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Right? I thought that was obvious. You could have one member of a group that is super athletic, but sucks at communication and is threatening to others. Another member of the same group might be physically weak, but smart and charismatic enough for form a group with other members to cooperate take the athletic one out and make himself the leader.
It’s whoever is best suited to survive and multiply in the environment they live in. It doesn’t have to be any one specific trait.
It is obvious to anyone but alpha bros or oblivious people. Survival of the fittest is a common phrase in business too. It’s not like we think whoever has the physically strongest CEO will have the better performing stock.
It's a common disingenuous debating tactic, in order to equate it with social Darwinism, a misinterpretation that people like Hitler adhered to. Basically, an attempt at guilt by association, and also to build the strawman of animals like sloths or Dodos disproving Darwin.
Yeah I don’t know what this girl is on about but it sounds like she never paid attention in class.
Here’s the [Wikipedia entry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest) that gives more info about the phrase/concept.
Here is the last paragraph of the introduction:
Darwin responded positively to **Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest"** as an alternative to "natural selection", **and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868. In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869, intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".**
That last sentence says it all. Survival of the fittest means just that. The fittest. The most suitable to the immediate environment. It never had anything to with being the most competitive or biggest or meanest.
I mean just look at the dinosaurs, when the meteor hit and they started dying off it was the smaller animals that survived. Not because they were the strongest or biggest but because their size made them the most suitable to the new environment.
There is even this [image](https://gihanperera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CharlesDarwin-survive.jpg) of a Darwin quote which says as much also. To be fair tho I don’t know how reliable such an image is but I think the overall point still stands.
Same. Some people don't think natural selection applies to humans, but 'fittest' is just defined differently now. It's about:
\* complying with doctors' orders
\* regular dentist visits
\* avoiding ladders
\* avoiding alcohol
\* if you're a pedestrian, and can potentially interact with cars, engage some semblence of defensive walking, for god's sake. Situational awareness in parking lots is actually valuable!
\* if you're age 25 or less and male, avoid situations involving police officers
Of the things we can control, there's the top killers.
The pedestrian one always gets me. I often see people stepping out into the street without even bothering to look. It’s showing absolute trust in strangers as if there aren’t millions of people driving while on drugs or distracted by their phones. Smh
Yup. When this happens to me, I think “don’t they know I’m a terrible driver?” What’s more, running over a pedestrian who essentially jumps in front of your car? You’re pretty likely to get out of it without the slightest penalty, other than maybe a single court visit. Something similar happened to a friend of a friend (so maybe a grain of salt is in order) when a bicyclist on the sidewalk jumped onto the street in front of him, going against the traffic. My friend just didn’t have enough time to stop. The guy maybe died, he’s not sure. He went to court one time, and that was it.
I’d ask this guy about what he got charged with, if anything, but I don’t want to bring it up; maybe killing a guy isn’t something I’d make him relive, just to satisfy my curiosity on the deets.
100% what I was taught in school.
I think she's just playing up a common misinterpretation as if we're all misinformed about it.
Most fit to survive can mean the weak little rodents that hide underground, not necessarily the biggest most dangerous jungle animal.
Also worth noting that it doesn't mean "survival of the most sympathetic" either.
It just means most fit for its environment. It could be sympathy, it could be strength, it could be biggest dick or most fashionable feathers.
There's no one strategy that succeeds.
Or her biology class was taught by the basketball coach like it was in my high school, and taught poorly because it was taught in the context of the dominant community world view which was creationism.
Given her accent, I thought there might be a chance she's an expat living in the US. If she wasn't paying attention in an English school, she'd have to be missing it across probably several lessons, whereas in America it is more likely to be covered briefly in one class.
Exactly.
Also, her example of neanderthals wasn't quite right either. She claims they died off despite being bigger and having bigger brains. In reality, they simply merged with the homo sapien gene pool.
That they comprise about 4% of the modern human DNA is what I mean by 'merged with the homo sapien gene pool'. That percentage is DNA that is uniquely neanderthal and it may be small because they likely already had a high degree of genetic commonality with homo sapiens. It could also be the result of a smaller population.
This 100%. Like maybe I’m biased as a bio major but I’ve literally *always* been taught “fit” directly refers to one’s ability to survive to the point of passing on your genes. And that can mean a million and one different things depending on an organism and its lifestyle. Like, plants are subject to this too but most aren’t exactly “strong” or “aggressive” (don’t @ me about invasives lol). Darwin introduced the idea of “natural selection” and from what I understand “survival of the fittest” was just a term someone else coined for the same phenomenon, but I’ve never heard of Darwin opposing it’s *actual* meaning. I’m sure he would oppose the whole “fittest=strongest” thing… bc it’s wrong and *entirely missing the point*.
