Am I the only one who thought that was a given based on phenomena like this:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea...

we all are not quite freediving most of our waking lives, but the daily pressures of modern urban living must be exerting a similar level of evolutionary pressure on us.

As far as I was taught in college, evolution never stops, but we're just too short lived to notice that. We _may_ notice some very tiny blip on timescales of several hundred years, but last really noticeable traits happened many thousands years ago.

However, cultural/society/educational evolution happens much-much faster (but is also much-much weaker, can disappear on just a few weeks).

Given that fertility rates are currently plummeting worldwide, the principles of natural selection would dictate that humans are currently undergoing very high selection pressure for specific traits.

Basically, any genetic trait that causes people today to think "You know, I think I'm going to remain childfree" is specifically selected against, and any trait that causes people to want more children will be selected for. I'd argue that the invention of reliable birth control was that biggest change in human selective pressures in history. Evolution made sex highly pleasurable and desirable because it often resulted in passing on your genes. That's no longer true with reliable birth control, and with such a huge environmental shift natural selection will act on other avenues that cause people to have children.

The idea that humans have undergone high selective pressure for genes related to immunity in some way during a recent 5000 year period in which massive urbanization lead to a truly unfathomable amount of deaths including staggering percentages of humans dying in childhood because of various infectious diseases, plagues, pandemics, etc, and that those changes involved large numbers of small changes across a large number of genes in complex regulatory networks, is probably the least surprising discovery in the history of the universe. It's good science and it's obviously important research to do, not in the least because it can shed light on evolutionary pressures that may be driving the rise in autoimmune diseases we see in the modern day, but the framing of the PR slop article around it is truly so stupid.

Maybe if it found selective pressures were still dominating and driving evolution in recent decades in developed nations with low childhood mortality that would be surprising. Though the framing of the article is almost that it would be surprising if mutations were happening at all which is obviously stupid - we haven't figured out how to reverse entropy so mutation rates haven't gone down, evolution by genetic drift is obviously continuing to occur, and with advances in medicine the number of folks surviving with mutations that would have been problematic otherwise is increasing.

Truly disappointing slop. Like obviously humans faced selective pressures during an era when like 8 in 10 kids died of plague or similar things, a biological factor where survival is correlated with genetic factors that influence immunity and disease survival.

Again, super useful science to see exactly what that influence was, but it would only be surprising if we learned we'd somehow managed to turn off entropy and statistics during the black death and we didn't face selective pressures.

I can't find the source now but an idea that really stuck with me is that evolution happens on the margins. If a 0.0001% increase in the height of a giraffe makes it 0.0001% more likely that the giraffe will survive and reproduce, then in 1 million years giraffes as a species will become taller.

As for humans: I mean, duh? The selective pressures faced by humans have changed radically in the time we've been around.

Genetic drift is not evolution. Every single birth brings about genetic drift. Evolution is gaining or losing specific traits. Individually, humans do gain and lose traits but from an macroscopic view, those traits are just a blip. An cheetah that lose it's ability to run fast many not survive. A human that loses a some useful trait does not die(government assistance. I'm talking about the West because I can't speak for every place in the world) and might even pass that trait down the line. An cheetah that gains the ability to run even faster thrives, outcompete competitors, and most likely pass on this trait. A human that gains a useful trait(faster, stronger, better vision, better hearing) does not amount to much;, might win competitions and make a bunch of money but many people can make a bunch of money without that trait so it's nothing really special. Overall, it's a wash because in one generation, you might have some good genes and the next generation, no so good genes. Therefore, no evolution.

Isn't this obvious? Why on earth would it stop? I don't actually believe that 'humans stopped evolving' was ever a widespread belief among scientists. This article has gotta be lying to me.

  There's been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain. -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Spice of Life", 2000

It is well established that evolution is driven not only by fitness in the trivial sense of "survival or death", but in large part by mate selection.

(Disclaimer: The rest is a personal theory with zero scientific support.)

This begs the question: selection based on what? In many bird species it is the complexity of the male's song, or the colourful beauty of his feathers. There are "dances" and courtship rituals in many animals, including even insects.

