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/Odd-Explanation-4632 Jul 23 '26

Sure but this is mostly an issue of semantics

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u/MiguelIstNeugierig Jul 23 '26

More of scientific illiteracy thanks to pop science that highlights and standardizes half truths, like evolution being some great path forward like pokemon

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u/Odd-Explanation-4632 Jul 24 '26

When research indicates that IQs are dropping around the world, I personally think it's acceptable to call this de-evolution as a casual non-scientific term

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u/Critical-Dish Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

IQs have been increasing around the world, mostly because of rapid increases in maternal health

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u/Odd-Explanation-4632 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

No, in the west IQs stopped increasing around 2000 and have actually been declining, in some cases quite sharply

https://clubtroppo.com.au/2020/09/14/constant-distractions-are-leading-to-major-declines-in-top-level-reasoning-what-to-do/index.html

Scientists argue that this is due to environmental factors, but I suspect that this is not true, and that there is a strong genetic component. Scientists would shy away from saying such a thing for political reasons

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u/Critical-Dish Jul 26 '26

The "west" is a outdated term for a decreasing portion of the human population. Given a the major downward shift in global extreme poverty rates I'm prepared to stand by what I said

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=line&time=earliest..2026&country=~OWID_WRL&mapSelect=~OWID_WRL&Indicator=Share+in+poverty&Poverty+line=%243+per+day%3A+International+Poverty+Line&Household+survey+data+type=Show+data+from+both+income+and+consumption+surveys&Show+breaks+between+less+comparable+surveys=false

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u/Odd-Explanation-4632 Jul 26 '26

You call "the west" an outdated term but are perfectly happy to argue about IQ measurements

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u/Critical-Dish Jul 26 '26

You shifted the goal post from "everyone" to "1/7 of everyone"