Is the Darwinistic Selection Principle False?

I find it that peoples who die out are not the fittest.

And I find that people who live on were not the fittest, merely the fitted.

The Neanderthals were just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s a poin it time thing. There can never be “the fittest”, only “the fittest right now”.

Afterwards it is always easy to say said that those who die out are not the fittest, but that does not always prove or disprove the real fitness.

What did, for example, Pol Pot do? He eliminated all intelligent humans in his country, because intelligence was “antisocialistic”, thus not allowed in his “socialistic” country. Were these humans really “not the fittest” (in your terms)? Intelligence is a sign of fitness, although not the only one. Pol Pot was one of many politicians who decided against the so-called “natural selection” by operating their own selection. According to them the people they murdered were not “fit” in the sense that they were not the “fitted”.

So the Darwinistic “fitness” concept is problematic and thus almost useless.

In many aspects the Neanderthals were fitter than all other species of the genus “homo”, but in spite of that fact the Neanderthatls died out. Yes.

So the Darwinistic “fitness” concept is problematic and thus almost useless.

There’s no “proving the real fitness”. That’s nosense. There is no single fitness in present time that is above all others. There are more unicelular organisms living on your body than there are humans on the entire planet, and they don’t even have a nervous system, let alone a brain.

Evolution doesn’t stop at the fittest. It proceeds to expect the fittesttesttest.
There’s fit. Every living species on Earth right now is fit, thus they are alive. All of them are a success. If they were unfit they would be dead. Among the fit, all are doing everything in their power to perpetuate everything about themselves. The ones who are better fit will be the ones imparting an effect on the future of the species. What determines what a “better fit” means is perpetuation itself. Thus knowledge of “the fittest” can only happen after the fact.

My terms don’t matter one single bit. Neither do yours. We follow to the obvious conclusion that intelligence is the greatest indicator of fitness, but that is an antropocentric view. Intelligence has allowed us to colonize every terrain on the planet, and subdue all other creatures and the Earth itself, terraforming it to conform to our whims, but it would only take a well placed space rock of adequate size to wipe most of that away in a second and the rest of it in a few months. And guess what, cockroaches will still be roaming around, bitches.

In fact, intelligence itself has already put us walking the plank at least once before, so I imagine that species who have existed on this earth for a long time, like crocodiles who have existed almost in the exact form that the are today for some 65 million years, must look at us whippersnappers who have only been around for a mere 160k years or so and wonder ah, kids these days… if they can wonder, hell if I know, you get the point.

(As a side note, lol @ people that go omg we r haltin evolution with our manmade envirumentz!1!
Are you fucking kidding me? You learn to make syrofoam and all of a sudden you think can shape the fate of the planet? From the rodents in our dumpsters to the dogs sleeping by our feet, to the tomatoes we had for dinner, they are laughing at us. Laughing.)

Almost useles… hm. What uses do you think it should have?
And again, what’s problematic about it? I still don’t get your objection. It seems to me that what you are arguing is that sometimes we eliminate what we think might be the best among us. But then again, arminius, we don’t get to decide what atributes make someone the fittest. All we can do is strive to be fit.

There’s no “proving the real fitness”. That’s nosense. There is no single fitness in present time that is above all others. There are more unicelular organisms living on your body than there are humans on the entire planet, and they don’t even have a nervous system, let alone a brain.

Evolution doesn’t stop at the fittest. It proceeds to expect the fittesttesttest.
There’s fit. Every living species on Earth right now is fit, thus they are alive. All of them are a success. If they were unfit they would be dead. Among the fit, all are doing everything in their power to perpetuate everything about themselves. The ones who are better fit will be the ones imparting an effect on the future of the species. What determines what a “better fit” means is perpetuation itself. Thus knowledge of “the fittest” can only happen after the fact.

My terms don’t matter one single bit. Neither do yours. We follow to the obvious conclusion that intelligence is the greatest indicator of fitness, but that is an antropocentric view. Intelligence has allowed us to colonize every terrain on the planet, and subdue all other creatures and the Earth itself, terraforming it to conform to our whims, but it would only take a well placed space rock of adequate size to wipe most of that away in a second and the rest of it in a few months. And guess what, cockroaches will still be roaming around, bitches.

