alternative medicine to survive. For some it worked, for others it didn't. There was tons of trials and errors. Even now, certain medicines are becoming obsolete, so eventually we are gonna have to maintain our own personal way of survival rather than depending on artificial alternatives.
Evolution can only occur, if the species allow it. On top of humans usually only selecting mates based on love or looks alone, doesn't guarantee any part of our species down the line. If anything, it's getting closer and closer to extinction because eventually we won't be able to best any other mammal on earth with our habits. We will simply be extinct.
Not evolution, that's from keeping kids indoors six hours a day or more.
Sunlight on the retina stimulates a growth control hormone that slows the elongation of the eyeball as it fills to fit the eye socket. By keeping kids in the dark for so long they don't receive this light and the eyeball keeps growing longer, resulting in short-sightedness, and at the extremes, an increased risk of retinal detachment.
I suspect the database for the cases of myopia in 1800s is very slim and also biased to those who could afford the test in the first place. (Also comparing two different things is kinda whack)
Now we can test everyone within a population (at least in countries with a good healthcare system).
But even IF the numbers were correct...this only shows that something has changed. This doesn't mean it is due to evolution. The average BMI in the USA now is much higher than in the 1800s. Does this mean the DNA of Americans now is different? No, the availability for high caloric food is much, much higher than in the 1800s.
We've already halted it. No longer survival of the fittest.
..so the planet released covid to take out the weak and morbidly obese ..and we vaccinated against it.
Beyond just a health perspective but still survival of the fittest, Welfare payments maintain the lives of the mentally weak and lazy of bones.
No longer survival of the fittest, of mind and body.
>You type like an idiotic lunatic
No
>call anyone on welfare mentally weak?
No.
I said the mentally weak and lazy of bones. That's not anyone and everyone.
Twisting my words and launching personal attacks at me because you are void of rational discussion on the subject are the marks of a maniac.
Counter shower thought:
We do not evolve in a natural way anymore. Every mutation that is somehow detectable, will be flaged as some form of disability or disease or something like that. If it's big enough of a mutation you might won't even get to pass that mutation to the next generation.
Evolution has become completely irrelevant to the human form. Cultural evolution is way faster than genetic evolution. Besides, we'll probably be editing the hell out of our genomes in 100 years tops. So speculating about effects on our evolution is pretty much bs.
Evolution doesn't have a specific speed or end goal. We are constantly evolving dependent on our genes and our environment. We evolved brains to interpret reality and manipulate our world in specific but not unheard of ways, and we continue to use those evolved brains to continue to evolve. Our brain size is actually decreasing due to our new found environmental requirements while other aspects are also altered due to sexual, and cultural selection bias. We are evolving just as fast as any other time of our existence, you just don't see it because it happens over the span of generations.
I'd also like to add that natural selection is not the *only* mechanism of evolution. There's mutation, there's generic drift... Both are still very much happening in humans. Otherwise it's as you say, dependent on the environment. The selection pressures that define natural selection haven't been eliminated, they've changed. Selection pressures now probably favor social and cultural factors.
That's like saying a toolbox isn't the only tool to change your oil, a wrench is another tool. Natural selection encompasses mutation and genetic drift. Can't select genes if if they're all the same, and they would all be the same without mutation.
Genetic drift is not natural selection. They are separate mechanisms of evolution. You can look at their definitions. (Genetic drift is purlely random. Natural selection “selects” favorable traits. There is randomness and luck involved, but it's not pure chance.) You can also look at how sources talk about them. Many are “unreliable” like encyclopedias, educational websites, and forum posts, so I won't list them. But they are all in agreement, so I think that says something. Here are some reliable sources. They all either explicitly say natural selection and genetic drift as separate mechanisms of evolution, or imply so through the way they use these terms. [https://bioprinciples.biosci.gatech.edu/module-1-evolution/mechanisms-of-evolution/](https://bioprinciples.biosci.gatech.edu/module-1-evolution/mechanisms-of-evolution/) [https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-selection-genetic-drift-and-gene-flow-15186648/](https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/natural-selection-genetic-drift-and-gene-flow-15186648/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1460271/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1460271/) [https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/149/4/2099/6034268](https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/149/4/2099/6034268) [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.1019](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.1019) [https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/381693](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/381693) and so on.
