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Comment by lucio | Hacker News Reader

It is not just a spin? "survival of the fittest" is exactly the same as "death to the weakest".

"survival of the fittest" = "not survival of the not-fit"

And also "fit" it is not the same as "strong"

    - Population: XXXOOOOVVV
    - First 3 are the weakest. (X)
    - Last 3 are the fittest. (V)
    - Middle ones are normal. (O)

When you say "survival of the fittest" you mean that only the 3 VVV survives and the other 7 OOOOVVV die.

When you say "death to the weakest" you mean that the 3 XXX die, therefore the other 7 OOOOVVV survive.

When you say "not survival of the not-fit" (I suppose you say the fittest) you mean:

    - Let's take the non-fittest (XXXOOOO)
    - Not survive of them.

Therefore you mean the death of 7 XXXOOOO and the survival of 3 VVV. So you are right that "survival of the fittest" = "not survival of the not-fit".

But "survival of the fittest" (VVV survives) is not equal to "death to the weakest" (OOOOVVV) because VVV != OOOOVVV.

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").

There 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 ;)

My 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 ;)

"survival of the fittest" is closer to "not survival of the not fittest" than "not survival of the not-fit", which is not the same as "death to the weakest".

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