In fact, intelligence itself has already put us walking the plank at least once before, so I imagine that species who have existed on this earth for a long time, like crocodiles who have existed almost in the exact form that the are today for some 65 million years, must look at us whippersnappers who have only been around for a mere 160k years or so and wonder ah, kids these days… if they can wonder, hell if I know, you get the point.

(As a side note, lol @ people that go omg we r haltin evolution with our manmade envirumentz!1!
Are you fucking kidding me? You learn to make syrofoam and all of a sudden you think can shape the fate of the planet? From the rodents in our dumpsters to the dogs sleeping by our feet, to the tomatoes we had for dinner, they are laughing at us. Laughing.)

Almost useles… hm. What uses do you think it should have?
And again, what’s problematic about it? I still don’t get your objection. It seems to me that what you are arguing is that sometimes we eliminate what we think might be the best among us. But then again, arminius, we don’t get to decide what atributes make someone the fittest. All we can do is strive to be fit.

.
“FIT” for What??

Though this ends up having to say that the fittest are people who don’t get too stressed doing boring repetative jobs, who like the TV on during dinner, who try to stay up with fashion and believe a lot of rather idiotic stuff with the little passon they can muster. And they tended to like sitting in rows in school. They feel good in that kind of external disrespectful structure. They fit it. They are suited to being disrespected and being boring and are unfit for something else.

Those whose genes lead them to have trouble with this do not fare so well, are more likely to be diagnosed, and likely will soon have their ‘problematic genes’ isolated and weeded out.

Agreed, fittED, not fittEST.

That is a false quotation. You should quote my text correctly, Phoneutria. I said (see above): “… that does not always prove or disorove the real fitness.” So I do not claim or demand a prove or a disprove, the reverse is the case: the Darwinists and nobody else have to prove or disprove, if they want their theory to be accepted. If the Darwinists want their theory to be accepted, then it is up to them to prove or to disprove. And if it is not possible to prove or to disprove a theory, then this theory has nothing to do with science.

Who said that there was a “fitness in present time that is above all others”?

The knowledge of “the fittest” can almost always also not happen after the fact. You contradict yourself. First you say “there’s no ‘proving the real fitness’”, then you say “knowledge of ‘the fittest’ can only happen after the fact”.

I understand “proving” and “knowledge” in a scientific sense here.

Nobody really knows “the fittest”. There are too many parameters.

No. Maybe that you “follow to the obvious conclusion that intelligence is the greatest indicator of fitness”. But I do not:

I said: “not the only one”. Did you not notice that?

If there is fitness, then there must be indicators of fitness, otherwise the concept of “fitness” can never be taken seriously.

The excuse of the Darwinists is, for example, that “fitness is more than fitness”. So they do not want to be taken seriously. :laughing:

Yeah. Do you consider cockroaches as “the fittest”? :slight_smile:

Again: Nobody really knows “the fittest”, Phoneutria.

One can only say after some facts that this or that living being “fitted”. There are some indicators of fitness, as I already said, but in some cases (for example in the case of the human “social selection”) this indicators can also be used as if they were indicadors of unfitness.

The Darwinistic “fitness” concept is problematic, the Darwinistic “selection principle” is partly false, and that includes the possibility of being totally false but also being partly right. I would like to save the right parts of that theory, because I think that it is going to be completely eliminated, if nobody will have eliminated its false parts in order to save its right parts.

I did quote you verbatim and assigned the quote to your name. The “proving the real fitness” part was not between quotes as in being assigned to you, it was in quotes to distinguish it as a phrase.
You meant to say that you can see after the fact that a species fitted, but that does not necessarily prove or disprove the fittest part.

My point was to say that that is nonsensical. When two species are competing for resources and only one survives, that is the fittest of the two. It is called survival of the fittest because the fittest is the one who is left standing.
There is nothing to prove or disprove. So maybe there were extinct species who were way more kickass at something than the remaining ones. It does not matter at all in evolutionary terns unless that kickassedness is put into staying alive

You are incorrect. Theories that can be proved are no longer theories, they become laws. We call it theory of evolution, and not law of evolution, in admitting that as beautiful and complete as it may seem, it is only plausible. There is plenty of room for unproven ideas in science. That is all theories are, an explanation for phenomena that we are not currently able to determine is the only correct explanation with certainty.

Anyway, what, exactly, is up to darwinists to prove?

This is why I asked you above, what exactly do you think darwinists need to prove. It appeared to me that you want proof the whoever survives is the fittest.
I said that there is no one fittest species. Survival determines who is fittest. Survival as in perpetuation.

