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Yes it is spin, but not just spin. "Survive" often implies some sort of agency, that there is some sort of struggle that was overcome and the organism is still
by adwf 12y ago
Yes it is spin, but not just spin. "Survive" often implies some sort of agency, that there is some sort of struggle that was overcome and the organism is still alive. We teach survival skills. Whereas if you drop some antibiotics on a bacteria culture, there is no struggle, the bacteria that aren't already resistant just die. That's why I think the inverted phrasing is clearer in meaning (although yes I meant "weakest fit / not fit").
- lucio 12y agoThere isnt a struggle?. Do the non-resistant bacteria "try" to survive and fail, then die? or it "just die"? The inverted phrase will be a PR disaster for Darwin ;)
- adwf 12y agoMy point was that the resistant bacteria didn't suddenly evolve the resistance because the antibiotics were placed in the tray, they were already resistant to begin with. Therefore they didn't "struggle" to become anything, they already had the fit attributes for the situation. Hence why I say survival is a poor word choice as it implies struggle. Death of the non-fit on the other hand, has no such implication. Obviously this is all very black and white edge cases and most of the time we're not talking about absolute death or survival, but decline or success of certain attributes within a given environment. And yes, it probably is a terrible way of phrasing evolution from a PR standpoint ;)