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Comment by devmor | Hacker News Reader

As far as evolution is concerned, you've already had the kid - you passed on your genes. If you survive long enough to make sure your kid reaches maturity, that's all that matters there.

Evolution can't select for anything that happens significantly past the birth of your progeny.

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Maybe, but do other mammals suffer from this? Maybe it woukd have been taken care of with some early human-ish species with shorter life spans or something.

> As far as evolution is concerned, you've already had the kid - you passed on your genes

A second child would help with that too.

Sure but I doubt lack of sleep effects mortality greatly in childbearing years. Assuming you make it to 40-50, that's it. Now you can die whenever and have succeeded

As a parent, you’re underselling the impact of the help of grandparents and siblings on fertility

Sure it can. Knowledge, skills, and wisdom passed on to children and grandchildren well into adulthood significantly increases their chances of successfully passing on their genes to future generations, attract quality mates, and reduce stressors that can be passed down through subsequent generations.

You are thinking in far more modern terms than anything evolutionarily distant enough to affect this issue in a large portion of the population.

Additionally, even if you were looking to predict selection many generations in the future; modern reproduction happens at higher rates the lower in economic disparity you go, so clearly that isn’t the case.

I was responding to the sweeping statement you made about what natural selection can select for, and it can absolutely select for these sorts of advantages. It will play out differently depending on environmental factors such as economic and other disparities but this just becomes a matter of which strategy is chosen to adapt to that landscape.

Can you give an example of evolution selecting for parental survival past the maturity of progeny? I’m curious about this because I’ve never heard of a species that has that trait.

I never said it is selecting for parental survival. I was responding to "Evolution can't select for anything that happens significantly past the birth of your progeny."

The point is that there many valuable things that parents can pass on after the birth of their children that will increase their chances of success in future generations.

Those are effectively the same thing, I’m not playing semantics. Can you give an example of this happening in nature?

long enough to pass on genes also includes living long enough to make sure your child survives, so there is that as well.

Yes, which is why I said that.

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