Forgive me if I sound confusing. I can rephrase. You can say that we are the fittest of the Homo genus because we are the only ones left. This is after the fact because all the other ones are dead.

If you mean that that does not prove or disprove
that we are truly the fittest, I find that nonsensical because survival itself (as in perpetuation) is the very definition of fitness.

Yes I did notice that. Hence I used “we” meaning not you or me, but we as a human population.
I was making a point.

Besides you went on about humans damaging the environment in which it lives in another post and I fail to see how any other species would be different.

Survival.

I am not familiar with that argument.
[quote
Yeah. Do you consider cockroaches as “the fittest”? :slight_smile:[/quote]
Which ones? There are about 4600 known species.

Like what? Can you give me an example?

I still don’t understand your objection.

there may be typos and shit, don’t make me type so much

No, Phoneutria. You are wrong. Laws are like the instructional parts of any dogmatism and made for dictatorships. I do not care whether some people want to name them “laws”, because (at least to me) laws are superordinated rules and should not have anything to do with science, otherwise science would become a religion (and - unfortunately - it has already partly become a religion).

But I know some people who want it to be a law and why they want it to be a law.

The accent lies on the term “is up to Darwinists” not on the word “what”. If I want to convince you, then it is up to me to prove my statements or to disprove their negation.

Concerning your “what” I already said several times: (1) “selection”, (2) “fitness”.

During the period of Realism and Naturalism (radical realism) almost everything was related to nature, based on nature - it was a reaction to the previous period: Idealism and Romantic.

One can say it, but that does not necessarily prove “our” fitness or disprove “our” unfitness. So it is nonsensical to say it as if it were something like the truth or a law (see above). If you have won a game, then that fact does not necessarily prove your fitness or disprove your unfitness. You may have had much luck or/and help.

Survival is no sufficient indicator of fitness.

The so-called “fittest”! :slight_smile:

I have already given several examples. This time I am not going to quote again. … Sorry.

Let me ask you: Is your term “survival as in perpetuation” an objection?

So one would have to get after the “perpetuation itself” in order to get the “knowledge of ‘the fittest’”; but It is not possible to get after the “perpetuation itself”; thus according to your own words it is not possible to know anything about the “fittest”; and that means, for example, Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is nonsense.

No, no. What is nonsense is wanting to have knowledge of the fittest.
That’s not at all what the concept is meant to do.
In fact it is not meant to do anything other than explain the present.

When the population grows from 1billion to 7.5 billion in less than 250 years it is undeniable fact that the selection pressures have been relaxed and that large numbers of unfit mutations are being produced. In fact, to claim that any type of achieved reproduction whatsoever is proof of genetic fitness is a total cop-out. Surely there are degrees and objective standards from which values can be drawn or inferred? Phoneutria’s argument means that a male dwarf who is deaf and blind and a woman with downs syndrome and spina bifida, both of whom are HIV+ and asthmatic, who manage to reproduce will fall into the same category of fitness as two tall and athletic mensa members who reproduce. It is something she obviously doesn’t believe and which begs for a more nuanced analysis but might encroach on territory which is not politically correct and she isn’t willing to tread those waters.

Apologies if I described some poor soul on ILP. You matter. :romance-caress:

No, because the evolutionary process is one which takes place over millions of years. Such flukes become irrelevant over the course of millenia.

And how? By weak genes being exposed to harsher environments and predation or culling right? Therefore one can make very reasonable inferences about who is fit and who is not or at LEAST who is fitter and who is less fit. Nothing controversial about that at all, speaking from an evolutionary biology standpoint. But then that would involve you making value judgements on health, beauty, intelligence and all manner of things that you prefer remained mysterious and subjective. Ergo: cop-out.

My value judgments are irrelevant. What I think makes a good human is irrelevant. Nature does not create nicer or harsher environments with the objective of creating better organisms. It doesn’t have a mind.

ONLY under that particular environment at that moment in time.

Change the percentage of oxygen in the air by a few percent and it is possible that an entirely different species would emerge on top of the food chain. So what “value judgements” apply? How can you use the word “fittest” to mean anything but a value judgement that is misleading as it ignores the exact circumstances of the environment at the time.

“Fittest” is an inappropriate and misleading word, inferring blame and discredit where it doesn’t belong.