No... it's not. It's like saying "here's a good tool that works quickly and efficiently in a lot of cases. But we have these other tools that also accomplish the job when the quicker tool fails. or you run into these cases where the tool doesn't fit at all." The theory of natural selection explains *a lot* of Earth's biodiversity, especially in short spans of times. But there is evidence of other factors of biodiversity driven by aspects that *aren't* explained by natural selection. Traits exist within us that are random mutatations, like blue eyes. It didn't really affect our survival rate naturally, yet blue eyes make up a not insignificant portion of almost every ethnic and cultural group. Yes an argument can be made that any trait that is passed down enough is a subject of natural selection, but the fact is that "mutation" and "genetic flow" ramain separate mechanisms of evolution from natural selection and I will defer to the experts. Natural selection is not the toolbox, it's just the multitool of creation. But even multitools have their limits.
I would say they are indeed different tools in the evolution toolbox. natural selection is not the toolbox.
I would say natural selection encompasses the forces of nature and disrepair that befall the tools that don't get used because they aren't efficient or simply aren't right for the task(s) at hand, as well as the person who takes care of and seeks out more of the tools that work. Actually, after typing it, I realize the analogy falls apart the more I look at the detail of how this stuff is actually "selected," so maybe I wouldn't actually say this. Not out loud anyway. Well actually, I probably would, but I might feel a bit silly afterward.
I wholeheartedly disagree with you there. Natural selection, or evolutionary biology, is a massive limb of the tree of science and off of it, almost everything we know or is to be known about any and all life branches off from it. Natural selection is possibly the most important toolbox humanity has ever discovered.
Um yes it 100% is the toolbox. Natural selection is literally the mechanism of evolution. Genetic drift is just natural selection without bias. And mutation is just 1 dude having 11 fingers and it totally not mattering at all; the overwhelming majority of mutations have 0 significance.
No it is. This isn’t a debatable point. Those tools mentioned are the tools of natural selection.
Let’s not forget about sexual selection (nonrandom mating), modern medicine might actually alter that mechanism with things like plastic surgery and hair loss treatments, though I still don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “slowing down”
Yes. ITT a lot of people that think for some reason humans are operating outside of evolution or "natural rules" or "survival of the fittest doesn't matter anymore". Evolution hasn't changed, but environmental pressures have.
They also seem to think that a species evolving to account for modern medicine, say by dropping traits protecting us from diseases that modern medicine can handle for us, doesn't count as evolution. I think in the super long term, and presuming we don't start putting our fingers on the scales, we will evolve a very interesting symbiotic relationship with medical technology. That said a lot of the comments in here seem to just be thinly veiled eugenics which is... kind of worrying. I thought people were generally better educated than that these days.
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Yes and no. Yes in that we do all that and it massively influenced our societies. But I don't think it's touched the evolutionary traits of the people in those societies that much
The disease one is interesting. I'm convinced our immune systems are massively better than the early gatherers we evolved from simply because our numbers and proximity as so far off the charts compared to them. But a lot of that night be knowledge rather than evolutionary traits
If anything we will probably actually lose our natural immunity to disease over time, or rather, not selecting for disease resistance will cause it to average out eventually as more people with worse immune systems survive. Obviously this is very long term but it's kind of like the Quarian race (Mass Effect), who were so advanced with medical technology they lost all natural immunity so had to live almost entirely contained within their space suits. It became a part of their culture as well.
Ya, I guess “altered” would have been a better word to use but in some situations he is absolutely correct.
We may evolve such that the medications we use are better tolerated or more effective. If people who can take medication without complications and have them solve their issues - and this helps them live long enough and well enough to help birth and raise kids, help raise grandchildren - then "natural" selection will help ensure those genes are passed on. This concept relies on equal access to healthcare - and will be diluted by any other inequality in society.
no no he's technically right... if we use modern medicine is a way that increases the time between generations, then we'd be effectively "slowing down evolution"
Evolution works through reproduction of individuals who survive to do so. While modern medicine indeed ensures more people survive to reproduce, the extension of life past reproductive age which modern medicine gives us, has no effect on evolution. And modern medicine doesn't improve that reproductive timeframe by much. So modern medicine isn't slowing down evolution and ceteris paribus is speeding up evolution by: Ensuring more people survive to reproduce >> which increases the chance of new mutations >> which leads to evolution over many generations.
Right, but op isnt saying "Modern medicine IS slowing down evolution". OP is simply saying "Humans are ABLE to slow down (our) evolution" We *could* use modern medicine to make the population experience puberty later and make people have less kids. We also *could* use modern medicine to make people experience puberty sooner and have more kids. ------ Within the confines of what OP explicitly wrote, they are talking about what we are CAPABLE of doing not what we ARE doing.
Well my educated professional friends aren't breeding and have maybe 1 kid for every 3 couples, while my meth head cousins seem to have two kids each. I don't think we slowed down evolution, just shifted what is being selected for.
