[blainm]

Issues like these reflects an evolutionary blind spot: selective pressure drops off after reproductive age, allowing defects like prostate dysfunction to persist. It's the same reason late-onset neurological diseases remain prevalent.

[mattigames]

We lucked out compared to other species, octopus develop dementia soon after breeding.

[amelius]

Yes, and there are spiders where the female eats the male after breeding. I bet their pr0n movies are a bit more interesting than ours.

[7thaccount]

Isn't that usually only in captivity where it can't escape?

[jbd0]

Shouldn't kids with grandfathers have an evolutionary advantage?

[bmicraft]

They didn't say drops to zero, but the advantage is obviously more limited

[georgeburdell]

If it wasn’t in the past, I imagine it will be in the future with how common two working parents is now. We want more kids but we are getting zero grandparent help

[mensetmanusman]

Two working parents have far below replacement numbers of children, so it would actually cause it to disappear…

[const_cast]

Probably barely, and I think in some instances the opposite. You have to care for the elderly.

[adrianN]

Grandparents used to be 40ish when their grandchildren were born.

[me_again]

The grandmother hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis is reasonably well-established. The corresponding 'grandfather effect' has not really been demonstrated, as far as I know. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2007...

[natebc]

when humans were still primarily subjected to natural selection the life expectancy likely wouldn't have allowed for many grandfathers.

[Sharlin]

You only have to live to your 40s to become a grandparent in natural conditions, and your chances of living to at least your 50s have always been pretty good conditional on living long enough to reproduce at all.

[nkrisc]

Your 40s? A man could pretty easily be a grandfather at 26-28, possibly less.

Perhaps less common but 30s would probably be more likely.

[readthenotes1]

Iirc, historically, if you made it to 10 years of age, most humans make it to 60

[inglor_cz]

Medieval burial grounds, when examined by anthropologists, do contain some people over 60, but the majority of adults buried there died earlier, typically in the 45-55 bracket.

It wasn't just disease, but also wars and famines. And in women, deaths during childbirth, which cluster in the 20-35 bracket.

Cardinals of the Church, who led peaceful lives, didn't give birth and never went hungry, lived into their late 60s and early 70s even during the Middle Ages. But an average peasant wouldn't.

[ASalazarMX]

Probably improved more with lots of siblings from a wide age range. The bigger siblings would do productive work, the younger would take care of the little ones.

[Izikiel43]

The problem there is with your definition of grandfather. Currently, the age for a grandfather in developed countries is 55+. For most of humanity's history, if there were grandfathers, they would barely make it to 55 years of age.

[saagarjha]

No, plenty of people made it to that age in the past. Life expectancy was significantly depressed by infant mortality.

[Izikiel43]

> in the past

What's "in the past" here? Last 200 years? 500? 1000? In evolutionary scale, those numbers are a blip.

[card_zero]

Hmm. If we engineer late-life reproduction, that might create evolutionary pressure for healthy old age.

Hides long list of ethical problems with the concept

[halgir]

We missed the boat for that a few million years ago. If we're engineering anyway, we might as well engineer for healthy old age directly.

[Workaccount2]

We just have to get the media to portray geriatric men as sexy, and we'll be well on our way to living to 200!

[the_af]

I know you're joking, but it's women that get the short end of the stick in media.

Men are (within reason) considered handsome in media even in old age. Wrinkles and gray hair can be seen as sexy (again, within reason), but only in men.

Women are discarded or relegated to sexless granny roles (except maybe for comedic purposes, where sexuality is the butt of a joke). Actresses are replaced by younger women because they are not sexy enough even when their male equivalents aren't (looking at you, Top Gun: Maverick).

I'm not saying there aren't exceptions in particular movies that deal with this topic; I'm talking about the general trend.

[Spooky23]

When you ask men who they are attracted to, at least on the surface, it’s always young women. I’m pretty sure the OkCupid stats showed that girls age 20 give or take were peak attractiveness. Reality is of course that guys will “work for food” or attention.

