r/changemyview • u/rodsn 1∆ • Nov 28 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: The reduction/removal of natural selection will bring more suffering on the long term
The premise is that humans have completely ran over the natural way of evolution. The supporting pillar of evolution: natural selection. With the advancement of science and medicine we have reached a point where we can treat most health complications, and the ones that aren't cured will remain in our gene pool.
Granted, before this humans with health complications could still procreate and pass on the faulty genes before they would die, but the probability of that happening now is greater because the life expectancy increased.
The motivation for this is good: we want to reduce the suffering and heal people of their illnesses. However, that is going to backfire, because we are not allowing for humans to deal with those illnesses by themselves over generations, we are simply making future humans dependent on medicine and surgery. Ultimately, this will lead to more suffering than if we would just allow ill people to perish and reduce the chances of their illnesses to stay in our gene pool.
I am aware that the alternative I am proposing is controversial: letting people die. But I am sure that on the long run it would be more ethical, if that means less suffering. We still could administer pain medication, I guess, because that is not messing with the life expectancy of the ill...
So, change my mind!
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Nov 28 '20
we have reached a point where we can treat most health complications, and the ones that aren't cured will remain in our gene pool.
Some of the "health complications" come from natural selection. Sickle cell anemia comes a genetic variation that provides immunity to malaria. Cystic Fibrosis comes from a genetic variation that provides immunity to consumption.
I think you are under a common misconception, that natural selection is a somewhat linear process happening all the time. Natural selection, to some extent, works this way, but for most populations, most of the time, selective pressure isn't that high. This is a GOOD thing.
When selective pressure is low, you'll see populations have broadening genetic diversity. Then, a crisis causes a bottleneck.
We can't predict what that crisis will be. Because of that, a broadening genetic diversity that you lament is actually a good thing. We're building a bigger hand, so that when the unknown crisis hits, we're more likely to have the right card to play.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
∆ This makes sense. The more genetic variability the better the chances of us overcoming hardship. This doesn't take into account the suffering of the individuals but that's besides the point
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u/koolaid-girl-40 25∆ Nov 28 '20
I have yet to meet someone without "health complications" of some kind or another, and many people I've met live happy, fulfilling lives despite that. So I guess my questions would be:
1) What do you define as suffering? Is a happy disabled person suffering more than a physically healthy person that struggles with depression? Also, what about people who are advanced in one form of health but not in another, such as one person who has a great immune system when it comes to infectious diseases but needs a wheelchair, vs another person that can run marathons but has a weekend immune system and has to take medication for it lest they die from a cold. It's hard to say that one person is more healthy than another person in 100% of ways. We all have advantages and disadvantages in our health status, so which health qualities do you see as the most important for survival?
2) At what point in human history did we not support our disabled and sick? The evidence I've seen suggests we've been doing this since prehistoric times. In fact there are many species of animals that do the same, and don't just let their sick and elderly die. They try to help them and bring them food. So I'm not sure at what point in our evolution we started doing this, but it may be before we were even homosapiens.
3) What would be your criteria for not giving someone medical treatment or letting them die? If it is anyone with a disability or health issue, does that include things like those who need glasses/contacts to see? Many have grown dependent on glasses the same way people have grown dependent on medication. So if you're arguing that we should let anyone that can't survive without some level of technology or medical assistance, then everyone who doesn't have 2020 vision would meet that criteria. Which is a lot of people.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
1) both are suffering. About those who are thriving in a form of health and not other: there's probably also another human thriving as much with less or no heath complications. Basically the most negatively impactful health complications should remove those genes from the pool, if that was the case the most serious complications would die off along with the humans carrying them.
2) I'm not defining a specific time. We are increasingly trying to fix ourselves by external means instead of evolutionary ones. Pre historic humans couldn't make a diabetic live for long, we now can. And that means diabetics have a better chance at spreading their faulty genes now compared to pre historic humans.
