this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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OK, I hope my question doesn't get misunderstood, I can see how that could happen.
Just a product of overthinking.

Idea is that we can live fairly easily even with some diseases/disorders which could be-life threatening. Many of these are hereditary.
Since modern medicine increases our survival capabilities, the "weaker" individuals can also survive and have offsprings that could potentially inherit these weaknesses, and as this continues it could perhaps leave nearly all people suffering from such conditions further into future.

Does that sound like a realistic scenario? (Assuming we don't destroy ourselves along with the environment first...)

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 6 months ago (8 children)

Pretty much everyone here either misunderstands how evolution works, or is willfully ignoring it to push their viewpoint.

Humans at this point have very little evolutionary pressure from natural selection. We aren’t getting weaker, shorter, taller, or anything like that from natural selection because those traits aren’t killing people.

The main driving factors for human evolution are sexual selection, random mutation, and genetic drift. There are still some poorer areas disease may still play a not insignificant part, but even that is fairly minimal since people largely live to reproductive age.

Human evolution has been fairly stagnant for quite a while. The differences most people would notice are from changes in diet, environment, and other external forces. For natural selection to pressure evolution we would need to have a significant portion of the population sure before they are able to reproduce.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Pretty much everyone here either misunderstands how evolution works, or is willfully ignoring it to push their viewpoint.

Yes! Finally someone else who knows how...

Humans at this point have very little evolutionary pressure from natural selection.

Oh come on! Such a strong start but then you fell on your face. Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It never lets up. It's more about reproduction than staying alive. Natural selection is happening every time someone reproduces more than someone else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Natural selection isn’t the only thing at play though. That solely refers to the organism best adapted to the environment being more likely to survive and produce offspring. Essentially everyone in our population survives to be able to produce offspring.

Sexual selection plays a much bigger part now. That isn’t someone being the most adapted to the environment, it’s someone being the most attractive to a mate. There are plenty of adaptations across nature that are maladaptive to survival, but are selected for regardless.

Then there are random mutations and genetic drift. Those happen in every population. That is more just a matter of chance.

We have found ways to adapt to our environment outside of evolution. So we no longer have a significant natural selection process.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Sexual selection is a subcategory of natural selection

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