ConscientiousPoster on Nostr: I think the question of who this immune system would benefit is a useful one. Anyone ...

I think the question of who this immune system would benefit is a useful one. Anyone who doesn't necessarily require all the benefits society brings to them in order to exist would have no qualms with destroying it from within, and at the same time would either help or be disinterested in anyone who does the same without any benefit. Someone who's very good at specializing within certain domains benefits from the presence of a structure that takes care of things outside of that domain, but anyone who's either generally good at most things or doesn't have to be good at any of them would have less of an incentive to try to maintain it.

It's a lot like the gay uncle theory of why homosexuality developed, it's much less to do with proposing something that's true than it is giving a justification for certain behavior by resorting to appeals of nature. I think "strategies that work within certain conditions taken to a maladaptive extreme" is a better way of characterizing these things. Fags are very promiscuous, albeit it's homosexual promiscuity that doesn't serve any real purpose, so it's possible some traits they have would've lead to greater sexual fitness if it wasn't expressed as strongly. This can also be seen in things like obesity and, across race, visceral body fat, where blacks have the least amount of any race, whites intermediate, and asians the most, where there's been speculation that at one point this was a method of maintaining functional immune system during times of scarcity. Since there's no longer such extreme times of scarcity in developed countries this turns into a solid detriment.

I think the extreme over-abundance of things that very few historical humans would ever have access to, especially those adapted to agricultural conditions, from food, entertainment, access to people through improved mobility and the internet, leads to phenotypes that aren't capable of maintaining healthy behaviors.