Survival of the fittest and the life of the unfit
Nature is cruel and inefficient, only a select few survive while many don't make it. Survival fittest applies to all organisms, including humans. While many humans are fit enough to continue the life cycle of finding a partner and producing healthy offspring, many don't make it. For instance, there are diseases and disorders filling the pages of medical books that can kill you. While not everyone dies of diseases and disorders many more lives are still devastated.
My question is, suppose you are one of those unfortunate many who aren't fit enough to make it, what now? To illustrate this conundrum, think of an ordinary worker ant, all its life it was made to bring food to the queen ant. Suddenly an invasion of predatory bugs storm the ant colony killing the queen ant while the worker ant survives. The worker ant was programmed its whole life to just gather food for the queen. Now the queen dead. What should it do now?
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now?
My question is, suppose you are one of those unfortunate many who aren't fit enough to make it, what now? To illustrate this conundrum, think of an ordinary worker ant, all its life it was made to bring food to the queen ant. Suddenly an invasion of predatory bugs storm the ant colony killing the queen ant while the worker ant survives. The worker ant was programmed its whole life to just gather food for the queen. Now the queen dead. What should it do now?
Our human traits are a product of natural selection, made for surviving and reproducing. If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? How similar are you to that worker ant who loses the queen? What should you do now?
Comments (47)
Die. Die your hair blonde, and get a boob job, or work out and develop muscles. Humans are frightfully superficial; good looks are everything in our world.
God and science
What are the deepest hopes of humankind? Humankind appears to be hell-bent on destroying all life on the planet.
It's survival of the fit, not the fittest. Often misquoted.
I'm confused about your ant example. The worker ant seems perfectly fit, although her circumstances may have changed.
(Fyi, depending on the type of colony, there may be more than one queen, and in single queen colonies depending on the time of year, there may be queen larvae.)
You could follow a moral framework that does not reference survival/fitness. Plenty of people today are not concerned (or at least profess to be so) with the proliferation of their genes. I don't know that there is any evidence that these people suffer some psychological damage as a result. I think humans are adaptable enough to find purpose outside of biology.
If course, in a literal doomsday scenario, things might be different.
The literary doomsday scenario has begun when I started to write poetry.
There is bad poetry. There is BAAAD poetry. And then there is mine.
(I know I used an alteration of the word, and then cmmitted the equivocation fallacy on the Strawman just committed. It's for the humorous effect.)
According to one source, 87% of women and 81% of men reproduce. Here's a link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/26797a/what_percentage_of_humans_reproduce/
I don't know if those numbers are right, but it does seem that the great majority of humans reproduce.
So, are you saying, what is the purpose of life? your post seems to suggest that reproducing is the meaning of life? You imply without it, what is the point. Many humans CHOOSE not to have children. Evolutionarily (is that a word, haha), those people (me) are unfit. But so what?
Those who view THEIR purpose in life as reproduction, would likely have a severe reaction to their inability to achieve their "purpose." They are also unlikely to view their inability to reproduce as their own fault. This could result in terrible consequences for society (at the very least we just have a higher percent of depressed people)
This seems a good reason NOT to convince people that reproduction is THE purpose. Although we are fighting centuries of religious arguments that emphasize making babies and working hard as the sole reasons for human existence.
Quoting Artemis
I like this. And human society has made it so that just about everyone "is fit" (those that wants to have kids, can - even those with severe disabilities). Now, many (most) will not get their first choice (if you can't be...with the one you love...love the one you're with), but IF their MAIN purpose is reproduction (not WHO they reproduce with), they can find someone.
Evolution is usually spoken of as a competition between organisms and thus survival of the fit is a common description of it.
If we cast our glance beyond the limits of our cities we can directly observe how the weak become prey or succumb to disease - we need to be fit to make it in the wild.
However, looking within into human societies we see people trying to save the weak and diseased, giving those who are physically or mentally handicapped special privileges so that they may get equal opportunity as those who are fit/healthy.
This exclusively human phenomenon, protecting and nurturing the weak/unfit, is at odds with how evolution works for non-human organisms. Yes, a good chunk of the unfit population may be incapable of having children but some do go on to pass on their unfit genes.
One of two ways this can be understood is that humans have outgrown evolutionary constraints - our environment no longer determines the health of the human gene pool - and this is, in part or in whole, due to our moral sense. To anyone who is moral the weak/unfit need protection and care and this is carried out all over the world despite it being contrary to the accepted wisdom of how evolution is about survival of the fit.
The other way to understand this is that morality is part of evolution and somehow a population of unfit genes is beneficial on some level for survival. I mean if diversity is essential to survival then having sick/unfit members may be necessary.
