this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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The idea itself isn't wrong, the fittest individuals (those who have the most offspring) are always those whose genetic material will be best represented in the next generations. Kin Selection Theory just includes the fact that even selfish and thus fitter individuals which are helped by altruistic ones usually carry some altruistic genes which they propagate.
It's more useful to model the genes as selfish, not the individuals. A queen bee/ant won't survive long enough to produce fertile offspring if her infertile offspring, each a genetic dead end, doesn't provide for the hive/colony. That genetic programming isn't altruistic because it doesn't help rival colonies/hives, only their own.
So no, the individuals aren't free riding on others' altruism. It's more that genetic coding for social groups is advantageous to the gene, even if localized applications of those rules might seem disadvantageous to the individual in certain instances.
Well said
But then you introduce parasitic organisms, which prey on the more selfless and mutualist functions of complex species. And you end up with a cyclical rise and fall of survival strategies.
Predator organisms proliferating in periods of organic wealth and collapsing when they've depleted the reserves.
Meanwhile, prey organisms trade their mutualist reproductive impulses for traits that are defensive and alienating from their kin... until the predator collapse, at which point they can open up again.
Optional survival varies with the historical movement, which is driven by the strategies that preceded that moment.
Fitness isn't a solved problem, it is a constantly moving target.
You don’t have to be rich to have rich offspring, you just have to fuck the rich guy’s wife before he does.
Fitness can be seen as a phenotype trait, i.e. the kind of phenotype that will produce the most offspring. Of course that is dependent on the environment, but it is worth noting that the kind of adaptation you mentioned can also happen epigenetically or by other means. Basically organisms can have some adpatability built into their genotype.
That's only beneficial when your children are an asset to community survival. Predators tend to produce fewer offspring, because every new member of the predator cohort is an eventual rival. Prey species benefit from large populations when the populations' role is to terraform territory or otherwise synergize with their kin. This is a big fundamental difference between animal and plant reproduction, since plants generally benefit from more members of the species in the immediate area while animals have a soft ceiling on their population tied to how much food / shelter is available.
One could argue that the human habit of terraforming and the synergy enjoyed by a large population of active brains in a small area puts us more in line with plant species than animals.
The Survival of the Fittest trope is flawed on a whole host of levels. The idea that you want a small number of apex predators as a survival mechanic neglects all the instances in which a very large number of prey species perform significantly better.
Which, in the context of Social Darwinism, still puts the idea to rest.
People don't understand that fitness is related purely to the number of viable offspring, which isn't a useful indicator of a person's virtue. Anyways Social Darwinism is idiotic and a wonderful example of the appeal to nature fallacy. We've surpassed evolution for fuck's sake, if we want to progress as a society we need to educate people.
We've become self-aware, but the evolutionary impulses persist. Ecological pressures don't vanish because you begin to understand them. We can adapt rapidly - even within one or two generations - to enormous changes in the ecology. But these are still responses and they still exert evolutionary pressure on the population.
Nevermind that most people still don't actually understand evolution in a manner that benefits them individually. The idea is only useful at the social level, via community-spanning collective actions and policies.
I meant that our goals aren't aligned with the evolutionary "goal" of maximizing the number of offspring anymore. We are still deeply driven by evolved instincts, but we should recognize them as needs that our biology requires to be satisfied in order to achieve happiness, rather than goals in themselves. Of course we are still part of the biosphere and subject to evolution, but that evolution isn't significant on our timescale or meaningful (in the sense that by our criteria of good people, we won't evolve to be better). If we want to improve as a species, we should focus on a different, memetic, kind of evolution, passing knowledge and ideas instead of genetic material.
More humans in one place have a real positive benefit. That's why we congregate in office buildings and university centers, rather than spreading ourselves out as evenly as possible. And communities with large populations enjoy economics of scale that smaller that smaller, more diffuse populations can't take advantage of.
Genetic drift isn't significant on the span of decades or centuries, but it is still happening and will have consequences to population subgroups in tens of thousands of years.
And - as we've demonstrated with more manual efforts at selection - we can force the issue with technology. Modern corn and bananas are two classic examples of a species cultivated by human intervention. Modern methods of transportation and trade has given us record levels of miscegenation, producing enormous cohorts of the human population with combinations of biological traits heretofore unseen (mostly trivial and unremarkable in the moment, but wait another 10,000 years and we'll see what we get).
The pressures we've placed upon the global ecology through industrialization are taking their toll as well. But these have feedbacks that shape our own populations. As the pressures we exert rise (via pollution, climate change, terraforming, deliberate scientific gene tampering) the consequences on our populations become more profound.
Even then, having said all of that, there is no real "better" from an evolutionary perspective. There is surviving to procreate and not surviving, but you'll be hard pressed to name an existing species that hasn't figured that out. What we have in cognition is the ability to evaluate the consequences of our actions. We don't have any kind of measure for what direction we should aim, save in what we collectively choose to value.
Fit and reproducing a lot isn’t mutually exclusive tho. Just look at Elon. Do you think he could hunt a deer with just his hands? I doubt he could even put up a shelf.
In evolutionary biology, fitness is defined as reproductive success, aka the number of viable, reproducing offspring
ok so you're going purist? fine: Elon's baby momma's are using IVF. so as far as reproductive success this is being tampered with. it is already being interfered with here to create a success that isn't organic.