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Hopefully evolution takes care of this eventually?!

jdmichal 11y ago
What would be the proposed mechanism for evolution handling this? The typical mechanism is (lack of) child bearing, and being near-sighted with access to modern optics has zero impact on that.
XorNot 11y ago
Do realize when you say things like this you are exactly saying "I hope all these people die without having children". That's how evolution "takes care of things".
- product50 11y ago
  Never thought about it like that. Suddenly my comment sounds really nasty. I would be curious though as to how evolution works when a specific sense organ begins to weaken in every subsequent generation but however due to human beings ingenuity, the impact from the weakening may not be fatal.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    By those with the weaken sense organ having fewer offspring than the population average. Selection is probability based that for any trait is effectively continuous. Currently the only significant evolution in the human population is for the non use of birth control.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    It's worth keeping in mind that evolution doesn't mean "improvement" - just change. There's no drive to make things objectively "better", which is why the human body is a giant pile of just barely good enough processes.
  - jonathansizz 11y ago
    The fact that we can get around vision problems using technology is precisely what allows such vision problems to become widespread. Poor eyesight has gone from being massively deleterious and thus exerting a strongly negative selective pressure, to being (usually) trivially correctable and thus having no bearing on natural selection at all (excluding sexual selection). Once you remove selection from the equation, genetic drift gets free reign; suboptimal alleles will spread through the population. Note, however, that in the case of myopia we may well be dealing with a non-heritable environmental effect.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    If a trait doesn't prevent people from reproducing (whether by killing them, making them infertile, or making them unattractive to the opposite sex), and also doesn't make them more likely to reproduce successfully, then evolution has no effect on that trait whatsoever. There are plenty of examples of characteristics that actually make individuals less likely to survive, but flourish because they also make the individual a more attractive breeding partner--the peacock's cumbersome tail, for example, which is used in mating displays.
coldtea 11y ago
Evolution "takes care" of things like this in the span ranging from millennia to hundreds of thousands of years. And it might even decide to "take care" of the wrong thing, e.g. wipe out the human race in favor of the more resistant cockroach overloads.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Overlords (damn, I always make tons of typos on HN).

What would be the proposed mechanism for evolution handling this? The typical mechanism is (lack of) child bearing, and being near-sighted with access to modern optics has zero impact on that.

XorNot 11y ago

Do realize when you say things like this you are exactly saying "I hope all these people die without having children". That's how evolution "takes care of things".

product50 11y ago
Never thought about it like that. Suddenly my comment sounds really nasty. I would be curious though as to how evolution works when a specific sense organ begins to weaken in every subsequent generation but however due to human beings ingenuity, the impact from the weakening may not be fatal.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  By those with the weaken sense organ having fewer offspring than the population average. Selection is probability based that for any trait is effectively continuous. Currently the only significant evolution in the human population is for the non use of birth control.
- XorNot 11y ago
  It's worth keeping in mind that evolution doesn't mean "improvement" - just change. There's no drive to make things objectively "better", which is why the human body is a giant pile of just barely good enough processes.
- jonathansizz 11y ago
  The fact that we can get around vision problems using technology is precisely what allows such vision problems to become widespread. Poor eyesight has gone from being massively deleterious and thus exerting a strongly negative selective pressure, to being (usually) trivially correctable and thus having no bearing on natural selection at all (excluding sexual selection). Once you remove selection from the equation, genetic drift gets free reign; suboptimal alleles will spread through the population. Note, however, that in the case of myopia we may well be dealing with a non-heritable environmental effect.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  If a trait doesn't prevent people from reproducing (whether by killing them, making them infertile, or making them unattractive to the opposite sex), and also doesn't make them more likely to reproduce successfully, then evolution has no effect on that trait whatsoever. There are plenty of examples of characteristics that actually make individuals less likely to survive, but flourish because they also make the individual a more attractive breeding partner--the peacock's cumbersome tail, for example, which is used in mating displays.

coldtea 11y ago

Evolution "takes care" of things like this in the span ranging from millennia to hundreds of thousands of years. And it might even decide to "take care" of the wrong thing, e.g. wipe out the human race in favor of the more resistant cockroach overloads.

coldtea 11y ago
Overlords (damn, I always make tons of typos on HN).