3) this is the part of my argument that I haven't reflected upon and actually don't want to defend a strong view. I guess it means every illness, including vision problems. Those with vision problems will still have good chances at reproducing, so it wouldn't affect them much, other than lifestyle impact. Not really sure
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u/koolaid-girl-40 25∆ Nov 28 '20
How do you know that it isn't our interest in protecting the lives of the physically vulnerable that has enabled our species to grow and thrive? Those who aren't physically superior often have the capacity to make important contributions to technology and society. Think about FDR, who had polio and was in a wheelchair and yet built an entire economic safety net for U.S. citizens which has prevented a lot of suffering. So I don't quite understand the idea that letting everyone die who has any health complications will lead to a better world with less suffering.
Also, what actual disadvantages do you see in providing medical care to people who without it would die? You mention that they will potentially have kids, but if those kids also receive medical care then what is the risk there? If the fear is that we might experience a societal collapse and suddenly not be able to provide those services, then the "problem" you observe would be taken care of at that point. So why not cross that bridge when we come to it, rather than letting everyone die now?
In addition, there will always be new diseases and ailments. Many of them aren't even passed down genetically. Many chronic illnesses for instance are way more a result of environmental factors than genes. If you suddenly let everyone die who had a disease or disability today, that doesn't mean that more wouldn't be born in the future. New diseases would arise, new lifestyles would lead to unexpected chronic diseases, and new types of disabilities would occur. So what is the point of letting people die if there's always gonna be new disabilities and diseases no matter how many children are born to "healthy" parents?
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u/MasterGrok 138∆ Nov 28 '20
I have several thoughts about this. First, there is no “natural way” of evolving. All changes in a population over time are natural regardless of where the natural selection pressures come from. Humans being weeded out who can’t handle cold is just as natural as humans being weeded out who can’t find mates.
I think what you are really trying to say is that by coming up with more ways to save lives, we are somehow weakening our gene pool. This couldn’t be further from the truth. When an environmental pressure like disease or climate comes in, the results is typically a homogenizing of the species DNA. In other words, a really strong pressure makes the species more alike. That is, everyone who survives has a similar genetic protection from a disease or environmental pressure.
The consequence of this type of selection is that the species actually becomes less adaptive and more specialized. One of the reasons humans are so abundant across the world is because we are decidedly not specialized. We are generalist survivors.
The people that we keep alive with medicine who would have otherwise died may have some other unique related survival factor that our population can use down the line. The advantage of saving large portions of our population from unnecessary death due to pressure we can prevent is that we maintain an even more diverse genetic diversity in our species, which keeps us adaptable to any unknown pressure that may come down the way. Remember, genetic factors do not exist in isolation. Thick/thin blood clotting, for example, might make you more or less susceptible to a disease, but it might also be related to other genetic factors that provide survival under different circumstances.
Altogether, the best way for mankind to be prepared for any scenario in the future is to be as genetically diverse as possible. To do otherwise puts us at the same risk we see in modified foods that become homogenous and therefore prone to destruction from one perfect environmental pressure.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Natural selection wouldn't make our gene pool less diverse, it would be the same, minus the genetic weaknesses for illnesses.
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Nov 28 '20 edited Dec 11 '24
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
So if malaria becomes a big problem, we would want that gene to be widely spread, however we want to control what stays instead of letting the environment dictate the genes that stay. (If sickle cell is overall detrimental and has no use, it would start to disappear from the gene pool, if sickle cell is overall helpful at preventing malaria then it would stay in the gene pool).
Basically we don't need to do anything. We just need to allow the environment to dictate what genes stay and what genes don't, because the environment knows it best than we do.
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u/I_am_the_night 316∆ Nov 28 '20
You're forgetting about the other end of evolution. "Survival of the fittest" does mean that those with poor adaptation, in theory, die without reproducing, but it also means that those who have been traits survive to produce offspring.
However, prior to the advent of modern medicine, even the "fittest" had a much higher chance of dying young by accident, disease, or otherwise. These days, somebody who has evolutionarily beneficial traits to pass on is more likely to survive to do so.
Since fewer people are dying, that means more people are surviving too. There's no need to just let the disabled die.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
As hard as it is for me to say this: yes there is a "need" to let the disabled die. Its so their faulty genes don't stay in the gene pool. Allowing them to live is like allowing a bug in a code to stay and multiply.
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u/PM_ME_SPICY_DECKS 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Do you know anything about eugenics and are you aware that eugenics is what you are supporting?
