No. Alcohol is not mutagenic, the issues it causes in fetus are not DNA related. On the other hand smoking or other carcinogens definitely do affect DNA so they could "speed" evolution. Unfortunately any species advanced enough to smoke will also be advanced enough to be able to control the environment around them to a certain extent, so besides the one good trait getting develop you would also have dozens if not hundreds of bed ones that get preserved because the species is somewhat above natural selection.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Of course!
You need to have evolutionary pressure to have directed evolution, and "alcoholism is a disadvantage" is as good as any. By drinking more, one reduces their and their kids' chances to survive, making those alcoholic genes less frequent.
By the way, I hear propensity to alcoholism is also an inheritable trait.
I wonder if that cuts the wrong way in humans.
Alcoholism generally keeps people down societally, but I imagine a shitload of babies are born because drunk people didn't worry about a condom
None of the birth defects caused by boozing it up whilst pregnant affect the genetics of the child. it disrupts the development, and does not generally effect the genetic make up.
in short, fetal alcohol syndrome is not a heritable trait and have no reasonable effect on 'the rate of evolution'.
Keep in mind, evolution is a slow process consisting of gradual changes resulting in divergent species.
I also want to add that evolution is a species-wide phenomenon over hundreds or thousands of generations, it's not done individually.
I guess I was understating the slowness, lol.
I do wonder if it might not actually slow down evolutionary change by removing otherwise beneficial traits?
Probably not on the scheme of things. It’s not like alcoholic mums haven’t always been around.
Step 1: Place DNA in a blender
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit? (DNA Smoothie)
I think radiation might be a better option that alcohol ngl bc alcohol messes with the developing brain
Radiation is stored in the balls
That's the part of The Hulk we are all just told to ignore.
What about smoke?
More alcohol, more bad decisions, more babies, more opportunities for evolution.
This is like someone who has faulty math, faulty logic, and fails on every level of a mathematical process. They have nothing but errors when they show their math, but somehow come up with the right answer.
It’s almost as if it were a joke.
I have a hard time believing that not having enough sex was ever the reason that prehistoric people had too few children.
Oh they HAD enough children. The majority just died early. Disease, fire, cliffs, dinosaurs eating them. It was rough.
The only “dinosaurs” that were around at the same time anything vaguely human was, was chickens and such other theropod descendants.
We, uh, ate them.
Fetal alcohol syndrome has to have a huge negative impact on population survivability. I have a hard time believing that even that one one-in-a-million genetic freak superman is able to offset that. Seems more likely that if anything, the general benefits of alcohol consumption (e.g. incentive to settle down into agrarian communities, increased social cohesion) outweight the negative health impacts.
Well, in the early 2000s, WWE had a faction called Evolution. Ric Flair was part of it.
So yes.