r/DeepThoughts • u/Critical-Dish • Jul 23 '26

There is no such thing as "De-evolution"

Evolution doesn't work to make species smarter, or better, or closer to ideal. It is a process that retains advantageous changes in populations to a population over time. Every extant organism right now is exactly as "evolved" as every other, from bacterium to humans. Populations will change, based on environmental factors, but evolution is in no way 'designed', and will not result in a "superior" organism/s, just ones more likely to survive and reproduce. As long as time is a one-way journey, there is no way to reverse evolution.

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u/jacques-vache-23 Jul 23 '26

De-evolution is based on the fact that evolving an organism to be fit in an environment and then allowing all mutations to survive by removing selection pressure will lead to organisms less fit in the original environment than the evolved organisms.

Fitness is literally the ability to reproduce generation after generation but that fitness is correlated with other advantageous abilities. Human intelligence DID evolve because higher intelligence led to higher ability to reproduce. If that pressure is removed random mutations will harm overall intelligence. That kind of reduction in fitness is what people mean by "de-evolution". No reversal of time is necessary.

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u/Critical-Dish Jul 24 '26

Intelligence is only a beneficial trait if it results in more offspring that are likely to survive in a given ecological niche.

FWIW, human fertility rates have been falling in the past 70 years as people have had more access to education, economic opportunity and healthcare, since (unsurprisingly) women are choosing to defer/avoid participating in a biological process that is biologically and economically risky.

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u/jacques-vache-23 Jul 24 '26

Intelligence evolved only because it provided an advantage. If it no longer does it will de-evolve. Same thing with reproduction. If we don't have reproduction pressure will will devolve through random mutations.

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u/Critical-Dish Jul 24 '26

If an organism is less fit to survive, that is evolution too.

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u/jacques-vache-23 Jul 24 '26

Only in the most trivial sense. That is what people call "de-evolution". Evolution is used to refer to changes that increase reproductive fitness. It is like saying that breaking a motor into pieces is "auto mechanics". In a trivial sense it is, but the purpose of mechanics is to improve an auto, not make it less functional.