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Here's an idea about natural selection, we had two world wars, during the wars the fit and healthy brave people went, the cowards hid and stayed at home. The c

Here's an idea about natural selection, we had two world wars, during the wars the fit and healthy brave people went, the cowards hid and stayed at home. The cowards survived to live another day, so cowardice and unfit individuals are selected for breeding, giving us the people of today.

oofabz 10y ago
Why start with WW1? Wouldn't this effect work with earlier, smaller-scale wars as well? And since we've had wars for all of history, and have even observed wars in other primates, surely bravery has been selected against for millions of years.
olalonde 10y ago
By definition the people who survived are fit, not unfit.
- mamon 10y ago
  They are "fit" as in "best adjusted to their environment" but not "fit" as in "good at sports", which I think is what parent comment meant :)
jarek-foksa 10y ago
A brave person that always choses to confront an enemy, no matter how powerful he is, has lower chances for survival, just like a coward who always choses to run away, leaving his resources to the enemy and risking being killed by his own people for treason. That's why most people of today are neither brave nor cowards, they are somewhere in-between.
VLM 10y ago
In the pre civil engineer era, civilian death rates averaged around 80%, typical woman has 12 kids, 10 die before they reproduce, etc. Against those odds, world war level losses are a rounding error. Its telling that the influenza epidemic after WWI killed more people than WWI.
whyenot 10y ago
It's interesting that you seem to have completely forgotten that reproduction ("breeding") usually requires two people people, usually of different genders ;) Women, no matter how "fit and healthy" did not tend to participate on the front lines in either war.
kstenerud 10y ago
So, if I understand you correctly, the premise is that, while the brave went off to war and all died (every single one of them), the cowards (whose cowardice also apparently conferred them with hyper sexuality) helped themselves to the wives of the brave, thus causing a baby boom of fresh young cowards? Interesting theory. Completely missing the fact that sex among couples increased dramatically just before shipping off to war, however. I'm also wondering which study you're relying on to state that "bravery" and "cowardice" are genetic traits passed on exclusively via males.
- philip142au 10y ago
  Its just a hypothesis (guess) in a thread in a comment on the internets, its not a paper ! lol

oofabz 10y ago

Why start with WW1? Wouldn't this effect work with earlier, smaller-scale wars as well? And since we've had wars for all of history, and have even observed wars in other primates, surely bravery has been selected against for millions of years.

olalonde 10y ago

By definition the people who survived are fit, not unfit.

mamon 10y ago
They are "fit" as in "best adjusted to their environment" but not "fit" as in "good at sports", which I think is what parent comment meant :)

jarek-foksa 10y ago

A brave person that always choses to confront an enemy, no matter how powerful he is, has lower chances for survival, just like a coward who always choses to run away, leaving his resources to the enemy and risking being killed by his own people for treason. That's why most people of today are neither brave nor cowards, they are somewhere in-between.

VLM 10y ago

In the pre civil engineer era, civilian death rates averaged around 80%, typical woman has 12 kids, 10 die before they reproduce, etc. Against those odds, world war level losses are a rounding error. Its telling that the influenza epidemic after WWI killed more people than WWI.

whyenot 10y ago

It's interesting that you seem to have completely forgotten that reproduction ("breeding") usually requires two people people, usually of different genders ;) Women, no matter how "fit and healthy" did not tend to participate on the front lines in either war.

kstenerud 10y ago

So, if I understand you correctly, the premise is that, while the brave went off to war and all died (every single one of them), the cowards (whose cowardice also apparently conferred them with hyper sexuality) helped themselves to the wives of the brave, thus causing a baby boom of fresh young cowards? Interesting theory. Completely missing the fact that sex among couples increased dramatically just before shipping off to war, however. I'm also wondering which study you're relying on to state that "bravery" and "cowardice" are genetic traits passed on exclusively via males.

philip142au 10y ago
Its just a hypothesis (guess) in a thread in a comment on the internets, its not a paper ! lol