Time spent outdoors is the best defence against rising rates of short-sightedness, but scientists are searching for other ways to reverse the troubling trend.
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.
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.
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 @Shawdow194@kbin.social already.
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.