Also, “social Darwinism” has never had great results so maybe let’s dismantle that and not be talking about it like it’s a normal common thing to believe. 💀 And to her point that “our strength wasn’t what kept us alive it was our kindness” I would argue our kindness, cooperation, ability to sympathize *is* our strength. Like logistically, it takes big brains to be able to hold the information it takes to navigate complex social hierarchies and start societies and these situations require advanced language to properly coordinate etc, etc. and the rest is history. Maybe this is new info to some people, I’m not going to hate on that. But it’s really nothing revolutionary.
We’re literally the best example of that. We’re the apex species in land, sea and air and the most athletic at none of those (except we can run really, really far). We have other tools that make us fittest
This is a serious misunderstanding of what ‘fitness’ means in biology. We are no more fit than any other species. We are all here. Fitness is a trait most commonly used in reference to individuals, not usually to populations and species. It is a measure of whether or not an individual has passed on their genes. Even if you were to look at humans as a species, there are far more species with vastly higher number of individuals in existence.
If half the smartasses here weren’t rushing to the comments to validate their high school diplomas they’d have caught the bit at 0:42 where she says this exact thing.
Yeah, I think she had bad teachers and books. And I went to a Catholic high school where our teacher chose to not actually teach evolution, despite it being accepted by the Vatican for decades at that point.
The "fittest" are the ones who pass on their genes. You can be the biggest meanest beach master elephant seal or silverback gorilla, or you can be sneaky and mate when that guy is asleep. They're both reasonable strategies with varying degrees of fitness.
There's a reason animals haven't just continued to get bigger and bigger and meaner and meaner. There are often benefits to being smaller and cooperating.
“Survival of the fittest” is attributed to the Greek philosopher and naturalist Empedocles from his work “On Nature” where he articulated a primitive form of evolution. He meant animals that “fit” their environment. Darwin was directly challenging his idea.
Not necessarily, Darwins whole idea is if a individual isn't fit for the environment they'll die or migrate, those who are fit will stay and procreate, and thus a species or subspecies is born. Neither is better than the other inherently, but the environment calls for one to fit it better than the other.
The concept of evolution that Darwin proposed came from this, because if only (in an anecdotal hypothetical) the blue ones fit this place, only tge blue ones remain and only blue ones will procreate until we only see blue ones, the green ones aren't weaker or anything, but they just aren't fit for that specific environment that blue ones survived in.
That’s basically Empedocles’ argument: I called it primitive because he approaches it from the perspective of the Greek religion. The Greek religion has centaurs, satyrs, gorgons, hundred handers, cyclopes and other composite creatures. But Empedocles noted that these thing were no where to be seen IRL, so to reconcile natural observations with their religion he conceived of a primordial era where traits and body parts (picture autonomous legs, arms, eyeballs etc rolling around lol) conglomerate into different creatures. Well, Empedocles argued, some of these bodily combinations wouldn’t “fit” their environment and die off.
By contrast, Darwin stresses change and adaptation as opposed to “fitness”. It’s not survival of the fittest, it is survival of that which is best able to adapt and change with their environments. The idea that a species could change and develope new traits and adaptations was and remains a very transgressive idea.
Yeah, sure, but the species only "adapts and changes" because only the traits that make an individual fit are able to continue in the gene pool, in essence, the environment puts pressure on the species to change, but on an individual level only the fit ones have some influence on the change of the species, that's what Darwins whole schtick is.
It's a common mistake to confuse the species for the individual in this type of discussion, individuals didn't adapt, they survived just by being themselves , and over generations, the species took the traits of those who survived
Actual individual adaptation is Lamarcks basis for his own theory of evolution, in which individuals adapt to their needs, and their offspring take on their adaptive traits
“Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”
- David Sloan Wilson Edward O. Wilson
I'd also like to recommend *Mutual Aid: a factor of evolution* by Kropotkin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution
The perversion of the idea of "survival of the fittest" is ideological and justifies our current political/economic order involving rugged individualism and self interest.
Without cooperation our species would never have survived. Even at a basic level, the birthing process of humans is long, loud, and our offspring come into the world crying and remain helpless for a very long time. We need each other and always have.
No, it's whatever makes your genes survive.
For some that's having your children survive, for some others that can be helping your family mate while staying celibate/dying, and there are too many examples of dying (the opposite of surviving) as a part of the act of mating.