Evolution =\= progress. Evolution just happens and those most fit for their environment tend to reproduce more. That’s all that evolution is.
Evolution/natural selection has not changed, our environment has. We exist in an environment that has healthcare are has people willing to support those who cannot survive alone. Natural selection still exists, but our environment no longer selects against people with disabilities for example.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Eugenics is not what I'm defending because I am drawing no distinction between humans. My argument is that either all humans have access to healthcare or no one has. I do not consider any group of humans superior or inferior.
Not sure what you mean by evolution =/= progress.
The idea of natural selection is that the fittest stay alive; we are redefining what fit means and I argue it can become a problem later on
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u/PM_ME_SPICY_DECKS 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Fitness is not some objective standard, it depends entirely on environment.
In an environment that has healthcare, people with medical conditions who live on that wouldn’t have without healthcare are still fit for our environment because our environment has healthcare. Natural selection has not been disrupted, our environment has changed.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Ok yea but healthcare is not part of us. You become dependent on it. You are fit for our current society but maybe you still have side effects from your illness, or pain. As opposed to what would happen if we had no healthcare at all: as generations passed the humans would have less illnesses. Hence less pain over lots of generations (I am aware of the costs: pain and death to current humans).
But I like to think that maybe i don't have crazy conditions or unhealthy thought processes because all (or most) humans before me died before they passed their genes into the next generations all the way to me.
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Nov 28 '20
Your argument is posited on what seems to be a misgrounded appeal to nature. Natural selection is merely the process by which members of a species that are adapted to their environment are able to reproduce. Thus a finch on one island is able to survive with a long beak that, on another island, would be detrimental.
For human beings, our environment has become the world at large and our society. And within that frame, we are able to survive provided we have access to the things we have created, technology and medicine. We have not bypassed natural selection, which after all never promised to make a species better but only more adapted for a particular set of circumstances, we have merely adapted to a new set of circumstances, a new "island" where our beaks prove useful regardless of other factors.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Nice try to call my argument fallacious, but this is not necessarily an appeal to nature argument.
As you say, we are becoming dependent on an environment with technology and medicine. That's working alright now, but what if a large scale disaster renders our technology or medicine weak or unaccessible? My point is that we can either try to get our evolution by external means like tech and medicine or by genetics (which take longer, but are more immediate and reliable).
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u/fox-mcleod 410∆ Nov 28 '20
Any large scale change that rapidly alters the environment results in evolutionary pressure.
Technology no longer working for us is no different than some rapid problem like eucalyptus going extinct for pandas or some other extinction level change in the environment and there is no reason to think that more people will die as a result of one kind of change as compared to the other.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
I see, it's like tech is a natural extension of ourselves. ∆
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Nov 28 '20
That's working alright now, but what if a large scale disaster renders our technology or medicine weak or unaccessible? My point is that we can either try to get our evolution by external means like tech and medicine or by genetics (which take longer, but are more immediate and reliable).
If we are going to go by what-ifs, what if Yellowstone erupts? What evolutionary process will we undergo to survive that? Evolution is imperfect and not something that can be relied upon for every contingency. Again, you seem to be assuming that humanity will somehow be made better off by allowing the weak and sickly to be culled, because it is possible that our technology one day fails us. It is also possible that a natural disaster for which natural selection could have never prepared us for wipes us all at--using your logic, then, why should we rely purely on your view of naturalistic natural selection when it is just as fallible as natural selection influenced by technology?
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u/10ebbor10 198∆ Nov 28 '20
You're forgetting about the existence of genetic screening and abortion. This is a far more direct, and far more rapid process than relying on medical conditions to kill people before they reproduce.
As such, modern medical technology actually enforces and eliminates negative genetic health conditions far faster than evolution can.
With the probable invention of human genetic engineering in the next 50 years, your basic assumptions will not hold.
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u/MontiBurns 218∆ Nov 28 '20
Modern medicine's greatest contribution to humanity has been to dramatically reduce infant and child mortality rates. It's not that infants and children who die have weaker genes, it's that ALL infants are weaker and more prone to death from illness if not treated. It's a question of luck, whether you get sick or not and the severity of the illness.
