If mutation is the engine of evolution, an increase in mutation should mean an increase in the speed of evolution. Obviously not on the scales we're talking about here, but the premise doesn't seem too unsound, external pressures being equal.
So, the mutations discussed in the article have nothing to do with evolution, because they are somatic, and not passed on to offsprig. But even if smoking caused germ cell line mutations, it's also important to note that "highly evolved" is a mostly nonsensical phrase that has no real meaning, and there is absolutely no guarantee that any individual germ line mutations would confer a selective advantage to the off-spring- in fact, the majority of the time, specific mutations are neutral or harmful. Thus, even if smoking did increase the mutation rate in the germ line of a smoker, any given smoker kid would probably just have more problems than benefits. And because mutation rate is (maybe this is somewhat controversial) a phenotype that can and has evolved into itself, changing it artificially through smoking would likely result in a net reduction in "evolvability" as it has been called. Anyways these are all long term (and I mean LONG) population level effects and have nothing to do with individuals being "more evolved".
Just trying to make the point that the original assumption was three times removed from a sound understanding of evolution and showed some pretty big misconceptions.
This isn't correct and is a common misconception about evolution. The process which does this is natural selection, and it only occurs through the organism being unable to reproduce as well as an organism with beneficial evolutionary changes.
With humans in the modern world, there is no natural selection because of state benefits that keep people alive and able to reproduce who would usually be unable to do so in a world without safety nets.
So in the modern world, any evolution in humanity - either positive or negative - will perdure. In effect we've ended the traditional form of evolution ages ago when we became civilized.
Also, the entire world does not have modern safety nets, not even close.
Also, why do you say 'some'? It would stop all negative mutations, as all people are given the ability to reproduce. Your argument seems to be that people with negative mutations would not be attractive, but often they are attractive to others with negative mutations themselves. Or just people who no longer breed purely based on biological fitness - again because of modern civilization.
There is definitely no contradiction there. Genes will still evolve, but it will no longer be through a process of natural finding the most positive genes. Or I'd guess you could say that we will now evolve towards genes that enable the largest families. And the largest families are predominantly in poor suburbs. The actual environment is artificial though, as those families would not be able to survive on their own without support. Taken to an extreme, it would technically be 'evolution to destruction' by selecting for negative traits that make it impossible to survive outside of the safety net. Luckily we're nowhere near that kind of extreme.
What's "positive"?
> The actual environment is artificial though, as those families would not be able to survive on their own without support.
I apologise to those who are offended by my stereotyping - If anything, I'd expect it's some of these people who are most able to survive on their own in the scenario of nuclear apocalypse and all major cities destroyed.
In such a scenario people like software engineers on HN, may even have lack the traits for survival (inherited or learned) - many of us do not know how to fix our own cars or grow our own crops.
Anyway, by all means, continue smoking if you think it's going to give you some sort of superpowers or immunity that you can pass on to your progeny. Most likely it'll just give you a disease.