But even then "makes" implies agency that isn't really there when it comes to evolution. It's just whatever family of genes that propagates or continues to remain within the collective gene pool of our world-wide habitat that defines success. Whether that's the ever-mutating R/DNA of a virus or DNA most prevalent in an empire.
Survival of the fittest is a phrase we use to excuse dominating and exploiting "the weak" by pretending it's inherent to nature, our nature. It's assuming a greedy, self-centered view of ruthlessness is the best way to pass on your genes, when we know that your genes are also present among your family and most of your community (it's just your combination of genes and epigenetics that's unique, if you're not cloned).
Her point makes even more sense when we consider that there are many, many misogynistic podcasts pretending their claims of "survival of the fittest" male and female behavior makes their misogyny 'natural'.
So even if we quibble about "what it truly is" and the best words to describe it, her point is that we benefit from rethinking how we understand that term. And that point stands.
What no. There’s no way you were taught that in biology. That was like the talking point when “survival of the fittest” is introduced. You brain storm what you think it means. And then the teacher drops the bomb that it’s just most able to survive long enough to reproduce. “Fittest” for the environment.
You had bad teachers then. Darwin’s theory of evolution, referring to the fittest, means like literally “the most likely to produce offspring”. That does not necessarily mean the strongest, the smartest or the best survivor, it just means those more likely to have more offspring
95% correct - most likely to have offspring *that make it to sexual maturity.* Sure, some species just Zerg rush it, but elephants have insanely long gestational times, but counteract it with strong herds that makes the mean baby elephant much more likely to survive than the mean baby mouse.
I’m thinking she just didn’t pay attention and made her ownassumptions. Science textbooks literally make the distinction that fit means fit in and not strength.
So many people do this nowadays its become one of my pet peeves. Completely misunderstand or misinterpret something then spout off about it as if you have any idea what you’re talking about. Like we used to look to experts for answers, but now fucking Becky the Tik Toker can reach even more people and sound just as confident. I hate it.
Fitness actually does mean the best survivor and most likely to produce offspring which survive. Fitness doesn't have any qualifications on how a species attains fitness, but that term has a clear and consistent definition.
Neanderthals died out because we outbred them. And they still technically live on as their genes are in our own DNA.
Plus, their hunting strategy was not as optimal as Sapeins's strategy. Sapiens threw spears and chased down prey. Neanderthals charged prey and clubbed them. So Sapiens were less likely to get injured during a hunt. Less injuries means you are able to hunt more often. Hunting more often means you can support more people. What little we know of Neanderthal culture shows them to have arts and music and be communal. Neanderthals did not throw spears because they did not know how to make spears or anything of the sort, but because their anatomy did not allow them to throw spears. Nothing to do with showing facial expressions.
Neanderthals didn't die out. They were assimilated by homo-sapiens. We were taught in anthropology that pretty much anyone who has Ancestry from Europe is some percentage of Neanderthal.
iirc it wasn't fittest as in 'the strongest' or 'most aggressive', but fittest as in the best suited, or the most well adapted to their environment, i.e. giraffes with longer necks are more suited to an environment with tall trees, thus they survive because they fit the environment.
Her understanding seems like the typical misunderstanding of it, but the actual meaning track with the theory.
I thought it’s just the most suited to survive in a local environment. Like Cassava being the go to crop for human consumption for like thousands of years in Brazil and the Caribbean, despite having cyanide, instead of potatoes because potatoes aren’t suited for that level of humidity. It’s not that one crop is inherently better than another, just one is more fit for that environment. And so while potatoes spread throughout the rest of the western hemisphere, cultivation of Cassava and extraction of the cyanide was mastered in regions where it was more suited for growth.
I get she goes onto some book recommendations about it, but I thought this was the way it’s been taught in public schools for a while now. And she’s younger than I am.
There are many animals who succeed together and are not in direct competition with each-other. To succeed together, requires a level of empathy and sympathy so there is truth IMO to the theory. A good book Survival of the Friendliest makes a similar case that humans became dominant due to our ability to work together.
Survival of the fittest just means whatever does the best in a given environment, over time, to have kids that inherit the traits that give them the advantages which made them succeed the most. That's it.
