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…)
I can, will and has. Push back would be on what it means to be “weaker”.
When we say evolution selects for strength, we mean strength in terms of environmental fitness with regards to propagation, not anything specific to health, well-being or survival.Our earliest “medical” advances actually left us significantly less robust over time.
Techniques like “not leaving the sick or injured to die”, “blankets”, “carrying food and water” and things like that.
Over time, that led is to continue with bigger brains, longer gestation, more care for the mother and infant before and after birth, and old people.
This led to a spiral of smarter, more educated, more cared for people who were able to pass on knowledge between multiple generations.
None of that could have happened if we hadn’t started caring for less robust people, like old man Greg with the bad leg, scary stories about snakes and knows all the berries, or Jane who is somehow so pregnant she can barely walk and who’s last kid was born with a massive cone head and no kneecaps.What makes us unique as a species is that we have a much larger ability to influence what exactly defines environmental fitness than others.
When we develop new medical treatments, we are potentially making ourselves less robust going forwards, but we’re also making it so that particular thing has less weight in determining what “fitness” means for a human, and more weight is put on “clever” and “social”.
Natural selection selected for a creature that can’t opt out of the game, but can bump the table.So we will inevitably allow a genetic condition that’s currently awful to become benign and commonplace.
We’ll also keep selecting for smart, funny, social and dump truck hips.My biggest contenders are diabetes, gluten intolerance and hemophilia. They all used to be death sentences, and now they’re just “not”. There’s also the interesting possibility of heritable genetic treatment becoming possible, which puts a lot of what I said into an interesting position.
We’ll probably keep selecting for those big hips though.Yes absolutely. We’ve already affected our biology and evolution.
Birth control, antibiotics, are examples
Given time, and even greater lifespans, we will have a larger impact on the path of our evolution.
As a thought experiment let’s imagine humans that live for 2,000 years. What does this mean for our adaptability to environmental changes? What does this mean for our fertility?
If nothing else changes, the carrying capacity for new humans will decrease, if the average lifespan goes up to 2,000 years.
From an evolutionary perspective, the question is always what is the current selection pressure? Historically it’s almost always been intelligence plus something else, melanin in the skin, the ability to metabolize lactose into adulthood, etc…
i always thought that it was the greater volume of humans, the greater the genetic diversity
There’s barely any pressure to extinguish “bad” traits, though.
If you’re the idiot who eats every berry you can find, cavemen can’t save you and your genes disappear. Modern medicine can and will save you, so you can create offspring and the berryeaters keep their proud heritage alive.
Now, what is considered “good” or “bad” is of course highly debatable, but currently we have effectively no survival pressure, the only selection is how many children you get.
But that if that “idiot” does propagate, but so does everyone else, no skin off the species back. If the selective pressure returns, well then the others keep going.
OG Luci is right, though. There are far more people due to modern medicine. So if we suddenly lose it, there will be a lot of death. But there is more population and diversity to draw from the survivors. So I don’t think it’s a threat to the species.
I would argue that modern medicine prevents non-selective deaths. We try and keep everyone alive, not just the idiots.
This has been happening for a while now and the results of which are the voting populace of the anti-intellectual movement that is explained in the documentary film, Idiocracy.
It already has affected natural-selection.
I think we’ve already demolished natural selection over here, modern medicine being the least of concern. Idiocracy was supposed to be humor, not foretelling.
Natural selection is an agent that runs contrary to the thing which is currently out-competing natural selection, that being big brain thinkering
E.g., if a cancer research scientist dies from a weak heart, that will reduce future life expectancy more than it will increase it
Natural selection and evolution happen because genetic traits in some individuals are more beneficial than in other individuals. It has nothing to do with increasing future life expectancy for most or all of the species. If a doctor is helping non-relatives far more than relatives, his contribution is not selected for.
a doctor is helping non-relatives far more than relatives, his contribution is not selected for.
Which is the whole point of my comment…
Hmm, that’s an interesting question. I’m not an evolutionary biologist but I am a biologist (more specifically, a microbiogist).
