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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

Evolution can be increased or decreased easily. Natural selection is a result of death. More death means more natural selection, and less death means less natural selection. We've reduced death tremendously, and hence reduced natural selection.

Sexual selection is quite a different animal, but we can't take as a given that sexual selection increases as natural selection decreases. It might; I just don't know any reason that it would. And there are reasons that even sexual selection would diminish--for various reasons, I don't think anyone today could have nearly as many children as Genghis Khan did.

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No, natural selection is a result of differences in reproductive success. We've lowered death, but does that somehow ensue that everyone has exactly the same number of surviving grandchildren? 30% of german women never reproduce. Among female graduates, the figure is 40%. From an evolutionary standpoint, they might as well never have lived.

The point remains that for natural selection to stay the same, decreases in death, sterility, etc. have to be balanced by increases in some other selective force, and you'd have to somehow argue that there was such an increase. Moreover, it has to be something inheritable, not acquired.

From an evolutionary standpoint, they might as well never have lived

There is the distinct possibility that they affected the chance for others to reproduce or survive. So you are right about their individual evolution, but they were likely part of group or species evolution.

In bees and other hive insects this effect is most pronounced, as there are only only a few individuals in the hive that can reproduce. But with only them, the hive would die out, so the rest is useful from an evolutionary standpoint.

My original claim was that it was fantastical to suggest evolution was arrested, not slowed; however, your point is more nuanced and interesting than mine. With this in mind, I'd refine my original statement.

I find the idea of a stable rate of evolution curious. With respect to your argument, we are in agreement: there is reason to suspect that evolution as a reaper has become more tolerant; on the flip side, I'd argue that genetic diversity is increasing, as a consequence of with an unbridled phase of expansion. In this sea of diversity, the genetic victor exists, to be revealed during some future event of punctuated equilibria.

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