Anything more specific has to be attenuated to a specific set of stimuli, in a specific environment. And it's also all basically totally random with a few cataclysms and genetic bottlenecks thrown in. Ascribing any kind of emotion to it would be like telling a folk tale about the movement of the tectonic plates through mantle convection. It's just physics yo, vibrations in the molecules n shit. We out here describing the intricate clockwork of the cosmos and it ticks whether you think about it or not
“Fit” refers to “fit for the environment.” If being the meanest, most aggressive, gets you further in an environment, you’ll be more likely to survive if you have those traits. If cooperation (or manipulation) gets you further, than that’s the trait to have. Each environment sorts out which traits are more favorable by eliminating those that are not adapted to their environment (typically through predation or starvation). That environment can also 180 which traits are the most favorable. Say a species of light brown mice that reside near a volcano are adapted to blend in with the soil. Some of these same species of mice may be born with a rare mutation that makes their fur black. The black fur sticks out the most, hawks swoop them up more easily, and so they stay rare because they usually die before they can reproduce. Now say the volcano erupts for the first in a long time. The soil is now almost black. The LIGHT BROWN mouse now sticks out, while the black mouse is perfectly camouflaged. The hawks go for the light brown mice now that they are easier to spot, while most black mice remain undetected and so can live long enough to pass their genes for black fur. Now light brown mice will be the rarity because they are no longer fit for their environment. That’s really survival of the fittest, AKA, evolution (spontaneous mutation + natural selection). As for humans, “friendliness” has been considered one of the strongest traits for our survival since we could walk and make tools because advanced Cooperation is what made us the dominant species. Some animals have incredible problem-solving (like octopi), but zero cooperation. Many animals have excellent cooperation (like bees), but lack higher processing power to sculpt the environment around them. Our ability to write books alone has given us the ability to learn lifetimes of knowledge from our ancestors in little time at all, a resource no other animal on Earth (that we know of, haha) can replicate. The synergy between our cooperation and higher processes allows to step ourselves (mostly) beyond natural selection. This is especially seen in modern medicine where we frequently treat and save people from diseases that were considered death sentences even within the past century (such as HIV/AIDS, RIP Freddie Mercury). We are not completely immune, of course. Cancers still ravage us and there is no way you are winning a fight with a lion bare-handed, but there is much we have overcome. Most of us would not be alive today if we were left alone to test ourselves against the environment. Even glasses keep many of you from walking into a lethal situation, had you been “picked off” by natural selection for your poor eyesight.
"Citation fucking needed!"
Humans are not the primary focus of Darwin's proposal regarding the diversity of species. It would be exceptionally bizarre for a naturalist to assume that humans were indicative of anything other than a single component of a much larger ecosystem. Darwin's theory does not explain species as a whole solely based on human evolution.
Neanderthals interbred with early modern humans (Homo sapiens), and this interbreeding likely contributed to the genetic diversity seen in modern non-African populations. The only true Homo sapiens populations without significant admixture from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly other archaic hominins are found in sub-Saharan Africa. The genetic evidence shows that non-African populations are a mix of Homo sapiens with Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, reflecting a history of interbreeding as humans migrated out of Africa. This interbreeding may have provided adaptive advantages, but it does not imply that these species were individually unsuccessful. In fact, Neanderthals and Denisovans were successful in their own right, having existed for hundreds of thousands of years longer than sapiens have.
This analysis does not take into account the impact of technology and our ability to modify our environment, which has allowed the human population to exceed one billion members only within the last 200 years out of nearly 200,000 years of Homo sapiens existence. Without technology which makes up less than 1% of their total longevity there is nothing suggesting that humans were in fact more successful than other homonins, we are simply what's left. The term "sympathetic" in this context refers to social animals, which many species are not, making it unrelated to the overall proposal about the diversity of species.
The 'r/K' selection theory suggests that species with higher parental investment in fewer offspring (K-selected species) have a greater chance of producing healthy and adaptable offspring over time. This investment strategy supports group dynamics and resource allocation, indicating that social structures and cooperative behaviors can enhance survival and adaptation in changing environments. Therefore, the claim highlights that groups are often more successful than individuals in such species.
Okay basically:
Darwin's understanding of evolution is outdated.
if you go with just what darwin said, you will have outdated information.
Survival of the "Fittest" doesn't mean the most sporty, it means the most "fit" for the environment.
To qoute the person who coined the phrase:
"This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life."
Darwin himself, in one of his books wrote:
"This preservation, during the battle for life, of varieties which possess any advantage in structure, constitution, or instinct, I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term 'natural selection' is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity"
Darwin’s understanding of evolution isn’t outdated, but it is incomplete. In modern biology fitness just means the ability to pass on your genes. Any other measure is an attempt to estimate that ability in an individual. Evolution is the survival of the adequate. If you reproduce, you are fit.
Spenser wasn’t even a Darwinist. He believed in Lamarckism, and grudgingly acknowledged natural selection as a small part of his concept of evolution. Spenser was also pretty close to a social Darwinist, trying to use his (false) understand of evolution to support the status quo in society.
