During our Hamburg Meetup we discussed selection pressure on humans. We agreed that there is almost none on mutations affecting health in general due to medicine. But we agreed that there is tremendous pressure on contraception. We identified four ways evolution works around contraception. We discussed what effects this could have on the future of society. The movie Idiocracy was mentioned. This could be a long term (a few generations) existential risk.

The four ways evolution works around contraception:

• Biological factors. Examples are hormones compensating the contraception effects of the pill or allergies against condoms. These are easily recognized, measured and countered by the much faster operating pharma industry. There are also little ethical issues with this.

• Subconscious mental factors. Factors mostly leading to non- or mis-use of contraception. Examples are carelessness, impulsiveness, fear, and insufficient understanding of the contraceptives usage. These are what some fear leads to collective stultification. There are ethical injunctions to 'cure' these factors even if medically/therapeutically possible.

• Conscious mental factors. Factors leading to explicit family planning e.g. children/family as terminal goals. These lead to a conscious use of contraception. The effect is less pronounced but likely leads to healthy and better educated children. These are actively encouraged but my personal impression is that this is less an area suspectible to education (because it depends on ones terminal goals).

• Group selection factors. These are factors favoring groups which collectively have more children. The genetic effects are likely weak here but the memetic effects are strong. A culture with social norms against contraception or for large families are likely to out-birth other groups.

Any mistakes? Do you agree? Are we missing something?

EDIT: Fixed link, typos