6 ms·

Let's assume the opposite - that success is not correlated with fitness (intelligence amongst other things). Is that a rational position to take?

stonogo 5y ago
Yes. Being second-born is not a heritable trait.
api 5y ago
Either claim would be wrong if it assumed perfect correlation or lack thereof. Correlations are floats not booleans. There is going to be some correlation, but there are lots and lots of factors like luck, network effects, heritable wealth, etc.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Right, and it would seem to be silly to argue that all else being equal, someone more intelligent isn't more likely to be successful than someone less intelligent. It's more that in the real world, all else rarely is equal.
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
We're talking royals here, not some entrepreneur. Unless of course what you're suggesting is that royal families gain and maintain power due to intelligence.
woodruffw 5y ago
That's not the opposite; success can be correlated with fitness (i.e., success) in disparate social strata without necessitating the correctness of the strata themselves. The strata themselves can be the product of pressures unrelated to individual fitness, like our individual propensity for selfishness.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Perhaps not, but the most successful individuals are generally not the most talented. Rather, they tend to be the luckiest. See, e.g. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Depending how you define success, absolutely. The worst thing about pseudo-Darwinism is the fact that so few people really understand that "success" just means reproductive success. It has absolutely no moral or ethical dimension, and is partly circular. Averagely intelligent sociopaths who are charming and pathologically unfaithful can generate a large number of kids. So - in historical times - could travelling bandits who were also rapists. That's what Darwinian success looks like. Meanwhile someone with a PhD who dies childless is a Darwinian failure. The problem is the usual one - evolution is stupid and selects for shallow local minima. So the "Darwinian success" continues - until the species as a whole fails.
zuminator 5y ago
That was certainly the position of the eugenicist monsters of the 20th century, who saw themselves as supremely rational, yet they believed that only by sterilization could they prevent the "marching morons" of the lower classes from overwhelming the elite with their sheer fecundity. On a less controversial note, I'm thinking of lions, believed by some to be the smartest of all cats [0], yet in terms of population and habitat spread much less successful than the lowly housecat. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-cats-a-nature-miniseries-are-lions-the-most-intelligent-cat/16638/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-cats-a-nature-miniseri...

stonogo 5y ago

Yes. Being second-born is not a heritable trait.

api 5y ago

Either claim would be wrong if it assumed perfect correlation or lack thereof. Correlations are floats not booleans. There is going to be some correlation, but there are lots and lots of factors like luck, network effects, heritable wealth, etc.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Right, and it would seem to be silly to argue that all else being equal, someone more intelligent isn't more likely to be successful than someone less intelligent. It's more that in the real world, all else rarely is equal.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago

We're talking royals here, not some entrepreneur. Unless of course what you're suggesting is that royal families gain and maintain power due to intelligence.

woodruffw 5y ago

That's not the opposite; success can be correlated with fitness (i.e., success) in disparate social strata without necessitating the correctness of the strata themselves. The strata themselves can be the product of pressures unrelated to individual fitness, like our individual propensity for selfishness.

actually_a_dog 5y ago

Perhaps not, but the most successful individuals are generally not the most talented. Rather, they tend to be the luckiest. See, e.g. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Depending how you define success, absolutely. The worst thing about pseudo-Darwinism is the fact that so few people really understand that "success" just means reproductive success. It has absolutely no moral or ethical dimension, and is partly circular. Averagely intelligent sociopaths who are charming and pathologically unfaithful can generate a large number of kids. So - in historical times - could travelling bandits who were also rapists. That's what Darwinian success looks like. Meanwhile someone with a PhD who dies childless is a Darwinian failure. The problem is the usual one - evolution is stupid and selects for shallow local minima. So the "Darwinian success" continues - until the species as a whole fails.

zuminator 5y ago

That was certainly the position of the eugenicist monsters of the 20th century, who saw themselves as supremely rational, yet they believed that only by sterilization could they prevent the "marching morons" of the lower classes from overwhelming the elite with their sheer fecundity. On a less controversial note, I'm thinking of lions, believed by some to be the smartest of all cats [0], yet in terms of population and habitat spread much less successful than the lowly housecat. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-cats-a-nature-miniseries-are-lions-the-most-intelligent-cat/16638/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-cats-a-nature-miniseri...