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Is Humanity Still Evolving?
sciencehabit writes "In a world where we've tamed our environment and largely protected ourselves from the vagaries of nature, we may think we're immune to the forces of natural selection. But a new study finds that the process that drives evolution was still shaping us as recently as the 19th century (abstract). 'The finding comes from an analysis of the birth, death, and marital records of 5923 people born between 1760 and 1849 in four farming or fishing villages in Finland. ... Natural selection was alive and well in all of the villages the researchers surveyed."
Yes, we're still evolving. The things being selected for may change, but we are evolving.
Survival is just one evolutionary pressure. As long as we will use inheritable criterion for choosing mating partners, evolution will continue.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Natural selection doesn't mean what most think. Fertility rates among the more intelligent members of society have dropped like a rock while birth rates are still high among the lower third. It can be argued that intelligence is a poor survival trait. Social factors create a form of evolution even if environmental ones are largely removed. What is seen as attractive socially is influx so evolutionary pressures created by society is also in flux. We aren't environmentally adapting so much as socially adapting. If society collapses the downside is it may leave us poor candidates to survive our environment.
Evolution doesn't have a value system that prefers education, a comfortable life, or the ability to exist without government help. Personifying the inherently unthinking force of evolution, we might say that evolution cares about exactly one thing: the number of creatures in the Nth generation with similar DNA. Adapting to the environment is key, and note that our current environment does include government services. Fit organisms take full advantage of the environment to maximize reproduction.
Fitness can mean screwing up the birth control or deciding that God would disapprove. Fitness can mean a non-reproducing individual (gay, elderly, too ugly, whatever...) finding dates for siblings and cousins. Fitness can mean getting the kids taken away by the government (they'll survive) so that time can be focused on activities that might produce more.
It's only in a difficult environment, like Finland a few centuries ago, that fitness means the traits that most of us respect: hard work, planning ahead, faithfulness, etc. We have changed the environment, and now it will change us.
The fact that natural selection isn't favoring traits you like doesn't mean natural selection isn't happening.