4 ms·
Gene based evolution is constant. There is no way to avoid it; any more than it’s possible to avoid a compiler (somewhere) for any decent sized computer program
by lazide 1y ago
Gene based evolution is constant. There is no way to avoid it; any more than it’s possible to avoid a compiler (somewhere) for any decent sized computer program, even if you’re writing in Python.
So what you’re describing is not what you think you’re describing at all.
Those ‘non-competitive’ societies are actually just those where the competition has been decided through structural elements which are not currently being contested to the same extent. Because someone either ‘won’ the war already, or the ‘war’ is more subtle and manipulative rather than being out in the open.
If you happen to be on the ‘winning’ side of that war, then that looks great. If you’re on the losing side, you won’t get much of a chance to notice or fight about it. And what cannot be ‘seen’, ‘doesn’t exist’.
War, after all, only can occur when someone is able to actually fight - and can see a reason to want to.
Because in either one, someone is making the choices (explicitly, or implicitly!) which decide whose genes actually end up spreading.
Complaining about mental health issues in competitive societies is like complaining about people getting maimed in war. And if people just stopped trying to fight back, then hey, world peace! (Once whatever Emperor conquered first won, of course)
Society is the increasingly abstract and confusing game we build on top of all this so we’re not all writing the equivalent of assembly - aka Ghenghis Khan’ng each other. But it’s all the same at the end of the day - the computer (aka reality) runs whatever instructions gets spit out (aka genes). And whoever decides that, ‘wins’.
- n4r9 1y agoOkay. But if social norms lead to almost everyone mating randomly and couples having the same number of kids on average, then what happens to genetic evolution?
- lazide 1y agoDo you think that is what is happening? Because the statistics definitely don’t agree.
- n4r9 1y agoNo, no one suggested that's happening now. It would require a lot of social change.
- lazide 1y agoAnd what’s in it for the various factions to want that?
- n4r9 1y agoThe advancement and flourishing of the human species. But that's beside the point. What rbanffy suggests might be absurd, but not because it somehow violates the laws of biology.
- lazide 1y agoI don’t see any point in human history where what is being described matches any stable human behavior. So while not impossible, it is probably unlikely eh? And think of what that would actually mean, and if you’d even want it - you’d be as likely to match up with a random Chinese 60 year old, or a 13 year old African tribe member, or 30 something European (while being one of those other two) or whatever. I can’t think of any sane person that would be willing to mate with someone truly randomly. And if it wasn’t truly random, who gets to decide on the criteria? Because that is exactly where the moral hazard comes in.
- n4r9 1y ago> you’d be as likely to match up with a random Chinese 60 year old, or a 13 year old African tribe member, or 30 something European Any such system would probably match people within the same generation. At a future point humans may be far more ethnically homogeneous. Or reproduction may be separated from romance - you donate to the seed bank but sex is a sterile act. There's lots of possibilities. I admit most look unlikely; but like, if that's what it takes to thrive at a galactic level, then it's simply unlikely we never reach that level. But let's not pretend that this is some sort of fundamental biological impossibility.