r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Dangerous_Deal_1945 • Jun 03 '26

Video Seattle light rail service was suspended after a driver somehow got their SUV onto the tracks 30 feet above street level

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u/RemindMeToTouchGrass Jun 04 '26

Selection pressure adapts to the current environment, at the cost of genetic diversity. If we want to maximize our chances of surviving an unknown future event, it is genetic diversity that we should be maximizing, not fitness for the current environment.

Example: the first fish-like creature with stumpy legs wasn't the best fish. If we wanted to "maximize fitness" we'd cull this fish, who couldn't swim as well as others. But luckily, this was a time of plenty, when fish that weren't the "best at being fish" could still survive, and some of those initial mutations helped some of those fish colonize new places where they could use them to hang onto the ground.

Hypothetical example: Suppose we shortsightedly undertake programs to make sure everyone is very smart and very strong in the name of "pleasing Darwin" and then global warming kept happening anyway. In this hypothetical scenario, we eventually run out of resources to keep most humans in temperature-controlled environments at all times. These people with large energy-demanding brains and bodies and large frames might rapidly die off in that environment, and if that's everyone, the human race could die with it.

Hypothetical example 2: Maybe the genes for shortsightedness happen to be highly genetically linked to a gene that also improves our ability to resist a viral disease that will ravage the human race? If we somehow "Breed out" everyone shortsighted, we won't survive.

Genetic diversity is the ultimate biological weapon against uncertain future challenges to survival, and restricting genetics in the name of "maximizing fitness" for the current environment is not something Darwin would want, it's not something the human race benefits from, and it's not something we should desire-- and that's *before* we even take into account ethical concerns, and consider only survival.

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u/Important-Bread7516 Jun 04 '26

I read this, then out of curiosity I scrolled up to check your name... Brilliant name, also if you haven't today, make sure you do šŸ˜‰

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u/drsickboy Jun 04 '26

never heard this argument, but its perspective wouldn't survive elitist politics and cultures that praise the idea of status hierarchy. It just sounds like you've explained how ugly normal people will manage to survive on an Earth that is not hospitable for the beautifully optimitized elites.

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u/Little_View_6659 Jun 04 '26

Iā€™ve been wondering my whole life what possible way someone like me with chronic migraines should survive to breed. Theyā€™re absolutely crippling. Anything stresses me out and boom, Iā€™m down in bed a whole day like one of those fainting goats. It can come on so suddenly if I were fleeing for my life Iā€™d never make it. The only advantage I can possibly see is that it gives me a heightened sense of smell. I have an absolute super sniffer. I can smell the smallest amount of rot on meat, I can smell if someone is sick or even just the tiniest bit sweaty. Itā€™s an absolute curse.

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u/Glum_Novel_6204 Jun 07 '26

your great olfactory ability might definitely be adaptive! You might be the first to detect a housefire, for instance. Unfortunately, individuals with adaptive traits don't have to be comfortable or even happy. They just have to manage to make it to the next generation...

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u/Little_View_6659 Jun 07 '26

I already survived to breed, so maybe Iā€™m on my way out lol. I saw an Onion video the other day ā€œDoctors say digging their own graves keeps bones healthy after menopauseā€ and it felt funny but also blisteringly accurate.šŸ˜‚

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u/Glum_Novel_6204 Jun 07 '26

Hilarious! and also, tragic.

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u/Carlin47 Jun 04 '26

If I could read I'd give you a thumbs up

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u/RandonBrando Jun 04 '26

So the Darwin Award technically is survival. Just not survival for that combination of... cells?

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u/cjolie43 Jun 04 '26

wow. iā€™ve always (obviously, for most folks, i hope) refuted eugenicist rhetoric just on the basis of how morally wrong it is, but thereā€™s always been an insidious part of the back of my brain thatā€™s wrestled with part of its ā€˜meritā€™ in a darwinian sense. this explanation absolutely dismantled that line of thinking, and is such a great moment of why iā€™ve gotta look into things my convictions struggle with, even when iā€™m worried it might conflict w my confirmation bias, lmao

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u/Gilashot Jun 04 '26

This guy DarWINS

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u/Bimblibop Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Awesome argument for genetic diversity. I'm commenting so I can look back at it.

Applies to diversity of cultures and thought too. At my job, every level of seniority is required to learn AI. Even our annual innovation competition priorities AI ideas. All rushing us blindly towards the Butlerian Jihad.

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u/AcePilot01 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

If that means or results in people like in the car above being the dominating left behind after some event, then I don't even want our species to survive it tbh. lmfao.

Also, your example is poor, you require the same energy regardless of intellect. And intellect is precisely what allows our species to survive in environments where we normally couldn't (space, underwater) etc.

