[xyzzy123]

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past.

Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

[isodev]

> you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal

I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It was a fascinating read.

[qsera]

>our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

As true as it might be, that does not mean that it is possible to work around evolution to change ourselves to fit better with the new reality.

[qsera]

>We're not really calorie constrained anymore

Why do you bring this up? It seems a weird hypothesis to bring up given that the parent comment did not suggest the possibility...

[ndsipa_pomu]

Not the OP, but evolution will often select for less energy expenditure as most animals are calorie constrained or at least during certain times of the year (c.f. animals that hibernate to survive low calorie availability).

It seems plausible to me that the immune system might be calorie intensive to be on full alert all the time. However, I suspect that having the immune system be more active will likely lead to other complications such as autoimmune disorders or even something as common as hayfever.

[qsera]

An always full alert immune system won't have any lee way to address any onset of an infection, and also considering that pathogens also evolve to by pass the increased alertness, this will probably be catastrophic for the species.

That is unless of course like bats, this was the result of evolution and natural selection. But bolting on like this vaccine do it, yea, going to be pretty bad.