Ask Lemmy

26707 readers

1380 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

154

A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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...)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 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 5 months ago

Sexual selection is a subcategory of natural selection