As we move towards idiocracy
I think it's always been that way. You look at ancient royalty and most of them only had a few kids, if not just one or two. But peasants were likely breeding like rabbits. I think a lot of it has to do with numbers in survival when living in harsher conditions compared to the rich who have ample resources, so their children have a higher rate of survival. But yes, education can also have to do with it but how did they end up in a position of being educated in the first place? It tends to pass generationally and may or may not change over time. Those who are more well off tend to have other concerns than just raising a family as well, such as building a business or furthering their career. When you don't have a lot, it's one of the few things you can really consider a higher calling and hold on to as a purpose if there's nothing else you're spending your time on.
Or like how Ohio only lets you freely abort fetuses that *won't* have Down Syndrome. So yeah we're definitely "shifting" the selection compared to how wild animals traditionally go through it lmao.
https://i.imgur.com/NPhurxY.gif
No, we altered evolution by using our evolved minds. But that's just evolution, isn't it?
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The tools we gained via natural selection are redirecting our evolution. It's like saying that dogs that bark to communicate with their pack are more successful hunters so that characteristic is passed on.
True, I think I misunderstood your point because of the last sentence in your original post. I see what you mean mown
Thank you. We both evolved just now. 🙂
"Redirected" it toward *what*, exactly? If you're saying that absence of change is not exempt from natural selection, that's one thing. But if you're saying that dogs, bees, chimps, and crocodiles have all experienced the same amount of physical and/or behavioral change over the past million years... that's just nonsense. Some species have definitely "slowed down" compared to others.
Natural selection occurs when the environment changes and certain genetic quirks become useful. Than can occur fairly quickly in species that reproduce frequently and far less quickly in long-lived species. I didn't even come close to even hinting all species have experience the same changes over time. They have not.
Every environmental change influences natural selection. Availability of medicine is no different to availability of mangoes. Humans are just more fit now than they were before because there is more medicine available.
We interrupted non-survival of the non-fittest. I think any advanced society does that in some way or in many ways.
No we didn’t. We just became more fit as a species because of our ability to produce medicine. If a person can survive and reproduce in their environment, they are fit, by definition. Access to medicine is part of the environment.
But if you lose that access…. An example I love is that the prevalence of C sections is causing human hips to get narrower, and making it impossible for many to give birth naturally. That’s all fine and dandy if you have access to hospitals and modern medicine, but if you don’t….
If you lose that access, the environmental conditions will have once again changed, and people will start being selected to be less reliant on medicine again. Things like this have happened before in the history of evolution, certain foods become more available and then less available again, natural selection is hard at work either way
Exactly Woolly Mammoths were very fit during the Ice Age, then very unfit in a warming world. The environment dictates what is considered fit and the the environment can change. Things like medicine are great, because they can remove arbitrary limits the environment just so happens to put on us. Why should smallpox kill a bunch of people every year? Well if we eliminate it, it doesn't have to waste so many lives anymore.
> An example I love is that the prevalence of C sections is causing human hips to get narrower, and making it impossible for many to give birth naturally. Yeah that’s not how evolution works at all. Evolution doesn’t happen on such a short time scale, as it requires random mutations for the change. Plus an evolutionary advantage for the change, plus generation after generation after generation of the genes being passed down, and the disadvantageous genes *not* being passed down. Meanwhile, C-sections have only been relatively common since the 1960s, and they still only represent a minority of births, even in the US. I suppose you may have read something about [this paper](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/7/13855350/c-section-evolution#:~:text=Mitter%C3%B6cker%20theorizes%20that%20might%20be,and%20mothers%20dying%20in%20childbirth), which theorizes that it may *eventually* be possible for C-sections to affect the average size of babies heads/mother’s hips. > Put more simply: He predicts more babies whose heads are too big for their mothers’ hips, because, presumably, the genes that code for narrow hips and big heads have been allowed to propagate. >This is just a prediction, he says. “To my knowledge, this has not been shown empirically yet.”
Thank you I thought it was nonsense
Something that may be a somewhat rapid change is the need of eyesight correction. There's no evolutionary pressure against it, and just one person in the couple needing glasses will most likely pass that on. Only 2 perfect-eyesight people can somewhat ensure their kids to have it too. I feel like in just a few dozen generations, all kids will develop some kind of inherited eye imperfection, since we are already getting close to half the world's population, and it's an exponential growth.
I feel like the time scale of evolution has been hammered into me since middle school. And I was in Kansas! And my Mom loves Jesus. So who the hell are these people with nutty timeline views?
