Another Darwinistic fairy tale: When Darwin wrote his books every single word he used had a “specific meaning” and differed “from the colloquial usage”. Today there is nobody - except the Darwinists of course - who is capable of understanding a single word Darwin used in his books.
Have you never heard of Anti-Darwinism or any Darwinistic criticism?
News (examples):
Individuals are not “blind” or absolutely dependent when it comes to the framework conditions of nature.
The so-called “social selection” contradicts the so-called “natural selection” in many aspects.
The immunity to any criticism indicates that Darwinism is a modern religious system.
David Stove’'s book “Darwinian Fairytales”.
Darwinism as an “Universal Darwinism”.
Darwinism as an “Ultra Darwinism”.
Darwinism explains NOTHING.
You push me in the role of an Anti-Darwinist, although I am not an Anti-Darwinist - but also not an Darwinist.
Darwinism is a system that makes humans dependent like pets. It is no accident that Darwinism and Marxism, Nietzscheanism, Freudianism have they have roughly the same age and are so much similar when it comes to speak about humans as absolutely dependent pets. Those isms have to do with compulsion systems, with dogmatism, with religion, but not with science.
Humans are not absolutely free, but they are relatively free. They do not depend on their environment like other living beings. Humans have the possibility to trick the nature. They are luxury beings. Their culture is a huge “island” in the “ocean” as nature. If they were not relatively free, then they could and would not be capable of destroying their environment, the whole globe, and meanwhile also the outer space, could and would not be capable of bringing every living being in an absoluetly foreign environment, could and would not be capable of having a technolgy that makes them more than demigods.
Humans do not absolutely depend on economic or fatalistic or unconscious restraints. They are relatively free. Humans are not pets, although they educate themselves as if they were pets.
So assuming all environmental concerns are removed such that only biology is dictating the results of evolution rather than all of the other factors, the word “fitness” is restricted to only the biological reproduction ability.
In other words, the Darwinian principle only applies after the other situational factors are disregarded (I think that I said that in the beginning).
And that is only a partial list.
The easier and more certain statement is: If anything cannot reproduce due to either psychological, physiological, or physical conditions then it will not reproduce.
I don’t recall Darwin saying anything close to that, yet Christianity and Judaism knew that thousands of years ago.
If anything cannot reproduce, it won’t reproduce. Wow, that’s a mind bender. I’m sure Darwin never considered that.
The elegance of the theory of natural selection lies in it’s simplicity. It’s very easy to understand. You guys are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.
You’re rubber, I’m glue, huh? I see I’m dealing with a very sophisticated conversationalist.
You don’t even know what you’re talking about when you refer to social selection. Look it up. It’s basically sexual selection, but was originally intended to be an alternative to it. What you call “social selection” is basically eugenics, which is not what social selection seeks to explain. I wouldn’t call you an anti-Darwinist because you’d first have to understand his ideas before being opposed to them. You’re more like a pseudo-skeptic and a bit of a blow-hard. Darwinism has faced tons of good criticism, which is why the theory has been improved upon since Darwin.
That would seem to be all that Darwin said: “It ain’t here because it stopped reproducing. And I am going to call that unfit.”
Don’t confuse elegance with simple mindedness. If anything it was fumbling and now words have to be redefined to make it true. It is a typically ill conceived and poorly worded religion.
You have not the tiniest conception of “selection”, let alone “social selection”. “Social selection” is not “sexual selection”. You have no conception of the “selection principle”. So why do you not look for another thread? Currently there are 41032 ILP threads. Good luck!
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I am interested in getting exactly what your sense of the falsity is. If there is a post that sums it up, let me know. I will hop in here and probe a little.
It seems to me that the moment you have a social mammal, sexual selection and even what might be called natural selection is no longer natural. It is chosen by the society and even by individuals in that society, e ven if it is a society of wolves or ground hogs.