The crux of the misunderstanding, I think, is that the definition of what counts as advantageous or “good” has changed over time. Very rapidly, in fact. The reason many diseases are still around today is because many genetic diseases offered a very real advantage in the past. The example that is often given is malaria and sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia gives resistance to malaria, which is why it’s so prevalent in populations that historically have high incidence of malaria.
Natural selection doesn’t improve anything, it just makes animals more fit for their exact, immediate situation. That also means that it is very possible (and in fact, very likely) that the traits that we today associate with health will become disadvantageous in the future.
If we remember that natural selection isn’t trying to push humanity towards any goal, enlightenment, or good health, it becomes easier to acknowledge and accept that we can and should interfere with natural selection
the traits that we today associate with health will become disadvantageous in the future.
Yeah I can think of a few, like aging. 10000 years from now kids will be saying, “wow, those poor unevolved savages lived such short lives and only really got to enjoy the first little bit of it before they started falling apart. They even had genetic engineering at the time! Imagine how many people would be alive today if they hadn’t been so scared to edit their genes to prevent aging.” Then their teacher would come over and explain that it wasn’t so easy at the time. There were still so many other problems they had to solve and related genes that need to be modified to avoid undesirable consequences, and let’s get back on topic: how many planets fall under the rule of the galactic empire including our own planet Urth?
Same question rephrased: Can seat belts be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing the effects of natural selection? After all, stronger individuals are more likely to survive car crashes.
What about wood stoves? Surely the fittest individuals are able to handle the cold?
We removed ourselves from “natural selection” a long time ago.
And yet, we have not, for these inventions are the Adaptations developed by other humans for the purpose of the propagation of genetics similar to their own
I think we’re in a more similar position to birds of paradise. Several species of birds that live in the south Pacific/Indian ocean islands/Australia kind of region, where the weather isn’t particularly harsh, their food is abundant and there are no natural predators, so natural selection has given way to mate selection. Male birds of paradise are fancy as fuck with brightly colored burlesque plumage not because it’s any help surviving their environment, but because the girl birds think it’s sexy.
I think our genus is in a similar position, but got there via a different route. Once the upright walking, hands having, brain thinking ape got dexterous and smart enough to build fire and cook food, there was a sort of bootstrapping period of becoming smart enough to do engineering, at which point we arrive at anatomically modern humans, and from there most physical changes have basically been “because it’s sexy.” Men have deeper voices because it turns women on. Women have permanent boobs because it turns men on, etc. People from Asia have distinctively shaped eyelids…is there some environmental pressure in Asia that doesn’t exist in Europe or Africa, or is it because that eye shape became fashionable to ancient Asians?
And now we’ve arrived in a time where we have a functioning understanding of how genetics work, and the ability to manipulate those genetics at industrial scales. Seriously I think we departed the “it was cold so the ones with thicker fur were more likely to survive to fuck another day” phase of existence at some point, with the invention of writing at the latest.
All of this is true, and I agree with it, but until we start employing genetic modifications to our own population, this is all still just natural selection in the same way that celibate worker drone bees building nests for their hive is natural selection.
The entire point of medicine is to give nature the finger. The goal is to make natural selection obsolete. We can certainly screw it up enough to wipe us out though or be unfair with it.
I feel like the largest threat may be C-sections over natural births. A lot of births in developed countries are C-sections, with a lot of it being because the babies are too large to fit comfortably through their mothers’ hips.
As baby size increases and has benefits post birth, there may come a day where some human populations need to rely on C-sections to propagate.
That wouldn’t be a threat to humanity.
It would be a threat to humanity’s continued existence in the case of societal collapse. You know, the one we are in the middle of. If one generation cannot for any reason give birth to the next one. It is over. We are facing that scenario right now.
The fact that sperm count in men is alarmingly poor all over the world. Be it caused by pollutants or by medicine allowing those unable to procreate naturally to pass on their genes.
The “gender revolution” has allowed people to be what ever they want to be. But this has led to them to be unwilling or unable to procreate without advanced medicine.
Birth rates are falling off a cliff around the world. In some countries the population will be halved by the end of the century given current birth rates.
This will cause a societal collapse. And those unable to procreate without advanced medicine will die without having children. The others will face an uphill battle to continue living. Their weakened immune systems inherited from ancestors saved by medicine. Battling superbugs created by medicine. Without access to it.