Whatever you want and can do! (don't hurt anyone) The extraordinary thing about us humans is that we are conscious to a degree that permits us to choose not to follow the dictates of our instinctual programs, even if the opportunity to fulfill them is still there. Herein lies our freedom and more. We don't have to play the game. Natural selection may have gotten us here, but now that we're here...
"Survival of the fittest" was not Darwin; it's Herbert Spenser's laissez-faire, proto-eugenic, coinage.
I agree with "fit" but iff it applies to (eu)social systems in terms of deep ecology (vide Næss, Diamond, et al); that is, a sort of '(eu)socialist darwinism' - perhaps in the (tautological?) sense of Survival of the Sustainable - with explicit ethical and political-economic implications for human development (e.g. UNDP indices of 'well-being' (vide Sen/Nussbaum, et al)).
[quote=TheMadFool] ... humans have outgrown evolutionary constraints - our environment no longer determines the health of the human gene pool - and this is, in part or in whole, due to our moral sense. To anyone who is moral the weak/unfit need protection and care [ ... ]
The other way to understand this is that morality is part of evolution and somehow a population of unfit genes is beneficial on some level for survival. I mean if diversity is essential to survival then having sick/unfit members may be necessary.[/quote]
:up:
[quote=Purple Pond]Nature is cruel and inefficient, only a select few survive while many don't make it. Survival fittest applies to all organisms, including humans. While many humans are fit enough to continue the life cycle of finding a partner and producing healthy offspring, many don't make it.[/quote]
'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals - genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons (Spenser) - the latter merely expressing traits adapted to proliferating the former. The OP's focus is incoherent because the level of abstraction is underdetermined and thereby misdirected.
[quote=Purple Pond]If you are unable to survive very long and/or reproduce, now what? [ ... ] What should you do now?[/quote]
As a hypothetical imperative, I suppose, if one's goal is to "survive very long and/or reproduce", then one should work, or collaborate with others, to bricole (or engineer) tools which help facilitate that goal. This is irrelevant, however, to "fitness" or the lack of it with respective to the adaptive pressures of natural selection. (vide Dennett, Dawkins, Gould, et al).
Unfortunately, you missed the boat. "Bricole" refers to the rebound of a ball from the wall in court tennis--basically a term describing balls bouncing around. Bricolage, which is what you were probably aiming for, means...
(in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.
"the chaotic bricolage of the novel is brought together in a unifying gesture"
something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things.
"bricolages of painted junk"
Perhaps you were using a French verb form? (I don't know -- my French is quite deficient.)
Thanks for the correction; but we're both right. I've no french either but 'bricole' as I've used it is correct - meaning 'to tinker' - and, yeah, it's derived from the verb form of 'a process of innovation or tickering' i.e. bricolage. Good catch though.
Pontificate on a philosophy forum.
And read 'fit' the way a kitchen installer would. 'If it's not properly fitted, it will fall apart.'
Nevertheless Darwin approved it and included it in later editions of OoS.
[quote=Wikipedia]Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection", and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868.[1][2] In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869,[3][4] intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".[5][6][/quote]
If memory serves, I seem to recall from either Darwin's letters or a biography that he took Wallace's suggestion because "survival of the fittest" was more accessible to the public than the scientific jargon of "natural selection". In short, marketing over edification; not an endorsement. In his last post SLX shows how the popular term has to be unpacked in a way the technical term does not. Wiki is as wiki does, Wayf ...
Scorpions are fit for certain places and climates, polar bears for others. Climate change is of course changing things, and so species will have to adapt to be fit enough for these changes, or go extinct.
Humans have the unique capacity to significantly alter their environment to suite human needs, even special needs, so the theory doesn't apply to us as much anymore.
There's no significant reason for the false ontology of a money economy, with its singular way of forcing you into a helpless role, to ever be something thought of together with being fit. If anything, this has made the entire species unfit for survival (save the few who have felt too vulnerable in this system and gone on to learn the work of living according to what is). Intellectual honesty screams its way into this conversation. The usual questions of what is real? and what does it mean to adapt? are relevant here.
Society sets out roles that people fall into due to either convenience or pressure (from peers or family, for instance). Sime people choose who they are at an early age, but that's not super common.
The role is like clothes, and you can change. For example, Nazis at the Nuremburg trials said they were soldiers and so were doing what they were told. They were talking about the role of soldier as if that's all they were. Each of them could have morphed out of that role, though it may have been dangerous to do it.
Morphing usually involves a sense of danger, even if its because of the unknown.
Where morphing isnt possible at all, it's death.
I’m not sure our traits are made for surviving and reproducing, as that assumes some sort of teleology. Unlike the worker ant, we are able to furnish ourselves with our own purpose. Even the ill and childless can reach greatness.
Survival of the "fittest" or "fit" is just nonsense used by lazy people to feel better about themselves; no doubt the people at the lowest denominator.