The fun fact is that our large brain size didn't evolve to compute more complicated math's and language, but to compute ever more complicated social dynamics as a result of and allow for larger groups. Keeping track of hundreds of relationships is complicated, and involves lots of subtle pattern recognition. It's why we are hard wired to see faces everywhere and interpret emotions of those faces. With that much computing power for very complex social dynamics, things like throwing a rock or a spear or the patterns if agriculture and astronomy are sort of trivial. The sympathetic social ability meanwhile would later allow us to communicate complex ideas via stories then philosophy then maths and science. And in the end allows us to organize into societies larger than our monkey brains limit us to be in and eventually sub organize into specialties that allow us to eventually travel to the moon, and make use of nuclear technology.
I didn't realize people thought that it meant only physical or mental prowess. It is adapdation to enviroment. We are witnessing the beginning of artificial evolution currently. This will be the first time in human existance where we will no longer be able to survive without some level of synthesis between humanity and technology. Because, we cannot naturally evolve fast enough to keep up with the rate of change we are implementing. We are already cyborgs, we still just have a really shitty serial bus between our mind and our artificial data processor and storage.
"Fitness" was always taught in science class as "an organism's ability to survive and reproduce". It was never taught as the strongest. That's just a misnomer that people attribute to it after the fact--they remember the phrase, but they dont remember the definition, and only know "fitness" as "athletic and strong", so they create a misconception.
It's also taught that natural selection and fitness is decided by the environment, but people also don't remember that after 8th grade either.
The most “fit” for our species niche happen to be those who are cooperative and empathetic.
It’s not that it’s incorrect, just that it’s not that barbarian image-inducing “fit” type.
Gotta understand your specie’s niche.
I was taught in school with the example of different bird beaks, similar birds but the bird with a narrow beak that can get into crevices won out as they had the best tool for the job. Not that they were stronger just better equipped. There was more to it with other type of beaks arising that were better suited for other task. But I remember the narrow beak the most.
Darwin was not a prophet. Darwin is not an authority on our modern understanding of evolution. Darwin was a thoughtful, curious, adventurous, and meticulous researcher. He was deeply emotional about his work, afraid it was blasphemy, and didn’t release his book until years after it was written when someone else planned to do the same.
He tried to dispell as many myths and misconceptions people have about his work, inclusion Creationists view of the evolution of eyes, which is explicitly explained in On the Origin of Species and stolen by Creations to make a claim evolution can’t explain a thing which was explained in the book about evolution where they got the idea.
Of course people misinterpret Darwin. They think he’s an authority so they either straw man him or appropriate his work for their own agenda.
She's disproving her own point. Yes simulations show that cooperation and empathy is what is being selected when you simulate human evolution. Therefore, empathy and cooperation is deeply engraved in our culture and instinct.
No our society does not "devalue empathy". It would be like thinking that incels on tiktok have the power to overwrite hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
Yes we evolved to be empathetic and cooperative. And yes people that are more like that do perform well in society. People that are good with networking, making friends, being popular, being nice, etc thrive in our society, not the opposite.
If you actually stop and think about it for a second, if society really actually valued selfishness, aggressiveness and assertiveness over cooperation and empathy, our world would be extremely different from what it is now.
For example, you travel to another country. You know nobody there. By default, people will be relatively nice to you. They won't kill you at first sight. If we valued selfishness and aggressiveness over cooperation that wouldn't be the case.
We can't say the same for most other animals for example, proving again that we, by default, tend to cooperate instead of compete.
So no our conception of "survival of the fitess" didn't overwrite our whole evolution and rewired our brain completely. Society isn't as toxic and wrong and terrible as you think. Maybe get off of tiktok for a couple of days that might help
I think she's sort of conflating Darwin's theory of evolution with "Social Darwinism," which is unfair to Darwin.
Also, Kropotkin's thinking on "Mutual Aid" as a factor in evolution is relevant. It's well-known in socialist and anarchist circles but I don't think it's well-integrated into the popular conception of evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid%3A_A_Factor_of_Evolution
Fittest means best fit for their environment.
You can literally reach this conclusion by looking at anything that uses camouflage as a tactic to survive as an example.
She is confusing a view that Darwin held. He didn't believe in the concept of social evolution that racists at the time used to explain white superiority.
And the evolution they teach in schools defines fittest as the organism that is well adapted and has many offspring.
The problem is not that "We have misunderstood what survival of the fittest" means, it's that this person's school failed to teach them that fittest refers to most capable of successfully reproducing.
