[deepsun]

As far as I was taught in college, evolution never stops, but we're just too short lived to notice that. We _may_ notice some very tiny blip on timescales of several hundred years, but last really noticeable traits happened many thousands years ago.

However, cultural/society/educational evolution happens much-much faster (but is also much-much weaker, can disappear on just a few weeks).

[Grimblewald]

also, technology largly exists to remove the discomfort of evolutionary pressure. This doesnt mean the mutations that give rise to evolutionary changes in the population, but it does mean we've removed or mititaged many of the mechanisms which would select for specific traits.

Again, we would naturally still change, but not in the the way or at the rate otger organisms continue to or at which we would sans technology.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I think this is a common misperception, but it's not accurate. The general idea is that with technology there is less risk of someone dying or not being able to procreate due to their susceptibility to disease (because modern medicine would likely cure them) or their inability to acquire food/resources.

But even if that were 100% true, that just shifts selection pressure elsewhere. For example, your ability to hunt is probably not selected for in modern society, where it would have been in centuries past. But your social standing (and the genetic traits that are beneficial for acquiring that social status) definitely would be, especially in places where there is a large sex imbalance.

We are currently undergoing a major change in reproduction due to the "severing" of the ties between having sex and having children due to modern birth control. Evolution is what caused sex to be so pleasurable/desired in the first place, because having sex greatly increases the chances of someone passing on their genes. The ability to have lots of sex now without having children as a byproduct means there will be natural selection pressure for another impetus for people to have children.

[Grimblewald]

I think we largly agree.

The point I'm making is that we use technology to solve discomforts, and discomfort tends to be something which would otherwise manifest as evolutionary pressure. This doesn't remove the fact we will change, but it does impact our trajectory. Perhaps one such direction of change is we go from having low variance with a moving mean, to a static mean with increasing variance.

so, we've removed much of the historical pressure but this doesnt mean, like I said, mutations stop. It simply means our environment is now less selective or selects for things we dont yet measure or understand.

[plastic-enjoyer]

> also, technology largly exists to remove the discomfort of evolutionary pressure.

I think this is a very limited way to view technology

[Grimblewald]

sure, it can be. However, I'd argue in a large amount of cases it fits.

Agriculture, medicine, transport combine massivly lower the bar for base survival let alone reproduction on all skill checks otgerwise place don metabolism, physical fitness, immunological fitness.

This isnt me taking a dig either, I am among the ranks of those who would be dead without these modern "comforts" but as a reuslt if there is a genetic driver for my lack of fitness (which there is) those genes are now not being selected against.

Perhaps we don't think of tech as an evolution stop, but really most of the comfort and conveniance it brings are won by removing the discomfort otherwise applied as evolutionary pressure.

Can't live in this place? no worries, create air conditioning. Can't calculate this? no worries, computers. Can't feed all these mouths because hunting and gathering wouldnt work? no worries, agriculture.

Tech, in my opinion, offers most of its perceived benefits by removing natural pressures to move, stop, or adapt from ourselves.