It's just distorted into a radical ideology - almost religiously so (consisting of a great deal of intellectual dishonesty, pseudo-scientific magical-thinking, biological reductionism and biological deterministic fetishes while making weak justifications for proliferating the stupidity gene by simultaneously trying to eliminate it through reproduction, it's usually held by edgy 19 year olds addicted to jerking their dicks to cartoon animations).
By this logic, all women are "fittest" because let's get real here, women do not have a problem proliferating their genes outside of (medical conditions) that deem them infertile; even the lowest of all women and "unfit" of them all. And no, infertile women are not going to die off as unfit.
Survival is not dependent on anything these nutjobs talk about. It's very easy to stay out of trouble.
I recognize you aren't endorsing@Purple Pond's position. I am responding to your summary of PP's ideas. The meaning or purpose of life is an expression of human values. Evolutionary processes have nothing to do with values - it's just the old universe chugging along. One of the big battles fought on the fields of the evolutionary wars is the fight to keep teleology (The explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve) out of evolutionary theory.
Right and wrong. From the individual's point of view, our efforts at work or education have approximately NOTHING to do with our individual survival, as you said. But... From the view of collective society, it does. The account clerk at a brokerage, a social worker, a housewife, a city street worker, the check out at Target, etc. are all engaged in the maintenance and reproduction of society as a whole.
Individual bees and birds aren't in the race to survive; it's their species that survive or not. Same with humans--which is not to say that individual humans are at all indifferent to their personal situations. We are quite concerned about it. But individually, we, birds, and bees will all die. Collectively, we endure -- or not.
To clarifiy - natural selection acts only on organisms. That action may or may not manifest itself as an evolutionary change in a species or other taxonomic grouping.
Quoting 180 Proof
Helping your brother or niece survive and reproduce, even if you don't, is a way of ensuring the survival of your bloodline. As such, it should be worth evolution's attention as much as if you had had children of your own. I'm not sure, it sounds as if you aren't taking that into account. Maybe I misunderstood.
As I indicated in another post, the primary mechanism of evolution, natural selection, acts only on individuals. I'm not sure if that contradicts what you are saying or not.
Ahem...Hayseed?
It's perfectly reasonable to consider the effects of natural selection on people living in a technological society, even if people live and reproduce with weaknesses that would have killed them in past times. Our current society seems to be a pretty stable one. Obviously, it could be disturbed by many factors, e.g. climate change or nuclear war, the way the dinosaurs seem to have been killed off by an asteroid. That's life...er...evolution.
Quoting Bitter CrankYet what is the collective without the individual?...an impossibility/nothing. What is the individual without the collective?...possible/something (depending on the degree of mental and physical autonomy reached by the person). Can the human collective know anything? Or can something only be known by each separate individual.
The Koch Bros. (David Koch is as dead as a doornail; Charles Koch has sadly not achieved that state yet. However, there are more Koches where they came from.
Donald Trump (whatever is wrong, blame him)
influential climate change deniers
the stockholders and BODs of coal, petroleum, gas, autos, tires, airlines, and power generation industries.
Agricultural multinationals like
BASF. Country: Germany. ... Part of the old I.G. Farben (forced labor camps in Nazi Germany)
CNH Industrial NV. Country: The Netherlands. Revenue: US$10.12 billion. ... (aka, New Holland)
Bayer AG. Country: Germany. ... Part of the old I.G. Farben (forced labor camps in Nazi Germany)
Syngenta AG. Country: Switzerland. ...
Monsanto Company. Country: USA. ...
Nutrien (Formerly Agrium Inc. and PotashCorp) Country: USA. ...
DowDuPont. Country: USA. ...
Deere & Company. Country: USA.
All capitalists and commie dictators
Hayseeds of the Bread Basket Unite. The urban parasites have nothing to lose but their bread and butter, their pate foi gras, their fried chicken McNugguts; their almond milk, salad greens, chick peas, and steak tartare.
Yes, my favorite is a Big Mac - two all beef patties, special sauce, pickles, foi gas, onions on a sesame seed bun.
It's a difficult knot.
The 'species' doesn't think, react, hunt, shop, cook, and eat. That's all done by individuals. On the other hand, individuals don't survive, thrive, change, or die out over long periods of time. Individuals are a flash in the pan. Individuals do not decide to talk in 7000 different tongues; language belongs to the species. But each individual has to learn their language one by one. If you and I had gotten run over by a Lamborghini Veneno ($5 million) roaring down the street at 200 kph, before we (well, you) had reproduced, the net effect would be zero. Not because you are unimportant, but because your (our) part in the scheme of things is vanishingly small and transient. The species has been evolving for what... 14 million years since the last common ape/human ancestor, and maybe 200,000,000 years for all of us mammal species. We've been around for a measly 70+ years.
On the one hand every individual is more important than the species, but the species is where our future lies, or doesn't.