Yes. But if we assume that Darwin’s theory of evolution is not false and that “less offspring can be fine”, then having less offspring can merely be fine in a cultural sense and perhaps for a very short time (!) also in a natural sense but not in the sense of Darwin’s theory of evolution, especially his “selection principle”. So according to Darwin’s theory of evolution having less offspring is always a disadvantage, because it leads to extinction. According to Darwin’s “selection principle” the living beings with less offspring die out because of their unfitness and the fitness of the living beings with more offspring. That is the main point of Darwin’s “selection principle”. Darwin’s theory of evolution refers to developments in the long run - otherwise it would not be accepted as a theory of evolution but “merely” as a theory of breeding - and by the way: the theory of breeding is very much older than Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Yes. Cultures or societies often contradict nature. The so-called “social selection” is the selection of some rulers who decide against nature just because of their own interests - e.g. money, thus power -, just in order to remain powerful. The “social selection” can lead to the extinction of all who are involved in the “social selection”, and in a global society of humans all humans are involved in that “social selection”. Look what the rulers do: they destroy the human’s environment, the whole globe, they sterilise the other humans (by poison and other means), and at last probably themselves too, they murder other living beings, … and so on, … and so on …, just for money, thus power. If this human beings were nothing else than natural, thus living beings that completely depend on nature, then they could not do such nonsense. Humans are relativeley free (not absoluetly free - because they are not gods), so they can decide and act against nature, and they do decide and act against nature.
This “social selection” is mostly directed against the “natural selection”, against nature at all, because those who select, want to exploit and to control anything and everything, thus also nature, want to wield power over anything and everything, thus also over nature.
Human beings are capable of killing alomost all other living beings on our planet. According to Darwin’s “selection principle” this means that the species homo sapiens is the fittest species of all times while most of all other species are the unfittest species of all times, just because of the fact that homo sapiens is capable of replacing most of all other species. But in addition the species homo sapiens is capable of deciding and acting against nature and the so-called “natural selection”. Instead of “fit” one can also say “capable”, “competent”, or “successful”.
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Okay - childish caricature aside. What make you think that evolution has to work with only one means of selection?
None of the means are contradictory.
If I chose a burger i shall have multiple reasons for that. You can describe my selection in terms of hunger, cost, convenience, taste, nutrition, advertising, life-style choice. All of them will be relevant, all of them will have some significance.
I just do not think you are capable of processing subtlety. You can’t even win your vote.
I am not that having less is a problem unless it trails off. I mean from a Darwinian perspective. If those offspring survive and fit their niches and create more. Humans doing just as well as most insects and better than some. I realize that thats a cross species comparison, but I hope it makes my point clearer. Lions were also doing rather well before we came along though they have very few offspring. They were, however, very safe offspring. The only animals that could kill them tended to be slower and not interested - perhaps some snakes were a threat, but clearly not enough of one.
This last part sounds more like Spencer than Darwin. YOu are fit or you are not in Darwinism and even this changes over time. Right now I think even a suicidal attempt to kill all life on earth - including, say, bacteria, earthworms and roaches - would fail. Some hardly little somethings would survive and survive us, since we would have destroyed our food and necessarily our own bodies to kill the bacteria in our intestines. I htink the odds are much better that we will pass away - say, from a gm viral release or a nanomachine accident - and a least some if not many other species will go on after. But being well adapted is to a niche and the niches include other species. I do think humans or AI successors may be able to replace all this, but then we will likely have been replaced via gm or machines. I do not think humans will outlive all other species.
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OK I see what you are getting at. OH, I don’tthink so. The elite is no longer part of most selection. They don’t need many kids. I am not taking about, say, the wealthiest 10% in the West. I am talking about the real power brokers. They can weather any shit they want - and their genes are ALSO going off on the side - and can get along fine with the few kids they have. I would guess to that the real power elites are careful to maintain at the very least their numbers. And good luck getting solid statistics on what they are doing.
This is exactly where your confusion lies.
You actually are saying that the principle is not false at all. In fact you are assuming the principle to be in place.
Your confusion lies int he assumption of a progressive evolution, assuming that intelligence or social success ought to be the selection criteria. Nothing of the kind was ever meant my Darwin.
Finches or tortoises that have different traits on different islands are not better than one another, they are just more fitted to their circumstance.
The principle remains intact; Fitness is the ability to survive to have viable progeny, and your own words demand this to be true. Evolution being an effect of change and NOT a cause of it does not ‘care’ about the consequences, it just does what it does.
Nothing is circumvented. You have not only failed to show the principle false, you are using the principle as a woking assumption.
