Comment on Does the net positive of Eugenics out weigh the negative? How so?

• kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Shouldn’t this be constantly instead of eventually? Genetic changes are happening all the time

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  • riskable@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Most mutations are irrelevant or don’t impact anything until they’re duplicated enough times to matter.

    For example, every human has 6 to 24 copies of the genes that let us digest wheat: AMY1 (salivary) AMY2A / AMY2B (pancreatic).

    If any one or two of those mutate in the next generation, it won’t be noticeable or make any sort of impactful change.

    This is why changes from one species to another take hundreds of thousands of years (many generations). A whole lot of people will need to accumulate the same mutations and survive (or just reproduce) with those changes (when others don’t) for speciation to occur.

    About 70,000 years ago, nearly all humans on earth died, leaving behind just a few tens of thousands (maybe up to 200,000) that had just the right combinations of genes to survive. When that happened, humanity lost nearly all of its genetic diversity. It’ll be a long time before we diversify again (if we ever make it that far).

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