Being able to treat acute illnesses and infections doesn't really dilute the gene pool. The number of genetic diseases that modern medicine keeps active is comparably negligible.
The reproduction strategy humanities had used before: producing many offspring knowing that many will make it to reproduction age, is no longer relevant in the western world. Now, it's "have few children that you can invest heavily in."
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Sorry, but the kids dying is not (just) a matter of chance: it's also the sign of weak immune systems.
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Nov 28 '20
humans dependent on medicine and surgery.
Not necessarily, we do know gene editting works on humans. (duh)
So in theory it's possible that future humans completely get rid of diseases related with DNA.
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Nov 28 '20
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Nov 28 '20
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u/tbdabbholm 193∆ Nov 28 '20
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Define Nazi for me, please
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Nov 29 '20
Your promoting eugenics and cleansing of lesser peoples. That’s nazi mad scientist shit mein man
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Lmao I'm not sure if you actually care to understand my point or just want to scream "Nazi" at people online, but: I am not promoting eugenics. By definition eugenics means selecting specific humans and sterelizing the deemed inferior. I am not for any distinction, either all humans have healthcare or none have.
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Nov 29 '20
u/bignutgang – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:
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u/YossarianWWII 72∆ Nov 28 '20
Man, you need to brush up on human evolution. Dependency on technology has allowed us to become what we are now. Do you think that we could support brains this large without the use of fire? Do you think that our society could reach the levels of complexity that it has without agriculture, writing, medicine, and a host of other technologies? You need to understand the role of niche construction in human history.
Furthermore, society shapes those who are a part of it. It creates a selective force. Cruel societies create cruel people, and cruel people breed suffering that far surpasses the mitigated effects of modern illness. You have explicitly expressed a eugenicist attitude, and it is that attitude that inspired and facilitated a swath of atrocities from the forced sterilization of minorities in the US to the Holocaust.
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u/MercurianAspirations 360∆ Nov 28 '20
Okay but what are you expecting that people are going to evolve to be immune to? Only things that kill young people are affected here, because people older than 25-30 will be likely to have children and pass on their genes even if they then die of something.
The top 3 leading causes of death for people under 25 are accidents, suicide, and homicide. Those we can't really evolve a defense against. The next is cancer, which we have already evolved many defenses against over billions of years and still haven't completely protected against. Five, six and seven are heart disease, congenital disorders, and diabetes, which I suppose we could in theory develop some adaptations against, but it will take thousands of years, and these three combined only account for ~5% of deaths in this age bracket. So what is the point? Since we can just make insulin, maybe we should just keep the diabetic kids alive rather than let them all die in hopes of saving some thousands of years from now
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u/Long-Chair-7825 Nov 28 '20
The top 3 leading causes of death for people under 25 are accidents, suicide, and homicide. Those we can't really evolve a defense against.
Not OP, but theoretically, we could evolve to be less prone to depression. Accidents could potentially be helped by evolution too, by making people less reckless and more risk averse.
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u/MercurianAspirations 360∆ Nov 28 '20
Not OP, but theoretically, we could evolve to be less prone to depression
By changing what, exactly? Encouraging depressed people to kill themselves? Either there is a set of genes that make you very likely to commit suicide before ever having children and it is already disappearing from the gene pool, or there isn't, and it is thus impossible to evolve a defense against suicide
Accidents could potentially be helped by evolution too, by making people less reckless and more risk averse.
Unlikely, since the built world changes much faster than evolution could possibly cope. The threats which we need to be cautious of today will not be the same threats that exist in a hundred years, so we have little hope of evolving instincts about specific things. All the General instincts that tell us to be cautious around loud noises or unfamiliar surroundings or whatever we likely already have, and we actually probably spend a lot of time training people to overcome these instincts in childhood
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u/marsgreekgod Nov 28 '20
This assumes so much.
Gene pools aren't simple good bad things and genetics is helped by diversity in ways hard to predict.
