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Evolution encourages diversity. At any given point in time and place, some people are better adapted than others. The least adapted make up at least some of t
by codex 14y ago
Evolution encourages diversity. At any given point in time and place, some people are better adapted than others. The least adapted make up at least some of the poor. By this relative definition, some poor will always be with us, even though their standard of living is rising continually.
- kaonashi 14y agoSocial Darwinism, really? I thought that went out of style with eugenics.
- philwelch 14y agoStylishness is not equivalent to truth.
- mbetter 14y agoIn science, they are quite highly correlated.
- anonymoushn 14y agoThis hasn't been true historically. Almost all of the times we have been confident that we understood something, we have been wrong.
- gruseom 14y agoThat's a powerful argument for the GP.
- roguecoder 14y agoThat is because almost all the time we are wrong, whether we were confident or not. However, we were generally less-wrong that were were before. I recommend Asimov's article on the matter: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
- philwelch 14y agoThere are also step functions when dogma comes into the question. Copernicus and Galileo were both right about heliocentrism, but when heliocentrism was politically incorrect, the scientific consensus was wrong.
- maratd 14y agoMental masturbation isn't equivalent to it either. The idea that because you have more money in your bank account that makes you more fit ... is absurd. For every other species, we evaluate fitness based on the number of descendants. Not for humans? Why? A welfare mamma can pop out half a dozen kids. How many kids do you have?
- jlgreco 14y agoGenetics don't have to be involved for traits to be passed on between generations. There is more to a phenotype than just the genotype. It is not a stretch to think that natural selection could apply pressure to traits that are passed on through culture and exposure to ideas.
- dllthomas 14y agoThis seems to be a nonsequitor. "Social Darwinism" isn't a single coherent movement, but those who have espoused it in various forms have only occasionally been specifically concerned with the mechanism as far as I can tell. The grandparent just said "evolution" and spoke of adaptation.
- jlgreco 14y agoYes, that does seem to be what has happened here.
- sliverstorm 14y agoI don't believe the comment you are replying to is Social Darwinism. As I understand it, that particular view set is actually a belief/value system, while the comment you reply to is merely an observation that assuming variety, there will always be a bottom rung.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoThe comment directly implies that some people are born predisposed to being poor on a genetic level, which is... absurd isn't even close to the right word.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Mz 14y agoGee, I kind of hate to say this, but my expensive genetic disorder is why I am deeply in debt and homeless. It is not due to lack of intelligence, ineptitude, etc. It is simply expensive to treat. So I have difficulty with the idea that our genes in no way impact this outcome. I was STAR student, a national scholarship winner, etc ad nauseum. In fact, I am in financial trouble because I figured out how to get well when that is supposedly impossible. It all came out of my pocket.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoInteresting. I didn't mean to discount that possibility and my strong reaction to the GP's implication was in the opposite direction as my comment looks in retrospect. I think health issues are a huge cause of poverty for families that were uninsured or didn't have sufficient coverage and I could definitely understand that happening with congenital cases. I'm sorry I came across so un-understanding, I was reading the parent-parent comment as "people are born lazy" which I found myself annoyed at. There are a lot of "poor people get what they deserve/are lazy" comments here that are dressed up to seem nicer (that frustrate me) and sadly I managed to (to you at least) come off even more sourly because I didn't express myself properly. Apologies.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoEugenics didn't go out of style. It's used quite successfully to prevent horrible genetic diseases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim
- Produce 14y agoIt's ironic that it's the Jews who embraced using eugenics on themselves!
- tokenadult 14y agoEvolution encourages diversity. That's quite a general statement for the discussion here, which you then use to make a specific conclusion about the human behavioral issue under discussion in this thread. Could you kindly fill out the reasoning steps you are implicitly following with more citations to research on each factual assertion you are relying on? even though their standard of living is rising continually This is generally correct. A popular book on the issue (I don't endorse ALL its conclusions, but I like its citation of many different reliable references) is The Rational Optimist. http://www.rationaloptimist.com/ http://www.rationaloptimist.com/
- codex 14y agoIt's pretty simple: Humans are diverse. Evolution created humans. Therefore, evolution created human diversity. "Encourages" is perhaps the wrong word--evolution really produces diversity because it responds to the diverse conditions of the earth. However, this is just background color, it doesn't change the argument. As long as humans are generically and epigenetically diverse there will be differences in fitness. In capitalist societies it makes people more or less wealthy; in other societies it makes them more or less powerful, or influential, or with more or less social status. There are other factors that can make someone poor but this one seems impossoble to completely remedy.
- wdewind 14y agoWhen you say "it's pretty simple: Humans are diverse" you are still making a pretty nebulous statement. What does diversity even mean there? On what basis are you resting your argument that evolution created human diversity, and is not in fact working against it? How do you compare genetic diversity to socioeconomic diversity in a way that is useful or sheds light on their actual relationship? There is no question genetics play a role, the question is how big of a role do they play? You haven't gotten anywhere close to answering that.
- grlthgn 14y agoumm.. no evolution does not encourage diversity. "encourage" implies that there is some sort of hierarchy or level in terms of evolution, and there isn't.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoThese sorts of points are silly, and wrong. If the general tendency of life under evolutionary processes is "diversity", through whatever natural processes are at play, then its reasonable to say in common language that "evolution encourages diversity". Personally, I disagree that evolution encourages diversity. It seems to me that diversity occurs in spite of it, as a result of our ever changing, dynamic, earth.
- aswanson 14y agoYes, it seems evolution 'encourages' homogenization. Natural selection acts as a filter reducing genetic variation in a given environmental setting.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoVariety is selected for, as with parasite defenses in the immune system, and frequency dependent selection of social specializations.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoCan you explain further?
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoYour body system has something called the major histocompatibility complex. The MHC collects proteins from parasites and shows them to the immune system to start a counterattack. If everybody had the same MHC, a virus that figured out how to evade it would be able to attack with impunity. So the MHC genes are under tremendous selective pressure to to evolve variety, and there are a huge number of mutants out there in the population. Consider a genetic variation that if you inherit one copy you communicate well but if you inherit two copies you stutter. Communicating well will be selected for, but stuttering will be selected against. If the probability of having one copy is P, then the probability of having two copies is P squared. For example, if 5% of people have one copy, then 0.25% will have two. The variation will be selected for until it is so common that the gain in fitness for one-copy people is balanced by the loss in fitness two-copy people. (The real situation is more complicated, since variations in many genes interact to affect each other's fitness.)
- dredmorbius 14y agoEvolution does not "encourage" diversity. Evolution is predicated on some distribution of genetically inheritable characteristics with differential survival / reproductive benefits. Depending on a number of other characteristics, one might end up with highly diverse, or highly homogeneous local or regional populations.
- codex 14y agoYou are right in general, but for succinct Internet discussion it is necessary to simplify as much as possible. Unfortunately this can sidetrack the discussion as flaws in the simplification are addressed. In the case of humans, evolution did encourage diversity, if only because it created sexual reproduction in humans, which increases the diversity of offspring. And of course, humans are not all identical today, implying an evolutionary response to different environmental conditions.