my only problem is with hemorroids, what went wrong in the design there!!
Do our primate cousins in the forests and zoos get hemorroids?
Of course most will die at first. But that's a price evolution is always willing to pay.
Regardless, I am now picturing a future where evolved humans find the smell of plastic appetizing.
What's changed is that people don't die as infants anymore.
It also doesn't make sense: vaccines and antibiotics don't just protect infants.
> The modern Amish also don't currently live in a society with endemic smallpox.
That's why I said access to doctors, not to public health, which is what's kept most of us alive. Though I don't know how modern their approach to childbirth is, that one's important.
One interesting data point is that the age at which people transition economically from accumulating wealth to transferring it has remained about the same (around 64), at least as far as Western European inheritance records prior to demographic transition show. Ie. people retire at the same age. They just spend more time being old. I'm not sure it's all that much progress. I wish we found ways of making people useful longer, rather than just trying to keep them from dying.
This means that our actual durability and lifespan hasn't improved that much, just our ability to fix and avoid previously fatal injuries.
If humans weren't genetically encoded to die from old age, vs just plain wear and tear like you would with a car, you would statistically see a small amount of humans who lived until 300 today. Just like how there are thousand year old well preserved physical objects today.