Humans almost certainly also subject to evolution caused by the evolutionary pressures of mate selection!

This is best said by Anthony Hokpins in Westworld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjsGJOXhPGU

"I read a theory once that the human intellect was like peacock feathers. Just an extravagant display intended to attract a mate. All of art, literature, a bit of Mozart, William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and the Empire State Building—just an elaborate mating ritual.

Maybe it doesn't matter that we have accomplished so much for the basest of reasons. But, of course, the peacock can barely fly. It lives in the dirt, pecking insects out of the muck, consoling itself with its great beauty."

Which is a good bit of drama, but... if true, what are the consequences for the evolution of the human species?

Assume for a moment, that yes, women are attracted to male intelligence, which men show off with music, art, and "great works".

The obvious immediate effect is that this causes the average intelligence of Homo Sapiens to increase over time.

But the secondary effect is more interesting: judging intelligence benefits from more intelligence! As the next generation of women inherit greater intelligence, they become better judges of male intelligence, more picky and precise. This forces male intelligence to increase ever faster to keep up with the "rising demand". Rinse and repeat.

I can't prove, but strongly suspect that this is the case.

Birds of Paradise become "more beautiful" on the scale of aeons because more beauty in the males doesn't improve the judgement of the females.

Humans become more intelligent on the scale of mere millenia because more intelligence does improve the judgement of the females.

Who said we stopped evolving? Evolution is slow cause we are many. Another garbage clickbait press release that butchers the science.

True, but not in the way most people would find admirable. Civilization is getting less intelligent, more impulsive, and catering to neurology wildlife predation often attenuated in the past.

Human-beings will likely evolve into a primate equivalent of a Chihuahua. =3

I'm reminded of this section of a Douglas Adams quote:

"Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again."

I like how this is not even specific to life nor genes, and it's not hard to add to it the idea of happening-again in ways that make the thing better-or-worse at happening again.

Personally I think this applies to all coherently-causal systems.. still trying to figure out whether to believe QM is fully causal or not! (Currently seems like it might be a mixture?)

The choice for the illustration is marvelous, no words... I love it...

Thank you for mentioning the Artists of so ineffably magnificent works:

- https://luisajung.com/

sure seems like a lot of 'em have

There is infine diversity of genders and orientations. Human is also the only mammal that can change its gender in adulthood!

If that's true. Why haven't we evolved into a species that doesn't harm each other or the environment?

This is certainly not what I learned to be the definition of evolution in my biology classes.

First, the article is not just proposing genetic drift, which is the change in allele frequency by chance. It is arguing that change in allele frequency is due to natural selection pressure, and that most certainly is evolution. Copied from the Wikipedia entry, because I think it's simple and clear:

> Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as genetic drift and natural selection act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations.

That is exactly what the article described.

I believe the traits for humans you should look at are not physical like strength, but social. People with poor social skills are less likely to reproduce in our society. Likewise, culture (and hence memetic evolution) influences birth rates quite a bit and is passed on from parents to children.

Well notably the loss of skin pigmentation evolved in two different ways after migration into Europe and separately into East Asia. There is strong selective pressure in Africa so pigmentation remains there.

And lactase persistence is quite recent. Some people say that Tibetans and some S E Asians are particularly adapted as well to their local environment of high altitude and sea diving but I don’t know anything about that.

>> might win competitions and make a bunch of money

You mean, they might be more likely to have lots of offspring than someone who was disabled and living on government assistance?

Or 500 years ago, be more likely to slaughter the men and rape the women of a neighboring kingdom, than those who stayed home?

Or for a trait closer to my heart, be adept at handling the intellectual requirements of surviving exile and persecution?

You know it's the success they confer toward reproduction that causes traits to survive or not, right? Without reproduction, of course one generation's genetic noise is just noise. And longevity traits don't survive if they hamper reproduction. Just the opposite: Lots of traits that succeed because they improve the chances of breeding are the worst possible things you would want for longevity. Risk taking behavior and all manner of psychoses have survived and thrived for millenia not because the individuals with them live long, but because they breed prolifically.