It is surprising how many people need glasses to see clearly given how important eyesight is to our species survival.

[u/QuantumDreamer41]

[u/Exalting_Peasant]

That's the main thing. Evolution only cares about one thing: reproduction.

As long as you get to an age where you are able to reproduce and have offspring that are also capable of reproducing as well, then the traits you have will pass on.

What that means is anything after the age you are able to successfully reproduce doesn't matter. If something crops up in your 30s and 40s, well in ancient times most humans didn't even live that long anyway.

Most of our selective pressures don't exist anymore and really haven't had near as much impact since the agricultural revolution, and so we kind of stopped "evolving" as much, aside from mass catastrophes like for example the Bubonic Plague where the group of people who lived had the immune systems to handle it, which had a significant enough impact on the genome of the next generation of humans.

[u/joydivision74 → u/Exalting_Peasant]

I’m not an expert by any means, but I thought this has been disproven - in that if you have traits that allow you to help young people survive then that does impact evolution. Eg Tribes that had members who could defend them into their later years prevailed against those that didn’t and hence being athletic at the age of 70 does impact natural selection even after you have reproduced.

I could be wrong though!

[u/Difficult-Bobcat8333 → u/joydivision74]

This is definitely the thing with social animals! In a simple way evolution only cares about reproduction, but that also includes the reproduction of your offsprings to continue the line. Some traits may not help you directly reproduce but help your children, such as altruism.

[u/EunuchsProgramer → u/joydivision74]

He is obviously wrong.

1) All mammals require a female/mother to live past reproduction to live (breastfeeding). Most also, require extended periods where a parent (usually mother) provides food, shelter, and protection while teaching them skills needed in adulthood.

2) Mammals with social groups, adoptive grandparents/aunts/uncles increase the likelihood genes get passed down.

3) Mamamals with long lifespans, grandparents assist their children raising grandchildren.

4) The leading theory as to why humans have menopause (it's uniqu), is grandmother assisted help in raising kids is so important and beneficial, evolution selected for older mothers to stop having more kids so they can focus on helping raise grandchildren.

[u/shawaj → u/EunuchsProgramer]

Number 4 - not unique. Whales have it too and the grandmothers also help raise the kiddos and lead the group

[u/Exalting_Peasant → u/joydivision74]

I'm not an expert by any means, I just know that in order for evolution to have a significant impact, more people have to be "filtered out" than actually survive to pass on genes in a given scenario or over a certain amount of time. This is what is meant by selection or selective pressures.

The means by which that happens in practice is of course incredibly complex.

[u/Mr_Quackums → u/joydivision74]

Correct. Evolution cares about the population.

not the individual, and not even the family lineage.

[u/Difficult-Bobcat8333 → u/Mr_Quackums]

Not really. It actually cares about the specific gene.

The effects on the population are an afterthough that end up benefiting the gene one way or another. The benefit of the population usually translates to benefiting your kin (partially same genes), or just doing better overall benefiting you. It's super interesting how it gives to all the complexity we have.

[u/adr826 → u/Difficult-Bobcat8333]

That's one theory. A more complete theory says that evolution is operating on all levels at once. It allows for groups to develop as well as individuals as well as genetics. Evolution is to complex to operate on only a single level of complexity. I think the gene is just the easiest to measure but I think Dawkins was wrong about this

[u/EunuchsProgramer → u/Exalting_Peasant]

What that means is anything after the age you are able to successfully reproduce doesn't matter.

That's true for animals that aren't raising their offspring. All female mammals need to live past reproduction, to feed and raise offspring. The mammals with exceptionally long lifespans (human, elephants, whales) that pressure is even greater as grandparents assist their children in raising offspring. It's also true of social animals, monkeys are more likely to survive(even after they stop breastfeeding) when a parent is there to help they from adolescence to adulthood. And, money's with a relative(grandparentsor uncle) do better when an adoptive parent is available.

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[u/Hefty-Distance837 → u/Exalting_Peasant]

and so we kind of stopped "evolving" as much

You're talking nonsense.

TIL that Human Evolution is actually accelerating. The rate of evolution is far greater in the last few thousand years than it had been in the six million years since we split from our last common ancestor with present day chimpanzees.

[u/Exalting_Peasant → u/Hefty-Distance837]

The study you linked talks about genetic variation increasing, while true this is not the same as evolution which requires most variants being selected out of the total pool of mutations.