alt Hacker News25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is <1%. Its been at least 5 generations since this value dropped dramatically.
We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."
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Probably throwing quite the grenade here, but around 29% of pregnancies end in termination globally. Absent cultural considerations, it's questionable whether life expectancy has improved in absolute terms in modern times
We have, we just have much, much better conditions for food, hygiene, personnal safety and medicine.
But have worse hormonal health (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063751/), and are less fit (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4033061/). The flynn effect also seems to decline in some parts of the world: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289619301679
It just doesn't compensate the immense gains tech created.
Turns out it's ok to be weaker if you don't have to worry about dying of parasites, malnutrition, cold.
Which, you could conclude, means the individual is weaker, but the species is stronger.
We haven't created humans from scratch using genetic engineering yet, why would you think our current state has anything to do with the comment you are replying to?
I like the spirit of what you are saying but the smart part isn’t true at all. IQ peaked around the mid 1990s and as someone that lived back then that tracks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...
Look at Fig. 3. The world seems to be experiencing a reverse Flynn effect.
> We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."
Haven't we?