Evolution Can Go Fuck Itself | Hacker News Reader

Evolution Can Go Fuck Itself

mindlasers.com

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I can't help but share your feeling. It's quite interesting how naturalism just mentions the parts that they like about evolution and hide actually how horrendous the thing actually is. Is not my intention here to promote alternative explanations to our origin or anything like that, but if we really believed in evolution, why do we try to get the women/children/handicap out of an accident first when who should survive is the fittest? And if I dare go to even darker terrain, having a superior race take over the world would just advance evolution positively (I ABSOLUTELY ABHOR THE IDEA!)

But then, why do we find ourselves in such strong revulsion against what is supposed to just be? If this (evolution) is all that there is and has ever been, how do we, as a part of it, "know better"?

That question is what I'm struggling with. My current explanation is that Evolution doesn't even care about itself. If it becomes more adaptable to leave its clutches, then it will push in that direction. It all depends on the environment to which we are adapting. So if the environment changes to value thinking that is anti-Evolution, Evolution will still reward that drift ...

Am I making sense? I honestly can't tell.

> why do we try to get the women/children/handicap out of an accident first when who should survive is the fittest?

This is pretty much the problem of why evolution encourages altruism, why there are eusocial animals (ants, bees, naked mole rats) and things like that.

You're missing 2 things:

1. "fittest" isn't very obvious. It probably comes down to something like a statistical ability to have offspring that survive. With that orientation, saving women/children/etc first makes sense: more offspring survive, especially for K-strategy species like humans. We humans are accustomed to making moral judgements about survival, but experts seem pretty sure that "fittest" doesn't include morality. Just as a side note, "fittest" may not exist as a long term thing. Climates change, continents move, volcanism happens. "Fittest" might mean something on a short term, but probably doesn't exist long term.

2. What nature wants to propagate isn't terribly obvious. It's chromosomes. Why do you help your children? They carry half of your chromosomes. Why do you help your parents? Same reason? Your sibligs? On average you've got maybe 50% of your chromosomes in common. See https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/05/05/brothers/ for a pithy way of saying this.

Propagation of chromosomes pretty much explains colonies of ants: because of the way sexual determination works in ants and bees, the worker ants are more closely related than mammal siblings are. This article has a decent explanation: https://www.antkeepers.com/facts/ant-colony/why-do-ants-live...

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