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Originally Posted by JayTeeMe
But that's the entire point, this isn't happening. Most everyone that is born now reaches sexual maturity, as opposed to the strongest 25% a few hundred years ago.
This isn’t true, it is happening. Shorter women and women who go through the menopause slightly later
are having comparatively more children.
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And someone like Brad Pitt might get laid a lot more than you or I but due to contraception he's not passing more genes to the next generation. Reproduction is now a choice instead of a biological reward.
The issue is whether natural selection is occurring, not whether it’s affected by modern medicine/contraceptives, which it undoubtedly is.
Natural selection is not just concerned with inferring increased survivability, it’s about increasing fitness. Fitness is both survivability and reproductive success. Since most people these days live to reach sexual maturity, fitness is hugely reliant on the number of offspring. Although the developed world may be ‘evening out’ the fitness it’s unlikely to ever reach a stage where there are no heritable traits correlated to increasing fitness.