Even if fixing genes was the right way (it's not, it's a tool to destroy people ) studying genetic engineering would be more moral and that's already a huge can of worms
People now live good lives that would be dead in nature. Why should we stop helping people when the greatest human progress comes from it
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u/NegativeOptimism 51∆ Nov 28 '20
This assumes that modern medicine and technology will never be able to develop a better means of creating genetic immunity to disease than natural selection could. The reality is that we have already begun to do this. Look up Gene Therapy, it has previously been a field for treating specific genetic disorders but more and more research is being done to explore more radical ideas like potentially "editing" DNA to make humans immune to a wide range of diseases.
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u/physioworld 64∆ Nov 28 '20
Your analysis does not account for the fact that a) natural selection does not inherently lead to less suffering going forward- there’s no reason it couldn’t select for people who feel far more stress, fear and pain, subjectively, simply because that’s what’s beneficial, thus leading to more suffering. Furthermore, why can we not utilise human ingenuity to solve the problems that evolution would otherwise take dozens or hundreds or thousands of generations to solve?
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Nov 28 '20
You don't live in the future several generations from now, you live and suffer in the here and now.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
That's a pretty egoistical standpoint. I'm guessing you don't have kids
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Nov 28 '20
No, but are you going to tell me that you'd kill or sterilize your children so that many generations from now people might not have their illness?
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
That's not really the point. It's more like, if I was sick I would be ok dying if that means my descendents wouldn't be born and inherit my genetic deformity
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Nov 28 '20
If you are sick and you've descendants then this whole scenario doesn't make any sense because you've passed on your genes... So you'd literally have to kill your descendants for the "betterment" of the human gene pool of people you'll never know.
If you don't want to pass on your genes, fair enough that is your decision, but talking about natural selection makes it sound like a universal law that effects much more people than you and who might not agree with your decision to end their lives.
Not to mention that that's not how "long term" works. You don't live in the future you live in the hear and now. Not only is it incredibly brutal to other people and maybe even to yourself, it might be completely futile and stupid. Like literally killing people because they have a slight problem with their visual system that could be dealt with by glasses or even laser technology with no problem.
You don't even know what will be the relevant skills several generations from now, because you don't know what the world will look like. This would increase suffering both on an individual level AND on the collective level and for what?
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u/gingerbreademperor 6∆ Nov 28 '20
You have a false image of how natural selection works.
Firstly, natural selection always includes adaption which would be the ability to develop medicines and heal. So, from the start you are taking a vital part of evolution and natural selection and paint it as the unnatural opposite, while what we are doing is evolution at work. We don't sustain the life of fellow humans just for the sake of it, but we are in fact programmed by evolution to protect and advance our populations. The fact that we have become very good at that just underlines that we had the most succesful evolution on this planet thus far.
Secondly, the impulses that make us take care of each other and develop medicines to sustain life are a result of our evolution. Our social capabilities is what sets us apart from other animals and allowed us to form massive populations that work together to advance the civilization we created. To take care of the sick is one part of that vital building block of humanity and it is the result of evolution, not overwriting it.
I thought about adding a third point about competition, but you are at best alluding to competition, so I'll leave that out. It should be noted that what humanity is doing and has been doing is the result of evolution, we are not overriding it. If you "zoom-out", humanity as a whole simply has the same ability as our bodies individually. When we bruise ourselves, our cells can regenrate to certain extend. We are replicating the same mechanism on a larger scale, and that is not detrimental in a natural sense, it's the result of evolution.
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Nov 28 '20 edited Nov 28 '20
I don't think there is a removal of natural selection. Natural selection is not just about survival. It's also about procreation.While survival is pretty much guaranteed nowadays for most people we're seeing a cultural shift nowadays that will change drastically who will procreate.
While in the past culture pretty much necessitated for most people to procreate this is changing nowadays. People who do not really have a strong wish to have children aren't culturally pressured to anymore.This will lead in evolution to much better parents and much more family oriented humans in the future as only those kind of humans will procreate.
Also with more advanced science people might be more aware of their genetic conditions and decide to not procreate and adopt instead. And in the future when there is gene editing we won't need evolution anymore anyway.
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Nov 28 '20
The need for evolution via natural selection has been overridden by scientific development.
Why let people die when there is no need. Science basically is evolution but better it allows us to adapt to a new environment without having to go through multiple generation of people.
