> I was using "evolution" in the sense of "survival of the fittest" The people who are reproducing more and passing on genes are "the fittest", by definition.

> I was using "evolution" in the sense of "survival of the fittest" The people who are reproducing more and passing on genes are "the fittest", by definition. > there aren't really selections for "fittest" (healthier, stronger, smarter) operating on humans anymore, it's more the opposite. That's still evolution. Selection may not be working in ways that select for attributes you or I would necessarily choose, but if there are selective factors and the organism is changing, that's evolution baby. Evolution does not mean "improving", which is subjective anyway. (I picked up on this because basically this idea that evolution has a direction, or aims, or that you can be somehow more or less evolved, that the human organism is de-evolving etc ... all this is the sort of thinking at the root of eugenics, which has some pretty dark history. And it's not the definition or the scientific understanding of the idea - a fish that evolves to be blind in the ocean depths is not de-evolving or going backwards. It's evolving subject to the selective pressures it is under)