[blainm]

Issues like these reflects an evolutionary blind spot: selective pressure drops off after reproductive age, allowing defects like prostate dysfunction to persist. It's the same reason late-onset neurological diseases remain prevalent.

[mattigames]

We lucked out compared to other species, octopus develop dementia soon after breeding.

[amelius]

Yes, and there are spiders where the female eats the male after breeding. I bet their pr0n movies are a bit more interesting than ours.

[jbd0]

Shouldn't kids with grandfathers have an evolutionary advantage?

[bmicraft]

They didn't say drops to zero, but the advantage is obviously more limited

[georgeburdell]

If it wasn’t in the past, I imagine it will be in the future with how common two working parents is now. We want more kids but we are getting zero grandparent help

[const_cast]

Probably barely, and I think in some instances the opposite. You have to care for the elderly.

[me_again]

The grandmother hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis is reasonably well-established. The corresponding 'grandfather effect' has not really been demonstrated, as far as I know. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2007...

[natebc]

when humans were still primarily subjected to natural selection the life expectancy likely wouldn't have allowed for many grandfathers.

[ASalazarMX]

Probably improved more with lots of siblings from a wide age range. The bigger siblings would do productive work, the younger would take care of the little ones.

[Izikiel43]

The problem there is with your definition of grandfather. Currently, the age for a grandfather in developed countries is 55+. For most of humanity's history, if there were grandfathers, they would barely make it to 55 years of age.

[card_zero]

Hmm. If we engineer late-life reproduction, that might create evolutionary pressure for healthy old age.

Hides long list of ethical problems with the concept

[halgir]

We missed the boat for that a few million years ago. If we're engineering anyway, we might as well engineer for healthy old age directly.

[Workaccount2]

We just have to get the media to portray geriatric men as sexy, and we'll be well on our way to living to 200!

[throwuxiytayq]

The main problem is that evolution is just not a thing at our modern civilizational time scale.

And I don’t see any problems with late-life reproduction, assuming we can make it reliable and healthy. If anything, some countries desperately need it.

[wkat4242]

With our modern health systems we are pretty much a huge evolutionary blind spot ourselves. Many illnesses that would be filtered out because the carrier wouldn't survive, are now trivial. And on the journey hand we can screen for known illnesses.

I think we are already post evolutionary, or control it ourselves. Not a big issue either IMO, it's totally ok that this is happening.

[the__alchemist]

Dawkins suggested this might be viable (In an abstract; not politically practical) way in The Selfish Gene.

[pavel_lishin]

I read a pretty entertaining novel where that was one of the sub-plots.

The ethical problems were fun to read about! But would be significantly less fun to live through.

[Qem]

We engineered it culturally already. Lots of people delaying childbirth until late 30s, early 40s today, often resorting to expensive treatments.

[magicalhippo]

If we're ignoring ethics, then we don't need late-life reproduction.

Just kill all offspring if one of the parents die of some unwanted cause.

Allows people to still get kids in the optimal age, yet applying old-age selection pressure.

[lukas099]

But the issue also causes male infertility, so that can’t be why it’s so prevalent. This is discussed in the article.

[wazoox]

Male infertility after 60 is probably not very impactful from a selective point of view. For 300 000 years, almost nobody reached 60 anyway.

[MyPasswordSucks]

The article sort of mentions this in passing, but doesn't subject it to much rigor, and the (completely obvious?) counterargument is that by the time it causes male infertility, the affected have already reproduced.

[yapyap]

what? so are you implying that prostate dysfunction makes you less wanted as a father if it presents itself in “the reproductive age”?

[rubyfan]

I read the comment as insinuating people stop taking care of themselves as much after children and develop unhealthy habits.

[nonethewiser]

So widen the reproductive age (men only)

[hhh]

Why men only?