Women are different. It ranges — alot, and is more about EQ and scarcity. If you have a moderate baseline level of physical attractiveness, moderately fit (Jon two miles let’s say), not an asshole, and not living with mom, a 40-60 year old guy is a hot commodity.

[ccakes]

If you’ve never stumbled across the older OkCupid blog posts or Christian Rudder’s book (Dataclysm[1]) then I can’t recommend them enough. Super interesting content delivered by a smart and engaging writer

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21480734-dataclysm

[fc417fc802]

This all makes perfect sense from a fertility (and thus natural selection) perspective.

[the_af]

Agreed, but once you reach 60 (like Cruise and McGillis) you're well beyond the forces of natural selection and into the unnatural realm that our longer lives have granted us. Both of these actors are outcompeted in real life by younger people (sex/reproduction wise) yet one of them is still able to secure billing in "sexy roles" and the other isn't... and this is just one example.

This could be natural selection acting against us, but since modern society is artificial anyway, why not make an effort to combat it?

[FilosofumRex]

Men season, while women age - The media's portrayal of desirability of old people is a reflection of societal preferences, not the other way around.

Men become wiser, skilled, kinder, more patient and often better providers. Women tend to become argumentative, quarrelsome, bitter (especially those who date often) and rewarded for it. They also tend to dissociate love from sex and manipulate one for the other.

[the_af]

I hope your second paragraph is not what you truly believe, but that you're describing a regrettable stereotype.

[brigandish]

There would appear to be two poles of explanation - that either the media is reflecting desires and not influencing it, or that the media is influencing desires and not reflecting them - or somewhere in-between.

The reflection of biological reality appears easier to justify: that men remain fertile for longer, that the attractive qualities that women care about most (e.g. wealth and personality) tend to improve with age; and that a women's attractiveness is most tied to her skin, which we all know shows aging the most on the body, and is a sign of her reproductive health or ability.

I'm not sure what the argument for the media being able to influence males to the extent suggested would be? Older men were marrying younger women before the printing press, so where did this pressure originate? And what is its mechanism of action?

[the_af]

I'm not saying media is influencing this; this preference clearly showed before media! The media here clearly reflects a preexisting preference, but in my opinion, it also makes the world worse for old people, especially women and actresses.

I'm saying media could be changed from this tendency, since this preference is less relevant in modern society and it hurts actresses. Media is a human construct that can be adapted to new needs, it's not a tool of natural selection!

Changing media wouldn't change the sexual preferences of men, and nowhere am I arguing this. It's like inclusivity in media -- is it ever going to eradicate racism? No, but it will make the world a tiny bit fairer.

[brigandish]

I agree that falling back on "it's natural" can be a poor excuse, mainly because humans have the power and intellect (maybe not intelligence, but I digress) to change even what is considered nature, but I'm also not for social engineering, and I've seen such a wild increase in social engineering in media over the past 15, maybe 20 years, that I'd err on the naturalistic side now.

[astura]

Exactly - there's no female equivalent of "silver fox."

[notesinthefield]

The kids call them cougars or MILF’s

[the_af]

Even they have an earlier "expiration" date than men in cinema and TV. Women are considered sexy for a far shorter period of time.

[rpmisms]

Uh, yes there is. Pretty sure there's even an acronym for it.

[throwuxiytayq]

The main problem is that evolution is just not a thing at our modern civilizational time scale.

And I don’t see any problems with late-life reproduction, assuming we can make it reliable and healthy. If anything, some countries desperately need it.

[literalAardvark]

From my reading this is wrong in principle.

Evolution is really slow on average, but locally it moves quite quickly and probably explains the large variation between members of a species.

Add strong selective pressure to that high local speed and you can change a good part of the genotype within a couple of generations. See: animal husbandry. You can breed a new race of dog within 5-10 generations.

Ethics aside we could probably breed people who can sniff out Alzheimer's in less than 250 years.

Our current late reproduction style will very likely influence future generations health at older ages.