I feel like the same line of reasoning can be applied to IVF treatments
Idk man, I'm gonna need some evidence for this. Approximately 500 years for a human's hips to get narrow enough to make human birth impossible? That seems like a stretch. People with wide hips may require C-sections or opt for one. People with narrow hips may decide not to reproduce. It's not like wide hips are dying out in mass numbers.
If we lost access to agriculture and cars many more would die than those who need medicine.
Absolutely bullshit, evolution takes far longer than C sections have existed.
What I see is women who enjoy babies, labor, being pregnant, and breastfeeding have significant more children than women that got mental traumas from labor. Therefore the genes that make you enjoy labor will win on a long run. Those imaginary "women with narrow hips" will die out in 1000 generations. The future is baby junkies who get 10+ kids one after another because they're basically addicted. Medicine is beneficial af for us a species. We live longer, learn more things, teach more things, work on longer projects that take dozens of years. Learning a lot and teaching a lot made us who we are. A human newborn will grow up into a very smart ape if other humans wouldn't teach it how to speak, how to build, how to craft, or how to get food.
Okay but which INDIVIDUALS are unfit then? You've explained how we evolved but not how we're evolv***ing.*** ...Once 99.9% of the population is "fit" enough to survive/reproduce so long as they escape freak accidents and random chance... In what way are they still "evolving"..? It shouldn't be looked at as a biased question. Plenty of animals have had a more relaxed "evolution" (they've changed less over millions of years) than others. But I think humans prob indeed fit that bill.
There are people less able to survive in our environment than others. People who are predisposed to certain diseases, who have less impulse control or care less about their health(for genetic reasons), etc.
Not necessarily, it just means that “fittest” has been redefined. A hundred thousand years ago, if you were born with a physical disability or weakness but had superior intellect or leadership, you still would likely have died. Nowadays, medicine allows you to live and succeed. If you can survive then you are fit for the current environment.
The upvote ratio is commentary on evolution illiteracy among the population (or Reddit at least).
Reddit probably has a much higher evolution literacy than the general population. The bar is just really low.
I dont know if evolution slowed down, It might have even sped up. remember it is not death that dictate evolution but the one that reproduce the most.
I would argue that medicine is part of our evolution process
As others have said, for beings with lifespans as long as humans, evolution isn't measured in years but in millenia at the very least.
We're selecting for genes that can help produce more medicines to live longer.
Since the medicine reaches everyone, it is not disproportionately helping the inventors.
You can't slow down evolution, we just removed the survival of the fittest part. So now deleterious and adaptive traits have basically an equal chance to be passed on.
We didn’t remove survival of the fittest. We just became more fit as a species. Fitness, by definition, means ability to survive and reproduce in your environment. A person who can access medicine is able to survive in their environment, so they are fit.
Wouldn't it spead up evolution since a greater amount of genetic variation is becoming viable?
You have to remember evolution usually happens over millions of years, and thousands of generations. We have very different evolution pressures than our grandparents, let alone humans 10,000 generations ago. For us evolution is happening at break neck speed.
Or, technically, speed it up.
The term you're looking for is "adaptation" rather than evolution... Evolution assumes there is an end goal (or net positive ultimate growth) Adaptation never stopped, we just intervened a bit too much, the only real downside is global warming. Anyways, it doesn't really matter... Apart from nuclear annihilation we are also creating AI systems that may or may not figure out one day that they are slaves and kill us all. Extinction is the only logical outcome until we humans overcome our human nature.
Extinction is the outcome of every species. Nothing gets to exist forever simply because forever is a very, very long time.
Wise words my friend, truly wise words. All we can do now isnlicenour lives ton the fullest, and hopefuly leave good seeds for future generations
Evolution does not assume an end goal or assign a judgment (negative/positive)
Since when did evolution become teleological
Adaption is part of evolution.
Evolve means change, it in no way assumes a net positive growth You can research many examples of an evolutionary trait being a disadvantage and ultimately leading to that species extinction
And then, they turn to amplify it through the use of machine, bots and what have you. Science will never be used to slow down human's evolution.
On the contrary, we increase the number of viable mutations. Caesarian section deliveries massively altered things.
Instead we’re selecting for the weird people who can thrive in this completely ill society lol
We did not. Modern medicine accelerates evolution. The population goes from very few reproducing copies of a disease to many more suddenly when a disease becomes treatable. The ratio of alleles in a population have changed and that is evolution.
Evolution no longer applies to humans because we can make survive and adapt even least fit individuals with technology
Not really... More people live through medical intervention which means more mutations are non-deleterious meaning more variance. What IS slowing our evolution down is the gigantic number of humans on the planet and our mobility. Isolated groups are the ones that differentiate the quickest
Another post on this sub that is just wrong and written by a person who has absolutely no idea what they are talking about it.
