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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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I think they answered this by saying that there were always natural selections which killed off the weak and only the strong survived.
That's an extremely simplistic view of what natural selection is. I would further add that they probably don't understand it.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
And yet humans formed cooperative tribal configurations precisely because this was better at securing human survival.
True, I should've lead with this tbh.
Retrospect is always clearer!
Do they think that's how modern society still operates? Do they think that's how modern society ought to operate? If you make them spell it out you can probably already see where it leads.
The competitions we have aren't natural and often just a sham anyway. And in the international competitions we see (both sports and economical) socialist countries regularly wipe up the floor with capitalist countries.
Another thing about competition is that it doesn't bring out a general ideal, it brings narrow specialisation that you can't really expect to be generally suitable under changing conditions.
Hasn't this version of the evolutionary theory been debunked by modern-day science multiple times and haven't Darwin's actual theories been updated? They even updated this shit in freshman year college classes!
https://ncse.ngo/misconception-monday-survival-fittest-part-1
https://ncse.ngo/misconception-monday-survival-fittest-part-2
How does one become a 'biologist' by believing in such outdated dogmas?
Ask him if he really thinks the rich who have accumulated and inherited capital over multiple generations, and who trample on actual hardworking, intelligent workers- are the 'fittest'.
I will the next time I see him, I said I wanted to continue this discussion when I have more knowledge.
Maybe he should stick to his science or read some more because that is not how society works or worked at all. What is humanity's biggest strength but working (and thinking) together? Can in this regard a "old sick cripple" not be just as valuable as a healthy young person? Indeed they can and have been countless times. Pretty much nothing we have could be had without thousands of people working hand in hand, even if they never meet.
Natural selection is not very much a thing for us. I would rather call it societal selection, as we decide what is valuable and what is not. Who gets to live and who gets to die. And these decisions are shaped in most parts by our very much chosen modes of economy.
Even if this were true from a biological point of view, and even if we claim humans have been beholden to Darwinian natural selection after the dawn of civilization, we have to define what "strong" means in this context. Put simply, it means an organism survived long enough to reach sexual maturity. For humans, let's be generous and say that's 20 years old. Everything that happens after that is irrelevant. Humans have a 50% lifetime chance of developing cancer. Pretty shitty odds if you ask me, maybe evolution should have sorted that out. But it can't, because most cancers develop well after our reproductive years.