This concept was mocked by anti-Darwinians as "hopeful monsters" because, again, they didn't grasp the timescale involved (a fish egg hatches a lizard that starts to drown but makes it to land just time?!?)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
But that's what most mutations are like Oh, some humans are melanin deficient, and that's bad because skin cancer, but it's also kind of good because vitamin D, so it's a wash People start living indoors most of the time and skin cancer is now rare? Hey awesome
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Replying to @Woman4W @arthur_affect and
Chemo has not existed on evolutionarily relevant timescales.
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Replying to @LizardOrman @Woman4W and
And neither did vitamin D supplements, although the need to consume vitamin-D-rich foods like dairy to stay healthy is theorized to be why white people evolved lactose tolerance
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Replying to @arthur_affect @LizardOrman and
But to be serious about it for a second, even pale people who've spent most of their lives working outdoors in the sun rarely get skin cancer early enough that it affects their chance at having kids From an evolutionary standpoint that's all that matters
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Replying to @Woman4W @arthur_affect and
As a matter of causality, no trait ever evolves *because* that trait will lead to higher survival. It's the other way around - the trait has to already exist, and if it increases survival it will not die out.
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Replying to @LizardOrman @Woman4W and
Right, this is the important thing, the process of evolution itself depends on diversity It's not only *possible* for there to be tons of "neutral" traits that hang around for long periods of time, it HAS TO BE TRUE or there COULDN'T BE evolution
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Replying to @arthur_affect @LizardOrman and
If a "useless" trait that increased the chance of surviving a plague gets ruthlessly weeded out before the plague exists, then when the plague does come it's not there and the whole population just dies
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The time scale of random mutation, especially in a slow-breeding species like humans, is much, much longer than the time scale of the environmental changes that we "evolve in response to" It's the idea of actively "responding" to the environment that's the biggest wrong thing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @LizardOrman and
This is the biggest and most serious wrong thing that eugenics advocates think Eliminating what *you currently think of* as "negative" traits in a species and reducing the species' total diversity is not helping out evolution, it's making evolution impossible
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