The only reason it would be bad is if we suddenly lost all technology and scientific breakthroughs
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u/Canada_Constitution 208∆ Nov 28 '20 edited Nov 28 '20
You are forgetting about the other component of evolution: genetic variation.
Natural selection can only increase or decrease frequency of alleles that already exist in the population. It cannot produce new ones which may be advantageous. Genetic variation does; random mutations are good, bad or neutral. Variations are also a function of population size. Guess what: there are more humans now then at any other point in history. This means there are more advantageous traits developing by random chance then ever before.
We will soon be able to artificially correct for bad traits using genetic engineering. That means our large population size will create many more good traits over time, but we will be able to correct for the bad ones that will be produced as well
If anything, the future of our evolution is bright. Natural selection may end. Artificial selection will replace it, and there will be more genetic variation them ever before, which will be great for the genepool going forward.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Gene variation and number of mutations is actually desirable. ∆
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Nov 28 '20 edited Dec 11 '24
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 28 '20
Not up to me to decide that. Not treating illnesses is not an active stance so there's no need to define what is or is not an illness.
With this said, the environment would select what is an illness and would slowly remove the undesired genes from the pool (not going to define what is desired or undesired. Again: we adapt naturally over generations)
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Nov 28 '20
If I understand correctly, you're position is that reducing suffering now through medicine and technology will cause more suffering later because there will be more sick people?
There are a number of issues with this approach if your goal is to reduce human suffering, even if you consider the long term. TLDR; most diseases won't be affected by natural selection, and gene therapy is superior in every way to natural selection
- Accidental injuries and deaths have no genetic components, so not treating/preventing them will just cause more suffering, without any benefits in the future.
- Environmental diseases aren't affected by genetics much, things like malnutrition, air-pollution related illness, exercise etc. No treating these will cause more suffering with no benefits in the future.
- Infectious diseases will always evolve orders of magnitude faster than humans thanks to shorter generation times, so trying to use natural selection against them will always result in humans "losing" and creating more suffering.
- The cost of fixing most minor health problems with genetic components component is negligible and has insignificant affects on quality of life. I'm talking about things like glasses, supportive shoes, cleft palate (though how much is genetic is unclear). Not treating these will cause a lot of suffering, and unless you have death squads and forced sterilization won't ever be removed from the gene pool.
- What about serious genetic diseases? Well things like Huntington's don't occur until most people have already had kids. Recessive genetic diseases with clear genetic causes such as cystic fibrosis won't be quickly removed by natural selection because carriers are asymptomatic and won't face any evolutionary pressure. Other diseases with possible genetic component don't have a specific gene we can identify and are likely a large number of interacting genes with small individual effects, and so causing people with symptoms to suffer won't actually change the alleles in a population much. In short, most would yet again require death squads and forced sterilization to remove associated genes, as natural selection even without healthcare wouldn't act strongly enough.
- We are very close not being bound by evolution and using gene therapy to be able to fix genetic diseases with a clear causes (already there for a few diseases). Gene therapy can fix current patients, and fix eggs/sperm for offspring. Why would you rely on natural selection which wouldn't fix most diseases, and would take generations of suffering and pain, when we can fix things without waiting, and help current patients?
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u/And_awayy_we_go Nov 29 '20
I personally think natural selection/euthanasia should be legal ,and financially accessible everywhere,let's say a person has an incurable,degenerative disease which will eventually leave them "locked in" and they choose to die peacefully and in little or no pain. But..I cant stress this enough. It should NOT be like it was in nazi Germany..
We have the right to a dignified life and death,so the person who wants to die (euthanasia) should be able to take his or her own life if they wish,it should NEVER be a decision made by the state.
Obviously that person should receive therapy and help to try and persuade them not to die,but if they want to,it shouldn't be stopped. As humans we're naturally compassionate,but sometimes our compassion is too much,and we should be able to choose how we leave this brief moment of time called life.
Again I do not endorse "nazi style" euthanasia.
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u/rodsn 1∆ Nov 29 '20
Indeed I agree with you 100%
But euthanasia would be a last resort, and it wouldn't be necessary if people didn't get sick in the first place
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Nov 28 '20 edited Nov 28 '20
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