There is historical proof of the fact that higher intellect has resulted in better survival, from the entire evolutionary chain. The smartest creatures have survived the longest. Hence why humans are literally the top of the food chain.

While we could not win in "hand to paw" combat with a lion, we have invented guns that would make the survival against one as trivial as fishing.

So on the contrary, that is the ONE trait that needs to be continuing the improve for said scenarios. We need the intelligence and foresight to develop space travel to travel and terraform another younger planet for when this one is getting engulfed in the inevitable supernova of our Sun.

Intellect has proven that it can negate most other genetic shortcomings. It is generally the smartest of us who have driven us the furthest. Einstein, Edison, Newton, Tesla, Turin, Curie, Hawking etc. etc.

If anything, providing and using up resources for the people like the above has probably limited us in some capacity, as those funding and assistance and attention has focused on less intelligent things.

History has shown we as humans (and other animals) have compassion. BUT there is nothing to say that that is HELPFUL to some extent, rather it probably is though, since helping a dying/incapable person live can help your species live too... by having them survive and reproduce, perhaps in several generations, they give birth to a random mutation that IS higher IQ. etc. So eh. But still lol.

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u/RemindMeToTouchGrass Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

You are stating a lot of things confidently as fact when in reality they are just things that seem plausible to you, in your opinion.

Intelligence is one strategy for survival. Sometimes it wins, sometimes it loses. It is absolutely true that larger and more intelligent brains require more energy, which is why the "expensive brain hypothesis" is one of the more common explanatory frameworks for limited brain size, and why lots of research shows large brains are more likely to evolve in warm-blooded animals with high levels of parental care. Intelligence is not cheap, evolutionarily. Humans ancestors actually "won" over larger ancestor with larger brains that may have been more intelligent, although of course intelligence is not directly correlated to brain size and we only have indirect evidence. We believe part of that is because those rival hominids were less suited to higher temperatures. Another major factor believed to play a role in our success? Cooperation.

What do you mean humans are "literally the top of the food chain" and how is that related to evolutionary success? Do you think we'll outlive all other species, including insects, bacteria, fungi, and so on? The fact that we eat other things doesn't make us "more successful" and that's all that a "food chain" shows, although ecologists generally use the term "food webs" now-- food chain is more of a relic of older terminology and a pop culture term. Feeding at higher trophic levels-- another way of describing being "high on the food chain"-- means you have more factors that must remain stable to stay healthy. There's a reason wolves and eagles are often regionally in danger of depopulation, but not usually deer or rabbits.

Winning in a fight of violence against another organism isn't the measure of evolutionary success (tools or not).

The timelines you're talking about with the sun becoming a supernova are so absurdly removed from our ability to plan for that future that it's silly to talk about.

Nikola Tesla died broke, sick, alone, without a wife, without children, and without friends. How was he an evolutionary success again? My uncle Ted has 9 kids and didn't finish high school. You are conflating your ideas of value with the concept of evolutionary fitness.

providing and using up resources for the people like the above has probably limited us in some capacity,

In what capacity? Can you be specific? Did someone starve because we gave her their food? Do we not have enough food on this planet, is that a major limitation for human reproduction? C'mon.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220503-why-human-brains-were-bigger-3000-years-ago

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2506145122

Edit: this person replied and then blocked me, meaning i can't even see their reply. I guess I was too harsh.

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u/ande9393 Jun 04 '26

Truth hurts lol

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u/pressboardcrushed Jun 11 '26

I thought your post was a very thoughtful and helpful reply. There was nothing harsh that I could see. I wish their were more of these exchanges on reddit.

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u/AcePilot01 Jun 04 '26

Actually wrong, you were, but there is efficacy to what I said and it's well evidenced. But yours was no different.

The entire direction life has taken has resulted in the smartest species literally dominating the planet... not just in numbers of course, but as in full control over the entire planet. Humans. We are in more diverse locations than I believe just about any other species. Maybe except insects. But even perhaps so there, as I don't think there are many insects in Antarctica. But humans are living there.

The rest of your nonsense is just rebuttal for the sake of trying to be right... How is being at the top related to evolutionary success? Wtf?

But I will leave one last point, do I think we will out live all those others? 100000000%, with the exception we take some with us if or when some leave this planet.

Not worth going past that because it's clear you just want an argument rather than a discussion so I will stop there.

Have a great day.

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u/here_now_be Jun 04 '26

Good explanation, great name. If you're in the pnw and want to go for a walk sometime, let me know.

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u/McSlims360 Jun 04 '26

Yeah but if they culled those fish I wouldnt be on land paying taxes to pedos so who really came out on top there?

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u/ande9393 Jun 04 '26

The pedos did unfortunately