this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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In all seriousness, human elderlies are actually evolutionary anomaly, because if Darwinian tenet of "survival of the fittest" applies 100% of the time, they would not be the norm. But the fact that old people are prevalent in human society is the proof that we are compassionate and loving creatures that transcend cold evolutionary programming. We care for others and the vulnerable.
What was that study again? Something like 30% of people would just swerve into a fake turtle to kill it, for no fucking reason at all. TL;DR There's an anomaly alright, murdery people.
And how many successful actually productive and generous persons alive wore glasses? Yep, you entered another mind trap.
Sure, in the context of physical abilities.
However, i think bands of hominids who care for each other have a survival advantage. I guess thats who we've evolved to be social creatures.
Also,, nanna might not be able to hunt mammoths anymore, but she knows what to do in years when the mammoth dont come.
There are other species which have elderly members, namely whales and elephants.
Itβs postulated that having grandmothers helps in a species where young take a long time to mature.
The thing is, for it to be an evolutionary advantage it can't be common. That's one theory behind why grandmas aren't more common in species.
Almost all of it comes down to how long it takes to raise children. It takes a lot more people and effort and time to raise humans vs any other species, and its made us unique in that we have essentially support roles. Elderly people, people who can't or dont want to have kids of their own, even older children, all have a role to play in making sure we make it to adulthood and continue the species.
The "grandmother theory" is supporting this idea.
The idea is that past a certain age there is an evolutionary benefit to not be able to have kids anymore. Past a certain age, to pass our genes it's more beneficial to be able to help descendants with their kids rather than having kids on our own.
Does anyone currently have any elders taking care of their kids? Or having done so?
The current generation of Elders living today aren't doing shit for support.
I would argue given how much voting power they have - they are actively making it worse for ~~parents~~ everyone
Yes, my mother in law is living with us and helping is to take care of our 4 years old and 2 years old
It's becoming more common where I am for a couple to move back to somewhere near one of their sets of parents before they have kids so they can rely on them for occasional childcare since both of the new parents usually have jobs
The grandparents have jobs as well here in uk so nobody has families anymore..
I think it's less common in north america than in other continents.
darwinian selection has nothing to do with aging. that's religious right / 1920s robber baron bullshit.
Actually having elders in human societies is shown to positively correlate with better outcomes for the youth in that society. Grandmothers in particular have a measurable benefit.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/92914
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93652-4
Yeah. One idea is that, since our offspring take SO long to mature and take so many resources relative to other animals, that it makes more sense at some point for mothers to devote their resources to existing children rather than focus on trying to have more. So it benefits us as a species to have "support" people like grandmas in our society. This is getting into a tangent but there are all sorts of things that kinda "make sense" if you think about life before modern society. Homosexual men would have probably been an evolutionary advantage to a clan of early humans since it would have provided extra strong male bodies without adding to mating pressure. People with a preference for staying up at night and sleeping during the day could have provided more alert guards to watch for predators. Etc etc.
What about ADHD people?
Some of our greatest minds are ADHD, probably bc ADHD brains seem to approach problems in generally more innovative/non-traditional ways than neurotypicals. It can also foster intense motivation in people. Bill Gates, for example, has been open about his struggles with ADHD. Many scholars believe that Albert Einstein struggled with AuDHD (ADHD with autism, which wasn't in the American DSM until fairly recently).
https://www.thebrainworkshop.com/blog/successful-people-with-adhd/
https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/famous-people-with-adhd/
Ohh, add this recent episode of Radiolab to the list.
https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-menopause-mystery
Except that it isn't a religious thing. I don't know if it was natural selection or societal pressure causing artificial selection, but human's are something of an evolutionary anomaly in the sense that the only other animals on earth who go through menopause are a few species of whales. There's a whole evolutionary hypothesis tied to it called the grandmother hypothesis. Or you can watch this PBS video about it if you don't feel like reading. It's pretty interesting really.
Edit: I'm also just gonna paste a paragraph from the wikipedia if people want the tl;dr.
I posted this further down but you would enjoy it if you haven't seen it already. The end of the video supports your statement. Why Your Grandmother Is an Evolutionary Mystery
It was Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," and felt that Darwin's biological theory of natural selection could be expanded to other aspects of society like philosophy and economics. His writings were misinterpreted by the creators of social Darwinism theory and eugenicists.
It could be media/social programing from perspective of the wiser imposed on the foolish.