this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Interesting that 3/10 people globally have myopia (near sightedness)... that's absurdly high. And as the trends stay as they are they are only predicting an increase

I guess it proves humans as a whole are focusing more on screens, books, and other short visions tasks

Focusing on providing safe outdoor spaces for everyone has never been more important

[–] victorz 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I guess it proves humans as a whole are focusing more on screens, books, and other short visions tasks

For me it tells me that nature is not selecting good vision anymore. We are fixing our vision on the side of evolution. If this trait is easy to pass on, it doesn't take many generations.

A near-sighted hawk will never survive to live even a short life beyond its childhood nest. But we have glasses...

Humanity will only suffer more and more ailments as medicine gets better and better, is my prediction. As long as the afflicted individuals have time to breed before dying.

I'm only a layman though. Evolution isn't my field. I might be talking out of my ass.

[–] isles 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This article is from 2018 and talks a bit about the suspected causes of increased myopia. The theory is that our eyes are responding to the environment and elongating (axial myopia). So it's not that humans have lost the ability to have good vision via selection, it's that we're adapting to screen vision.

Your point about natural selection is well addressed by @[email protected] already.

[–] victorz 1 points 9 months ago

This goes against everything I thought I understood about natural selection and evolution.

My understanding was that evolution is based on small, random mutations in genes, occurring constantly, and any beneficial changes will most likely cause that individual to thrive better than others, causing nature to "select" that gene.

But the notion that our eyes would "respond to the environment" and somehow cause the next generation to also have myopia... Wouldn't that necessitate that our eyes have some sort of feedback loop that connects to our reproductive system so that we can pass that on? I don't see any other way around other than this occurring from the lack of natural selection.

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