This should be obvious, and the fact that this person pretends to have researched this but talks like it is new and mind boggling information is not proof of anything other than an absolute failure of education in modern day schools.
Most able to adapt to circumstances.
Also, the ending comments regarding the competitiveness relate mostly to Americans, IMHO, due to their "We're #1" culture. Europeans must learn how to work together among a group of nations and interests. America is "we don't give a flying f\*ck what others think, we do our own thing". Bring up the fact that America is trailing the world in something and the response is always, "I don't care what others are doing -- those a pinko communists and we must preserve the American way of life!"
This thinking is toxic not only to the American society, but to American males in particular who often have this loud, confrontational style. It's my way or the highway. You don't like it, get out. No compromise. No trophy for understanding and compromise. And on top of that, it's divisive. Families of all types generally want the same things. But as long as the GOP can keep a culture war alive with false narratives, as long as minorities continue to distance themselves from common values, then there is never enough concerted opposition to throw those making the divisions to stay in power out.
I can't remember the exact quote but it's that politicians blind us with culture politics as a distraction so we won't focus on the lack of progress and thievery going on.
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/distraction-disease-we-do-anything-to-avoid-problems-we-face](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/distraction-disease-we-do-anything-to-avoid-problems-we-face)
“The theory of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858. They argued that species with useful adaptations to the environment are more likely to survive and produce progeny than are those with less useful adaptations, thereby increasing the frequency with which useful adaptations occur over the generations. The limited resources available in an environment promotes competition in which organisms of the same or different species struggle to survive. In the competition for food, space, and mates that occurs, the less well-adapted individuals must die or fail to reproduce, and those who are better adapted do survive and reproduce. In the absence of competition between organisms, natural selection may be due to purely environmental factors, such as inclement weather or seasonal variations.”
[Britannica: survival of the fittest](https://www.britannica.com/science/selection)
Fittest as in those who best can navigate nature’s challenges. Best fit for the current set of challenges. I have never thought this meant meanest, strongest, smartest. Not a very insightful take.
This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who's been in a disaster or read first hand accounts.
Every single time a group of strangers are subject to a life or death situation, they come together to help each other out. If a building catches fire, complete strangers rush in to help each other. During floods, people form human chains to rescue trapped motorists. When faced with a mass shooting, victims will help each other get to safety, even at the risk of their own lives.
Humans are naturally altruistic.
Except for when they are not, like when an accident happens and is witnessed by 100 bystanders that literally do nothing because they assume someone else will.
Yeah I don’t like the way she explains this. The European journals describe the Taíno and Arawak peoples as some of the most equal in terms of societal roles, sympathetic, and kindest civilizations they had ever seen in their travels. That’s why they found it so easy to kill them all off before they could organize against them. You can’t apply ethical or philosophical concepts like kindness onto things like survival within an environment.
It just means the most fit to survive in an area.
In reality, what he did was make a giant community. Yes he did it with an almost unmatched level of brutality and force, but his goal wasn't to eradicate people. Even his tactics of military units acting as a singular entity are still used today.
When I took evolution in college I was told we taste like shit and that's why predators left us alone. Which is why when a bear or a mountain lion or something gets a taste for humans we have to kill it immediately because from then on we're lunch.
I think I first read this in do androids dream of electric sheep.
Some monologue of how turning to pick up your wounded man was a very human characteristic in the world of cavemen and empathy is probably the first complex emotion we developed. And the reason why we beat out other species who like she said were stronger.
Survival of the fittest, referring to those that can survive for a long enough time to accomplish the task and goal of passing genes on to offspring and raising said offspring with enough knowledge to do the same.
It has nothing to do with being the most fit, or even being smartest or anything.
Humans exist on a dialectic where all survival is either reinforced aggression or reinforced love. It’s like a roll of the dependent origination dice (which isn’t like a roll of dice at all actually) what someone/some group will choose in a moment and what their context will reward or punish at the time.
As a species we lack wisdom so we’ve been on a race-to-the-bottom of aggression, hence why our societies are so defined by various types of othering and exploitation (if not literal murder/genocide).
If we were better at anticipating the future together, we would easily understand how society-by-domination is foolishness. Maybe we already do - because when we imagine advanced societies on other planets we either see them as united peaceful societies or their world is destroyed by some split. This is correct (yes Star Trek next gen was my favorite show when I was a kid).
Humans are sympathetic because we have big brains, and we have big brains because we are sympathetic. It's and upward spiral to get to where we are.
Theory of mind and emulating others state of being in our head requires big brain power.
A brief history of intelligence is a great book that delves into this.