[giantg2]

It's probably a wash. Sure people are reproducing later, but it's also more likely that they have recieved some major medical intervention to allow them to make it to that stage. For example, it could be stuff like freezing eggs before starting chemo.

[tomrod]

That in of itself is an external selection pressure though, having enough fit to gather resources to delay reproduction.

[throwuxiytayq]

> in less than 250 years

I don't dispute any of your points in general. But at the same time, it brings a nostalgic smile to my face to envision starting a 250-year project in 2025.

[inglor_cz]

Evolution is still a thing at relatively short time periods.

Icelanders are a well-studied population when it comes to genetics. Frequency of some traits meaningfully changed among them in last 100 years.

Source: this book: https://www.amazon.de/dp/0198821263?ref_=pe_109184651_110380...

[genewitch]

Also the moths that "changed" from white to black during and because of the industrial revolution. That was quick, and to me, the best example of how it all works.

[tomrod]

Someone needs to remain alive to provide, protect and raise the kids.

[wkat4242]

With our modern health systems we are pretty much a huge evolutionary blind spot ourselves. Many illnesses that would be filtered out because the carrier wouldn't survive, are now trivial. And on the journey hand we can screen for known illnesses.

I think we are already post evolutionary, or control it ourselves. Not a big issue either IMO, it's totally ok that this is happening.

[derektank]

We are definitely not post-evolutionary; the selection pressures have simply changed. Before industrialization the big two were starvation and infectious disease. Now? Well, it's anybody's guess decade to decade. Certainly sexual selection is still with us.

[the__alchemist]

Dawkins suggested this might be viable (In an abstract; not politically practical) way in The Selfish Gene.

[pavel_lishin]

I read a pretty entertaining novel where that was one of the sub-plots.

The ethical problems were fun to read about! But would be significantly less fun to live through.

[justinclift]

Name of the novel?

[pavel_lishin]

It was one of Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series, I believe it was Ring.

[justinclift]

Cool, yeah those are pretty good. :)

[Qem]

We engineered it culturally already. Lots of people delaying childbirth until late 30s, early 40s today, often resorting to expensive treatments.

[magicalhippo]

If we're ignoring ethics, then we don't need late-life reproduction.

Just kill all offspring if one of the parents die of some unwanted cause.

Allows people to still get kids in the optimal age, yet applying old-age selection pressure.

[lukas099]

But the issue also causes male infertility, so that can’t be why it’s so prevalent. This is discussed in the article.

[wazoox]

Male infertility after 60 is probably not very impactful from a selective point of view. For 300 000 years, almost nobody reached 60 anyway.

[Qem]

Before. Now people are delaying childbearing. Anedacta, past year one of my work colleagues had its first child, at 62.

[PKop]

And delaying childbearing decreases fertility probably more than anything.

[MyPasswordSucks]

The article sort of mentions this in passing, but doesn't subject it to much rigor, and the (completely obvious?) counterargument is that by the time it causes male infertility, the affected have already reproduced.

[yapyap]

what? so are you implying that prostate dysfunction makes you less wanted as a father if it presents itself in “the reproductive age”?

[rubyfan]

I read the comment as insinuating people stop taking care of themselves as much after children and develop unhealthy habits.

[trollied]

No. The grandparent comment was essentially saying that we, as a species, were not designed to live as long as we do. It’s only been <10 generations since medicine has been a thing. Cancers, dementia etc just weren’t a thing before because we evolved to live long enough to bring our children up to be self sufficient and reproduce, then our job is done. Like the rest of the animal world do.

Modern medicine has messed with this. We weren’t meant to “old”.

[nonethewiser]

So widen the reproductive age (men only)

[hhh]

Why men only?

[ix101]

I think OP was alluding to the fact that risks of complications with pregnancy increases with age.

[nonethewiser]

Not exactly that. Menopause.

[hhh]

wouldn’t the intention be just to fix that as well

[nonethewiser]

How do you "fix" menopause?

[nonethewiser]

Because you can't for women.