[abricq]

On a slightly related topic, I remember to have seen an exposition where an artist was asked to represents what a human who has naturally evolved to survive a car crash might look like. And it has a cool / terrifying website: http://www.meetgraham.com.au/view-graham

Quite fascinating topic to wonder about: how long will it take for the modern era to genetically change us ?

[BurningFrog]

Men will evolve to manage sperm banks and fertility clinics.

[MrLeap]

After the high profile grossness with those, you'd think every person using those services would do a paternity test just in case.

[highcountess]

To answer your question, it already has changed us in many ways. You are not the only one who does not realize this though. It is in fact the prevailing position.

We have diseases and genetic defects, among other impacts through modern behaviors and environments/toxins, which are also retained in the genetic mutational load. We even have a whole lot of energy and human activity working to counter evolutionary pressures and assure those accumulated mutational loads remain in the genetic code.

[amanaplanacanal]

Fitness depends on the specific environment the creature is in. Environmental fitness for the ancestral environment when all humans were hunter-gatherers is not necessarily the same as fitness for living in an industrial society. Evolutionary pressure still works just fine.

[spacebanana7]

Humans are beyond evolution. There's no meaningful selection pressure in our environment that kills people before reproductive age, so there's no reward for adaptations.

[svara]

Totally wrong, killing humans is not required for evolution.

Ignoring genetic drift and taking into account only natural selection, all that's needed is differences in fitness, i.e. differences in how much an individual contributes to the gene pool of future generations.

[swalling]

Dead wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution

[red-iron-pine]

no one is having babies mon ami. birth rates are declining.

it's not about killing people before reproductive age, it's about absolute numbers of offspring born. dying before reproducing ensures that number stays 0, but you can still hit sexual maturity and not reproduce.

plus there is a fertility window -- after 50 most humans, male or female, ain't having kids (a handful of rockstar types whelping babies at 80 notwithstanding).

there is a TON of meaningful pressure in our environment, like the inability to have a living wage reducing how many Gen Z's are marrying and having kids.

[steve_adams_86]

This simply isn't how evolution works. There's no way to be "beyond" it. It's an inevitable facet of populations of living organisms.

If a population used genetic engineering to collectively ensure their genetics didn't change, no mutations, no other populations involved, then... I guess? Otherwise, there is this staggering multitude of influences.

Living longer and reproducing longer is a huge weight on the scales of evolution. Why does anyone need to die early for it to work?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Humans are beyond evolution

Empirically false [1]. The median artery is a poignant example from the industrial era [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution#Early_M...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_artery

[ninetyninenine]

There is incredibly high sexual selection. Birth control is effecting this.

Note that sexual selection selects for health, wealth and reputation. Women are doing most of the selection here.

[dekhn]

I believe we are currently measuring recent functional selection on humans and it's non-zero. That is, empirically you are incorrect.

[washadjeffmad]

Interesting. So how do you explain menopause and other population or age scale adaptations?

Humans aren't individuals, no matter how certain blips of modern culturalism pretend.

[toasterlovin]

If there's a fertility gradient based on heritable traits then there is evolution happening.

[JumpCrisscross]

> There's no meaningful selection pressure in our environment that kills people before reproductive age

War and disease. Rich countries can afford defence and healthcare. Poor countries cannot. (Within rich countries, the kids of the rich see war and disease less. They're more likely to be in offices, not on the battlefield and they're more likely to be educated and vaccinated.)

And even rich countries have periodic selection pressures. Natural disasters. Pandemics. Addiction epidemics. Propensities towards violent altercations or risk-taking behaviour. (Exhibit A: young men in cars.)

[immibis]

Does everyone have two children?

[_DeadFred_]

That's what the build up of plastics in our testicles are for.

[mattigames]

I have always considered that a bug, not a feature.

[snarf21]

Really? I was under the understanding that we have continued to get taller and bigger driven by out our access to nutrition and medicine over the last couple of centuries.