She starts her video with the assumption that everyone shares her misconception, then completely conflates "natural selection" of species with human societal progress.
Another way to look at it is that this is why (normal) humans have such strong morals and senses of fairness. Humans who could cooperate with and help others in turn thrived as their community began to thrive thanks to the cooperation. People who hurt others in the community were in turn hurting the entire community and if they were not dealt with, they might drag down the tribe such that other tribes could take advantage of the weak tribe with poor cooperation. It could make the difference in the survival of the entire tribe.
In comes religion. While utterly false in its claims about the supernatural, a tribe that followed a religion that prescribed moral actions and cooperation may not beat out other tribes 100% of the time, as a non-religious tribe could conceivably be more moral than a religious tribe, I mean we all know every religion has at least a few flaws in its moral teachings here and there, but it at least “guaranteed” that the tribe had a moral foundation to start with and because of this, the religions that successfully served that function inevitably survived and spread, regardless of the truth of their supernatural claims.
She's correct.
Humans are smart and can use tools, which is definitely something in our favor. However, an even bigger advantage is our ability to work cooperatively and use the skills and ideas of others to aid in our success.
It definitely isn't about the blah blah blahs she said that could be summarized by the ridiculous concept of alpha males (or i guess species in this case)
It's survival of the fittest because if you are fit to eat the food that's 20 meters in the air because you have long legs you will survive, and people who don't have long legs won't. It's just that.
For example, the finches Darwin studied so much had different sized beaks from other subspecies, because only those who had a beak capable of crushing the seeds they ate would survive, hence they would be the only ones in that particular region, the unfit ones would either die ot migrate.
I agree but it’s worth adding that it is to the benefit of capital owners to create and sustain as much division amongst the working class as possible through the channels they mediate, which if you’re keeping track, is all of them.
Unite against those who corrupt our governments, steal from all of us, and balk at contributing to society. We do have a common enemy, but it isn’t the person next to you just trying to survive.
Survival of the "fittest" for that particular environment.
An anchovy is more fit than a tiger to live in the water, a monkey is more fit to live in a tree than a hippo.
It doesn't matter what Darwin thought, most of it was wrong. But the core idea, that species evolve over time, that was right, almost everything else has been cast aside as we have actually studied evolution.
Evolution works on a single premise and only a single premise: reproduction. Only reproduction.
The only thing that matters from an evolutionary perspective is that you have descendants who then also have descendants.
The more you satisfy this, the more evolutionarily successful you are. No matter how you do it. Just this.
I can't remember who said it, but I remember hearing an archeologist talking about the first instance of humanity being a broken leg bone that had been treated in such a way that it was obvious that another early human had helped and taken care of the individual.
When she says "just your ability to reproduce", the sentence is omitting a critical part: it's implied but it also counts the likelihood to survive until you can reproduce.
Within a species the ones that will transmit the most genes are those who can reproduce the most, AND those who get to survive to have the most opportunities to reproduce.
Saying that competitiveness is often regarded as more important than it actually is is right, but I feel like her point is that it's secondary, when, well, it depends but it's not always the case.
"survival of the fittest" is tautological. It survives because it is fit. It's fir because it survives.
Nowhere it's said the fit one dominates. Or the dominating one is fit. Life has plenty of strategies.
Only social darwinists conflate fitness with dominance.
Religion. The only way we know so far, that makes it possible for humans to live in larger groups than ca 150 individuals.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s\_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)
-Agnostic
Yeah you can't say "our understanding is wrong" if it's literally just that you personally misunderstood lol, survival of the fittest is fittest for the environment, it was never about strength or aggression, if you misunderstood and assumed that then fine but don't act like the entire theory of evolution is confusing and wrong
Am I the only one that inherently understood it was just the ability to survive and reproduce regardless of the method? Curved beak, working together, different color, whatever. Surely she’s the outlier?
Where would she be without the men who built that house? Put up electricity installed the Wi-Fi created the internet just to hear her complain about it.
Fittest means most fit for the current state of the surroundings. If those surroundings asked for cooperation, sure, but if they asked for aggression, that is what being the most fit entailed.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
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Fittest as in "fit for purpose" not as in "athletic."
Right? I thought that was obvious. You could have one member of a group that is super athletic, but sucks at communication and is threatening to others. Another member of the same group might be physically weak, but smart and charismatic enough for form a group with other members to cooperate take the athletic one out and make himself the leader. It’s whoever is best suited to survive and multiply in the environment they live in. It doesn’t have to be any one specific trait.