In an effort to heal and help medicine has weakened us and left us vulnerable. And that is a threat to humanity’s continued existence.
Why do you think declining birthrates will cause collapse? If anything I’d think it would help. We got what 8 billion people? I think we’ll be able to continue the species just fine with that. Though infinite growth for the shareholders may not work out
You fail to understand how deeply ingrained the need for infinite growth is coupled into our society. It’s not that some shareholders will not get their profits. Institutional investors (sovereign wealth funds, retirement funds, etc.) will fail to provide services billions of people rely upon.
There won’t be enough people keep the wheels of society turning. Some institutions will stop functioning. Healthcare, industry, law enforcement, etc. will all be under enormous pressure. People will lose faith in society’s ability to provide basic necessities and this is when the collapse proper will begin.
Importing more people from third world countries will not save us in the long run. They will run out at some point. And they will bring some of their problems with them. Causing instability.
If we were to avoid it we would have to replace almost everything.
It would be if we suddenly didn’t have access to modern medicine for some reason. Like say a city under seige with power cut iff to hospitals
A threat to a handful of women who happen to be pregnant. Not to humanity as a whole.
A very cavalier take until it’s your wife/sister/friend that dies because she cant get to a maternity ward in time. As it stands, humanity will carry on if society were to collapse next week. But if we cant safely deliver babies without modern medicine, we are in aerious trouble.
humanity /hyoo͞-măn′ĭ-tē/ noun
Humans considered as a group; the human race.
Humanity is not individuals. It’s humanity as a whole.
But that’s not what OP asked / wanted to dicuss? The person you’re attacking simply answered the original question:
“would it be a danger to the whole of humanity or our evolutionary progress?”
While I think the data alignes with your observation and your interpretation of the risks are on point it deviates from the point the person you answered to.
A threat to humans to live without access to medicine which makes humanity more fragile and less adaptable.
natural selection does not choose whats best overall, just those that can reproduce. steinmetz was a hunchback cripple dwarf who was the actual intellectual powerhouse behind GE and responsible for much of our quality of life in the modern age.
steinmetz was a hunchback cripple dwarf
I never want to hear anyone say again that “nobody calls someone a ‘cripple’ anymore”. Perhaps consider this somewhat less grotesque alternate phrasing: “Steinmetz was a person who experienced significant and debilitating disability”.
natural selection does not choose whats best overall, just those that can reproduce.
That’s not only an incorrect understanding of natural selection, i’d add that Steinmetz chose not to reproduce. If he hadn’t been the topic of your next sentence, I wouldn’t have felt the need to emphasise his personal agency. Or his existence as a person
I know he chose to not have kids and the phrasing I used has been used with him in particular forever to emphasize the extreme challenges he had to deal with. Its great you like a certain more generic phrasing which could be applied to anyone.
If you wanted to emphasise the challenges he dealt with, adjectives for his physical appearance were not a good choice. The challenges he would have dealt with may have included chronic pain, limited mobility and discrimination. You could even have said he suffered from kyphosis. But words which have been frequently intended to be derogatory don’t do much to create a sense of empathy.
could be applied to anyone.
And it’s nice to see disability being normalised, even if that wasn’t your intent.
where do you get cripple is a physical appearance description? do video game thieves use differentialy abled strike? ten years from now you will have folks say using disability or disabled makes you worse than hitler. the words only have deragatory meaning to those who have decided they are such.
Even if we ignored the entire history of the word cripple, it still would be remarkable to not consider hunchback or dwarf as physical descriptions. Given that your next question references video games and then we fall down Godwin’s slippery slope, I’m not convinced you’re honestly engaging with the concept of connotation.
the words only have deragatory meaning to those who have decided they are such.
Yes, and when the people who have to live with the consequences of discrimination tell you that you’re speaking in the same way as those who have discriminated against them, it’s worth considering. Even momentarily.
Have a great day, I’m going to go be a cripple elsewhere now. Nah, just kidding, it will still be my couch. Just not this thread.
No. Human evolution is driven primarily by mate selection.
I think a bigger threat to humanity is a LACK of modern medicine. Both because denying people life-saving medicine because you think they’re “weak” is inhumanly cruel, and because of that plague we just had.
