Comment by the_af

2 days ago

Well, like I said, this is a result of it when it no longer matters. For reference, we're talking about 60+ year old men.

And, like I also said, modern humans and our society don't reflect natural selection anyway; many things we do are "unnatural".

> modern humans and our society don't reflect natural selection anyway; many things we do are "unnatural".

That's simply not true. Don't get hung up on the word "natural". It's nothing more than the result of a biased random walk (at least until the eugenicists get involved, at which point it goes meta).

Some of the things selected for can get pretty abstract. Cooperative behavior for example. Despite often being to the short term detriment of the individual it is observed in the wild.

  • I don't think it's false. The forces at play in modern society are no longer (alone) those of natural selection. This has been remarked on by people like Stephen Jay Gould. Society/culture evolves along different (faster) lines. We do a lot that makes no sense from the perspective of natural selection.