> That if you’re a life form and you cook up a baby and copy your genes to them, you’ll find that the genes have been degraded due to oxidative stress et al., which isn’t cause for celebration, but if you find some other hopefully-hot person and randomly swap in half of their genes, your baby will still be somewhat less fit ...
You're right that it's a relatively weak effect-- which is a good part of why the effects of variance and selection (incl sexual selection) win out and fitness doesn't decline with each generation.
> That if you’re a life form and you cook up a baby and copy your genes to them, you’ll find that the genes have been degraded due to oxidative stress et al., which isn’t cause for celebration, but if you find some other hopefully-hot person and randomly swap in half of their genes, your baby will still be somewhat less fit ...
You're right that it's a relatively weak effect-- which is a good part of why the effects of variance and selection (incl sexual selection) win out and fitness doesn't decline with each generation.