Alright, so Ive got a bit of a question regarding futuristic societies for settings.
So, as we all know, medicine and treatment has increased in quality quite a bit even just over the past few decades. The obvious side affects, longer lifespan, diseases becoming less lethal, etc. are pretty obvious, but I'm kind of curious about a different effect. Namely, the "survival of the fittest" effect. Thanks to advances in medicine, people who would normally die off before reproducing are now living long enough to do so, passing along their genetic traits along the way. Now, I'm no biologist yet, but wouldnt this mean that as society advanced, you would see a sharp increase in less desirable traits over time? For example, bad eyesight, genetic disposition towards obesity, bad hearts, mental disorders, odds of getting cancer, the list goes on and on.
The question I have, is would it be possible that the breeding of flaws (survival of the weakest, if you will) will outpace the advances in modern medicine? That at a certain point, genetic flaws and disorders would be so common that they simply overwhelm our ability to treat them? Obviously we're talking hundreds of years down the road here, but I feel it would be an interesting theory to base a setting on. Given that first world countries are the most likely to have proper medicine, and be the first to explore the stars, I feel like itd be very possible, especially if some sort of "dark age" cut off colonies from the more varied genetics of earth.
Would these colonies, without the advanced resources they need to keep their genetic shitshow in check, be forced to resort to more extreme measures to survive? Say for example, genetic experimentation and manipulation, or more horrifying, abandoning the flesh to replace it with the machine? Or worse, would they be forced to live with what they were dealt, being a pale mockery of mankind used to be, twisted by maladies and madnesses beyond counting?
>>47885515
Look at what socialized healthcare is doing to the US government. We've already hit the point where keeping everybody alive and healthy is combining with rampant inflation in healthcare costs to bankrupt the government of the world's largest superpower.
>>47885515
It's a neat idea, but not likely to come to pass. Gene therapy has been around since the 1990s. Still experimental, but shows a lot of promise
A plausible future society with mature gene therapy is not bloody likely to let something like a mental disorder go uncorrected in the womb. That's like deliberately handicapping someone because they can't give consent for the procedure that would un-handicap them.
sounds like fodder for a setting. i'd play a distopian transuhuman game with mutants and maladys everywhere. just think of all the fun quests one could go on. "the AI controling the gene splicer seems to be on the fritz, mind checking the fuses?" slog through mutant clone army a deranged AI built for itself cause the brain in a jar cpu went schizo. but only it can access the cloaning system so you gotta fix rather than kill it, but someone in the sociaty must take its place, who will it be?
>>47885515
>Say for example, genetic experimentation and manipulation, or more horrifying, abandoning the flesh to replace it with the machine?
If by 'horrifying' you mean 'awesome' then yes, that's one solution
Doubtful. The reason those traits are being passed along more often is that modern medicine can treat them more effectively. If there are too many people with them to treat, then the people who aren't treated will find it harder to breed, lowering the number of people born with them.
>>47886451
Then look at how other countries have managed their socialised medicine systems and see how much the US government screwed it up by trying to do something other than copying them.
>>47886451
pol go home.
>>47886483
>who will it be?
Who cares?
>>47886501
>Seriously replying to an obvious bait
Guys, just stop this
>>47886509
who cares about you?
>>47886542
As if anyone cared about your bullshit
>>47885515
Here's the thing though. If we have genetic disorders now, it's because people with those genes were able to successfully pass them down throughout history. So the fact that we can keep someone with predispositions to genetic disease alive longer is not going to make much of a difference. Since you might be able to keep your hypothetical person "bad eyesight, genetic disposition towards obesity, bad hearts, mental disorders", let's call them Chris-Chan for short, alive where previously they might have died, but that doesn't necessarily follow that you've radically increased their reproductive success rate.
The only disorders that might be more likely to be passed down are ones where the affected person would have always died before they were sexually mature pre-modern medicine and who are kept alive now. Generally these are catastrophic disorders requiring constant care; and the caretakers are generally not having them have kids.
Now genetic damage from other sources, genetic bottle-necking? That could lead to the scenario you described.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenics
TL;DR Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual for human development, but it might as well have been designed as one
And yes, deciding that everyone needs to live is probably a very bad idea. Combining this with the fact that stupid people reproduce at a significantly higher rate than intelligent people, and we insist on feeding and caring for every single one of their offspring, and it seems likely that the stupid will continue to grow.
>>47887151
>zombie apocalypse with hordes of genetically-modified chris-chans, lukes, and big boy blues
Oh.
Oh god.
>>47887273
>2016
>People still treating Idiocracy seriously
>And not just as high-concept comedy
I doubt I will live to the end of this meme
Back to your hugbox, stormniggers
>>47887322
It was supposed to be a joke along the lines of "1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual," anon. I was being facetious.
