4 ms·

Coming from a household where only 1 parent had a college degree, growing up in a less affluent town within a highly affluent county, and being best friends wit

by brd 12y ago

Coming from a household where only 1 parent had a college degree, growing up in a less affluent town within a highly affluent county, and being best friends with a member of a much more well-to-do town/family has given me some interesting opportunities to see these effects at work. First and foremost, I don't understand the paragraph decrying successful people pairing off and breeding, we should be happy that there's some form of survival of the fittest still impacting the breeding of homo-sapiens. Having said that, I don't think the success of well-to-do kids is about smarts; intelligence can truly be found across the board. The well-to-do kids understand early on the stakes of the game and they have the opportunity to learn the industries and occupations that afford a better lifestyle. They mostly gain these insights because they see their parent's careers and the careers of their parent's friends and have a chance to understand where the more lucrative opportunities are. When I spoke with peers from my own town, most had no clue what they wanted to do and many were seeking out occupations with low ceilings (social work, teaching, etc). When I spoke to peers from my friend's town, most knew they wanted to get into sales or engineering or law or medicine. I think this is ultimately the biggest difference between upper and lower class upbringings and I'm still waiting for a concise study along these exact parameters.

Retra 12y ago
>we should be happy that there's some form of survival of the fittest still impacting the breeding of homo-sapiens. This is a terrible line of thought. Evolutionary fitness is not measured by us, and we have no obligation to support it. This is a massive fallacy. It is classic rationalization. Those that survive are fit by evolutionary terms. It doesn't matter who survives or why you think they should. It is perfectly acceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, since that is the very adaptation that ensures their survival and guarantees their fitness. Flies survive by reproducing en mass. Thus they are fit. It doesn't matter if they are only flies; they fill their niche and evolve just the same. You cannot control evolution by choosing whether or not to reproduce. Evolution doesn't have a 'plan' for you to interfere with: it is simply what happens. It is the outcome.
- brd 12y ago
  It's not a terrible line of thought, simply an unpopular/controversial one. We've effectively eliminated selective pressures that would otherwise create a trend towards increased fitness. The most successful members of our society are increasingly the ones that are having the least children, this is irrefutable. I would never imply that its unacceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, I'm simply stating that the trend within the opposite group is a bit unsettling.
  - Retra 12y ago
    You cannot eliminate selective pressures, you just change the niche. Changing from a circle peg to a square peg doesn't eliminate the requirements for a peg to fill a hole or die. You just fill different holes. This is not preventing survival of the fittest from working, it is just changing the meaning of 'fittest.' Edit: There is an analogous claim you could make to highlight the absurdity of this: Say we are talking about a plane crash and you said "We should be glad the plane crashed: it means that gravity is still affecting humans, as it should!" Flying planes doesn't invalidate gravity. Gravity is a law of nature, and it works whether we fly or not. You are still bound by gravity even if you leave the ground. Survival of the fittest is a law of nature. You are still bound by it, even if you find it easy to survive. Nature doesn't care if you are successful by human social standards; that is simply not a consideration the laws of nature take into account.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    I don't think you understand what fitness is. You seem to be confusing it with some imaginary social, financial, and cultural definition of human merit. It doesn't mean that at all. As you say, poor people are often much better breeders than rich people. They're more likely to have kids younger, and those kids in turn are more likely to breed earlier than the middle classes and the aristocracy. This actually makes them fitter in a Darwinian sense - because 'fit' just means 'more likely to breed successfully in a given environment.' It doesn't mean any more than that, and there's certainly no moral implication about 'quality' there. Defining who is and isn't successful is a huge social problem - possibly the biggest problem of all. Naive definitions of success won't cut it in either direction, because in the long term you have to consider species survival, and today's definitions of 'successful' may not be best for avoiding long-term extinction.

by brd 12y ago

Retra 12y ago

>we should be happy that there's some form of survival of the fittest still impacting the breeding of homo-sapiens. This is a terrible line of thought. Evolutionary fitness is not measured by us, and we have no obligation to support it. This is a massive fallacy. It is classic rationalization. Those that survive are fit by evolutionary terms. It doesn't matter who survives or why you think they should. It is perfectly acceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, since that is the very adaptation that ensures their survival and guarantees their fitness. Flies survive by reproducing en mass. Thus they are fit. It doesn't matter if they are only flies; they fill their niche and evolve just the same. You cannot control evolution by choosing whether or not to reproduce. Evolution doesn't have a 'plan' for you to interfere with: it is simply what happens. It is the outcome.

brd 12y ago
It's not a terrible line of thought, simply an unpopular/controversial one. We've effectively eliminated selective pressures that would otherwise create a trend towards increased fitness. The most successful members of our society are increasingly the ones that are having the least children, this is irrefutable. I would never imply that its unacceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, I'm simply stating that the trend within the opposite group is a bit unsettling.
- Retra 12y ago
  You cannot eliminate selective pressures, you just change the niche. Changing from a circle peg to a square peg doesn't eliminate the requirements for a peg to fill a hole or die. You just fill different holes. This is not preventing survival of the fittest from working, it is just changing the meaning of 'fittest.' Edit: There is an analogous claim you could make to highlight the absurdity of this: Say we are talking about a plane crash and you said "We should be glad the plane crashed: it means that gravity is still affecting humans, as it should!" Flying planes doesn't invalidate gravity. Gravity is a law of nature, and it works whether we fly or not. You are still bound by gravity even if you leave the ground. Survival of the fittest is a law of nature. You are still bound by it, even if you find it easy to survive. Nature doesn't care if you are successful by human social standards; that is simply not a consideration the laws of nature take into account.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I don't think you understand what fitness is. You seem to be confusing it with some imaginary social, financial, and cultural definition of human merit. It doesn't mean that at all. As you say, poor people are often much better breeders than rich people. They're more likely to have kids younger, and those kids in turn are more likely to breed earlier than the middle classes and the aristocracy. This actually makes them fitter in a Darwinian sense - because 'fit' just means 'more likely to breed successfully in a given environment.' It doesn't mean any more than that, and there's certainly no moral implication about 'quality' there. Defining who is and isn't successful is a huge social problem - possibly the biggest problem of all. Naive definitions of success won't cut it in either direction, because in the long term you have to consider species survival, and today's definitions of 'successful' may not be best for avoiding long-term extinction.