Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution should be required reading
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
122 points (100.0% liked)
Science
22957 readers
18 users here now
Welcome to Hexbear's science community!
Subscribe to see posts about research and scientific coverage of current events
No distasteful shitposting, pseudoscience, or COVID-19 misinformation.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Survival of the fittest is also seemingly an invitation for people to project toxic masculinity based ideals onto animals, immediately imagined to be survival of the strongest, fastest, and meanest. Meanwhile actual adaptations are like... absorbs more calories from the most common kind of nut on this island, slightly lazier during the season when food is scarcest, or slightly sexier to other sparrows.
My sister dated a guy who believed this. He once said to me, "If evolution is real why isn't every animal as big as a T-Rex?".
In fairness to him, he grew up in a cult where education was done by whoever felt like doing it that day.
Surprised he thought dinosaurs were real
I remember reading one about femboy Orangutans and Octopus. They're males of such low T that the Alpha doesn't perceive them as competition. He lets all the ladies hang around in in his domain, and that's where the femboys slip in.
They're boning behind the scenes without the Alpha noticing, to extent that sometimes the alpha tries to fuck one and is then like wait... this is a dude.
(they're called sneaker males apparently)
People conflate averages with individual determinism all the time. Thinking that “survival of the fittest” applies in each individual case, automatically and always, is as wrong as the gambler fallacy that losing a bet increases the odds of winning on the next try.
All the analysis in Das Kapital is on the basis of “blindly operating averages.” Yet insipid gotchas persist, among supply-side geniuses, about selling a single diamond in a desert — as if that contradicts the law of value
Marx: writes a complex analysis of capitalism based on real world figures and historical examples
Apologists of capitalism: "yeah but what about this contrived scenario involving like a cow or something?" 
People conflate averages with individual determinism all the time.
The way I've seen it put (by a Fire Emblem Let's Player of all people) is "Averages mean nothing when you're living in an instance."
Same goes for people who yell "iTs NaTuRal sElEcTiOn" for things that aren't natural selection or that darwin awards shite
There's a Srsly Wrong ep about this
Do you have a link or name of the episode? I'd like to listen to it
Ep 260 - Survival of the "Fittest"
👍🥰
Also the unit of selection is the gene, not the individual. And no gene survives alone.
The post endorsed by Peter Kropotkin.
nuke every city and medium sized town in north america and europe in the name of natural selection
Anyway, I believe the way we teach about the natural world is poisoned by this old fashioned fascist idea of "families not society" and as our community structures are stripped away and people find themselves too poor and overworked to have kids, the social aspect of our survival becomes clearer than ever.
This reminded me of what Franco "Bifo" Berardi wrote on how Social Darwinism/"survival-of-the-fittest" fits into capitalism in his book "Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide". I never finished the book because it was super dark, but in the first half he explained how mass murderers are the heroes (i.e., the most pure and unfiltered expression) of capitalism's survival of the fittest mentality, defined by their fascistic violence against and in-line with existing social hierarchies and the survival of the fittest logic. ... This is the antithesis to community and mutual aid
Besides that, I agree 1000% that appealing to evolution and biological determinism to defend social organization under capital is a completely goofy thing to do, because most modern social sciences only really kicked into gear after the neoliberal shift of the late 20th century. Not only do they have this recency, they also have this dual role where they are observing and describing (mostly Western) societies, while at the same time reinforcing dominant narratives about social organization and restricting alternative models.