This is not really the case, although it is often thought to be. Natural selection acts on any entity or entities which exhibit variation, reproduction and heritability. Although individual organisms fit this bill nicely, these constraints are broad enough to be applicable to genes, populations, and even species. That this is the case is captured in the idea that natural selection operates at various levels of selection. Thus for a long time it was argued that genes were the only units of natural selection, and not organisms at all. This has changed in recent times with the acknowledgement that all aspects in a developmental system can be subject to selection, up to and including the entire system itself. The unit of natural selection doesn't even have to be alive. You can use natural selection principles to come up with new circuit boards or even architecture.
That is a good point..When is the individual duped by social mechanisms that their labor is meant for them, vs. the collective? The invisible hand perhaps hides this more than other economic hands- usually ones of a dictatorial or totalitarian bent. However, the best way to engender more work from people is to get them to take on the burden of ideology themselves.
I take your opinion seriously on this. I remember the thread you did on how genes work as a complex interaction of many genes related to a complex system of traits. I go back and read it from time to time. It really changed my understanding of genetics. I remember you reject a one to one relationship between genes and traits.
Down to business. Before your thread, my understanding of the situation was that there are qualified scientists who do believe that there are levels of selection other than organisms but that it was a controversial issue. My prime source for that information is Stephen Jay Gould's writing. Since he died in 2002, I don't know what changes in theory have taken place. After reading the article in the link you sent, it seems that my understanding is still correct. I read through it quickly, but I'll go back to read it in more detail.
Some thoughts and questions - The article identifies four actors in the evolutionary process 1) interactor, 2) replicator, 3) beneficiary, and 4) manifestor.
Interactor and replicator - I don't think I understand these issues very well. I need to go back and reread the section. Off the top of my head, it seems these would be in conflict with the issue I mentioned above - the fact that it is a system of genes that causes a system of traits. Again, let me think some more.
Beneficiary and manifestor - These seem more like semantic questions than scientific ones. In my post, I acknowledged that evolution acts on species and other levels, but that natural selection acts on individuals. Evolution emerges out of the action of natural selection on individual organisms much as the market emerges out of the behaviors of individual economic actors.
This is really interesting. I'll come back after I've read some more, and thanks for the link.
Or, more importantly, die or fail to reproduce. Yes, of course species become extinct, but that is a long-term manifestation of the action of many organisms over many years. If my memory is correct, the average life of a species is a million years or more. Another question - how many species die out without a successor species? For example - birds evolved from dinosaurs, i.e. dinosaurs didn't die out, at least not all of them, they became something else.
See my @StreetlightX's post and my response above.
Exactly! That seems to make sense because fitness (whatever that is actually thought to be) does nothing to guarantee reproduction on an individual level, but simply makes it more likely if averaged out over sufficiently large populations; so there is no correlation of fitness with genetic inheritance on the individual level, but only on the group or species level.
Fitness does definitely promote reproduction on an individual level - that's how natural selection works. To vastly oversimplify, an individual with some trait that gives it a survival or reproductive advantage is more likely to pass its genetic makeup on to descendants. Then there are more offspring with that advantageous trait. They then pass it on and the frequency of that trait in the population increases, thus helping the population adapt to changing conditions, i.e. evolution.
Organisms don't evolve. Species evolve. Maybe some other levels of genetic organization evolve. The mechanism by which species evolve is by the action of individuals that have some survival or reproductive advantage passing it on to their off-spring.
:shade: No doubt Lamarck would agree; however, Alfred Russel Wallace, Ernst Mayr, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Niles Eldridge, Stephen J. Gould ... & Daniel Dennett certainly would not.
[quote=T Clark]Maybe I misunderstood.[/quote]
Maybe. :roll:
Sure, I said it doesn't guarantee it, and what I should have added is that, in the case that reproduction occurs, it doesn't guarantee that offspring will be fit either. So, instead both are mere likelihoods that become manifest as more or less guaranteed effects in sufficiently large populations. So, a fit organism is more likely to survive and reproduce than an unfit organism, and their offspring are more likely to be fit. And all this says nothing about what constitutes fitness either. At least that's my lay understanding which I will be more than happy to have corrected by someone more knowledgeable.
Exactly. You do not have to be "fit to fuck".. you just have to be hard. For women, just spread eagle.
People with severe medical complications, illnesses, and other are demonstrably still having sex and reproducing, surviving fine - even those with dormant sub-optimal genes. That is how we are producing all this gene variation in the first place. Precisely because you do not have to be a chimpanzee from 3,000 BC to pass on genes.
Well, you either adapt or succumb.
You must have missed this ...
[quote=180 Proof]'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals - genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons (Spenser) - the latter merely expressing traits adapted to proliferating the former.[/quote]
hint: On the Origin of Species ... not 'origin of organisms'.