>>47887389
>smug anime face followed by signature shitposting special
Like clockwork.
>>47887407
>Anime face
>>47887523
>Shitposting
>>47885515
I think you haven't considered the answer inherent within your own reasoning:
If at any time the accumulation of flaws and disorders in the gene pool exceeds our advancing ability to treat them, by even a tiny fraction, then that fraction which lies notionally 'beyond' our ability to provide treatment will die.
Thus the only time when Man's dysfunctionality will lie beyond our ability to support it is in the event of a massive economic or scientific regression.
>>47885515
As far as we can tell civilization actually made us stronger(that is the average person is more better)
You are correct about genetic diseases being an issue though.
>>47885515
>Obviously we're talking hundreds of years down the road here
That's not nearly long enough for what you're describing. Though it is probably long enough to develop gene therapies that could correct most genetic disorders.
>Say for example, genetic experimentation and manipulation, or more horrifying, abandoning the flesh to replace it with the machine?
Obviously we're going to do those things, but not because of your silly devolution scenario.
>>47887693
>civilization actually made us stronger(that is the average person is more better)
That's not really true, though, since foraging/hunter-gathering societies were healthier and worked less. Agricultural society (ie. civilization) was shit for the first 10,000~ years and only recently (1850~+) has it been particularly helpful for the average person.
The entire reason why agriculture is better than hunter-gathering is that it allows a small portion of the population to do brain work and art and shit instead of going full nomad. But the average diet was (and is) shit in most pre-industrial agricultural societies.
Plus there's the whole "world wars only kill people fit enough to fight in them" thing.
>>47885515
>Because we today don't have cure for X, we will never ever have
That's how your bullshit reads, nigger
>>47888203
>"Hey guys maybe we should stop polluting as much or someth-"
>"shut the fuck up faggot, SCIENCE has got this. we're good. now go dump that lead in the river already."
>>47888203
I was implying less of curing one thing, and saying how do you heal a person when he has parkinson', schizophrenia, down's, genetic obesity, diabetes, a heart murmur, a crooked back, cancer, and asthma all at once? Aka is there a point where you could potentially be predisposed to so many diseases that you just can't be treated. Another anon brought up a good point that those guys would be removed feom the genepool on their own, but would it hit a point where so many people hit that wall that society could suffer a "plague" of sorts.
Then, how the hell do you fix that when your magical elysium tier healing machines stop working?
>>47887959
Agriculture has proven itself to be significantly better at feeding large and concentrated groups of people for ten thousand years anon. What are you smoking? The idea that hunter gatherer societies are healthier on the whole is complete horseshit because they don't have enough food to support enough people to experience problems with crowding.
It's like blaming modern society for people dying of cancer. Modern society allows people to live long enough and avoid enough other threats that the only thing left to kill them is cancer. When you have a society where starvation is a real everyday issue that normal people in normal situations die from (as happens in hunter gatherer societies when food supply contracts) and not just in times of crisis, that's not better.
>>47891646
You seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about how evolution works.
First of all, just because certain genetic traits are less likely to kill people now, doesn't mean they're being selected for. Someone with Down syndrome is still less likely to reproduce than someone without it. Some negative genetic traits might not hurt your chances of reproducing anymore, but they still aren't making you any more likely to reproduce. So there is no selection bias in favor of those traits.
Also some of the traits you're listing have never done much to hurt someone's odds of reproducing anyway. Parkinson's disease for instance mostly effects older adults who have already had their chance to have kids.
Even if some negative traits were being selected for (like if you buy into Idiocracy's premise) it takes a hell of a lot of generations for any significant change to occur to a species. We're talking time scales longer than the entire history of human civilization. It's hard to imagine that advanced medicine could last that long, and yet not advance to a point where this is a complete non-issue.
>>47885515
Pretty much what government child credits do. I knew so many shitty drunk parents who pumped out babies so they could live off the income. More children than any sane couple wkuld have
>>47891995
>The idea that hunter gatherer societies are healthier on the whole is complete horseshit because they don't have enough food to support enough people to experience problems with crowding.
And modern Africa is agricultural and starving, so who cares about whether it can support more population? The fact is that per capita, hunter-gathering is healthier. It supports a lower population density of healthier individuals. Agriculture is zerg: the food production strategy.
People have always had a decent chance of living to 60+, so long as they avoid infant mortality. Cancer rates are going up and are higher in the developed world and polluted third world shitholes.
Too lazy to find an internet source for that, but "Farmers, Foragers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve" has a fair amount of information on this sort of stuff. I would highly recommend reading it, even though I think the author is wrong in his general premises (too environmentally deterministic).