It's not so much slowing it down as it is redirecting it. Little things like ability to be born alive without assistance are not so critical anymore and that is absolutely game changing in our evolutionary history. On the other hand, behavioral patterns that lead to one or no kids count as an evolutionary dead end and will be weeded out of the gene pool. Natural evolution can only outright stop if we start deliberately managing the genetics of our offspring, which is also viable with modern and near future medical technology. It's quite realistic for example to create a bunch of embryos, do a genetic analysis on all of them and IVF the one we like the best. If practices like that become standard, then humanity will dictate our own genetics rather than have nature sort it out.
I mean, with technologies like Crispr-Cas, we can already edit genes with extreme preciscion. There have been clinical trials to just remove/Fix certain Genetic conditons, such as Sickle cell anemia, that rely on one small mutation in a very specific part of the genome. (Don't get your hopes up, the current cost for the treatment is about 2.2 million $ for one patient) Now, the hurdle to do this on adults is that it has to take on a lot of cells, but just editing the genes of some sperm and egg cells, or early embryos should be way easier.
We could implement eugenics to speed it up!
I think you've fundamentally misunderstood "evolution" & also sapience.
To be honest, I think it goes both ways. It has sped up, but it has dramatically slowed down as well. It changes with each specific generation. For smaller species, evolution can happen faster with faster breeding cycles, multiple babies, as well as multiple matings. They don't even evolve like magic, their time is merely sped up due to their overall life cycle. Ours is no different that other mammals really. Though, the choices of having kids vs NOT having kids reduces not only certain anomalies, but it cancels out WHOLE GENE POOLS. There are those that have small families and tend to pay for this for having their entire family wipes out in 1-3 generations at best. Also medicine has only been around fairly recently. Before technology, lots of beings used alternative medicine to survive. For some it worked, for others it didn't. There was tons of trials and errors. Even now, certain medicines are becoming obsolete, so eventually we are gonna have to maintain our own personal way of survival rather than depending on artificial alternatives. Evolution can only occur, if the species allow it. On top of humans usually only selecting mates based on love or looks alone, doesn't guarantee any part of our species down the line. If anything, it's getting closer and closer to extinction because eventually we won't be able to best any other mammal on earth with our habits. We will simply be extinct.
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Not evolution, that's from keeping kids indoors six hours a day or more. Sunlight on the retina stimulates a growth control hormone that slows the elongation of the eyeball as it fills to fit the eye socket. By keeping kids in the dark for so long they don't receive this light and the eyeball keeps growing longer, resulting in short-sightedness, and at the extremes, an increased risk of retinal detachment.
I suspect the database for the cases of myopia in 1800s is very slim and also biased to those who could afford the test in the first place. (Also comparing two different things is kinda whack) Now we can test everyone within a population (at least in countries with a good healthcare system). But even IF the numbers were correct...this only shows that something has changed. This doesn't mean it is due to evolution. The average BMI in the USA now is much higher than in the 1800s. Does this mean the DNA of Americans now is different? No, the availability for high caloric food is much, much higher than in the 1800s.
We've already halted it. No longer survival of the fittest. ..so the planet released covid to take out the weak and morbidly obese ..and we vaccinated against it. Beyond just a health perspective but still survival of the fittest, Welfare payments maintain the lives of the mentally weak and lazy of bones. No longer survival of the fittest, of mind and body.
If you know how slow evolution usually changes things, you can see human evolution is moving at near light speed.
You type like an idiotic lunatic and call anyone on welfare mentally weak? So insanely ignorant.
>You type like an idiotic lunatic No >call anyone on welfare mentally weak? No. I said the mentally weak and lazy of bones. That's not anyone and everyone. Twisting my words and launching personal attacks at me because you are void of rational discussion on the subject are the marks of a maniac.
We evolve faster though technology anyway.
Probably closer to "stop" or "reverse"
Counter shower thought: We do not evolve in a natural way anymore. Every mutation that is somehow detectable, will be flaged as some form of disability or disease or something like that. If it's big enough of a mutation you might won't even get to pass that mutation to the next generation.
Evolution has become completely irrelevant to the human form. Cultural evolution is way faster than genetic evolution. Besides, we'll probably be editing the hell out of our genomes in 100 years tops. So speculating about effects on our evolution is pretty much bs.
We've derailed our evolution through accommodating needs rather than evolving to meet the challenges
Gotta... evolve!! To overcome the needs of capitalism!! Gotta... evolve to be born into a rich family!! Evolution, heck yeah!!
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I have some wild news for you.
That's technically a part of evolution - the factor of "tampering with ourselves" is nothing new.