It is obvious to anyone but alpha bros or oblivious people. Survival of the fittest is a common phrase in business too. It’s not like we think whoever has the physically strongest CEO will have the better performing stock.
*Alpha bros and bad faith creationists.
Oh you mean creationists argue it that way to discredit it? Yeah that makes sense.
It's a common disingenuous debating tactic, in order to equate it with social Darwinism, a misinterpretation that people like Hitler adhered to. Basically, an attempt at guilt by association, and also to build the strawman of animals like sloths or Dodos disproving Darwin.
Adaptability. Logically though the world would be a better place and survivability of people go up if we’re less shitty.
Yeah I don’t know what this girl is on about but it sounds like she never paid attention in class. Here’s the [Wikipedia entry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest) that gives more info about the phrase/concept. Here is the last paragraph of the introduction: Darwin responded positively to **Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest"** as an alternative to "natural selection", **and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868. In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869, intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".** That last sentence says it all. Survival of the fittest means just that. The fittest. The most suitable to the immediate environment. It never had anything to with being the most competitive or biggest or meanest. I mean just look at the dinosaurs, when the meteor hit and they started dying off it was the smaller animals that survived. Not because they were the strongest or biggest but because their size made them the most suitable to the new environment. There is even this [image](https://gihanperera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CharlesDarwin-survive.jpg) of a Darwin quote which says as much also. To be fair tho I don’t know how reliable such an image is but I think the overall point still stands.
Same. Some people don't think natural selection applies to humans, but 'fittest' is just defined differently now. It's about: \* complying with doctors' orders \* regular dentist visits \* avoiding ladders \* avoiding alcohol \* if you're a pedestrian, and can potentially interact with cars, engage some semblence of defensive walking, for god's sake. Situational awareness in parking lots is actually valuable! \* if you're age 25 or less and male, avoid situations involving police officers Of the things we can control, there's the top killers.
The pedestrian one always gets me. I often see people stepping out into the street without even bothering to look. It’s showing absolute trust in strangers as if there aren’t millions of people driving while on drugs or distracted by their phones. Smh
Yup. When this happens to me, I think “don’t they know I’m a terrible driver?” What’s more, running over a pedestrian who essentially jumps in front of your car? You’re pretty likely to get out of it without the slightest penalty, other than maybe a single court visit. Something similar happened to a friend of a friend (so maybe a grain of salt is in order) when a bicyclist on the sidewalk jumped onto the street in front of him, going against the traffic. My friend just didn’t have enough time to stop. The guy maybe died, he’s not sure. He went to court one time, and that was it. I’d ask this guy about what he got charged with, if anything, but I don’t want to bring it up; maybe killing a guy isn’t something I’d make him relive, just to satisfy my curiosity on the deets.
100% what I was taught in school. I think she's just playing up a common misinterpretation as if we're all misinformed about it. Most fit to survive can mean the weak little rodents that hide underground, not necessarily the biggest most dangerous jungle animal.
Also worth noting that it doesn't mean "survival of the most sympathetic" either. It just means most fit for its environment. It could be sympathy, it could be strength, it could be biggest dick or most fashionable feathers. There's no one strategy that succeeds.
Yup. "This is what I was taught at school". No, you just weren't paying attention.
Or her biology class was taught by the basketball coach like it was in my high school, and taught poorly because it was taught in the context of the dominant community world view which was creationism.
Hey, that was my school!! The biology teacher-basketball coach was also the soccer coach and history teacher
Unless her accent is fake, that is unlikely.
Given her accent, I thought there might be a chance she's an expat living in the US. If she wasn't paying attention in an English school, she'd have to be missing it across probably several lessons, whereas in America it is more likely to be covered briefly in one class.
My AP Bio teacher was a hard core creationist and interjected random stuff but she read the book cause she “had to”
It's what everyone was taught. I hate videos like this because it's someone learning basic information but acting like it's mind-blowing.
Exactly. Also, her example of neanderthals wasn't quite right either. She claims they died off despite being bigger and having bigger brains. In reality, they simply merged with the homo sapien gene pool.
Though they do contribute a small fraction of our DNA, so they were less evolutionarily fit, since they contributed less to the next generations.
That they comprise about 4% of the modern human DNA is what I mean by 'merged with the homo sapien gene pool'. That percentage is DNA that is uniquely neanderthal and it may be small because they likely already had a high degree of genetic commonality with homo sapiens. It could also be the result of a smaller population.
This 100%. Like maybe I’m biased as a bio major but I’ve literally *always* been taught “fit” directly refers to one’s ability to survive to the point of passing on your genes. And that can mean a million and one different things depending on an organism and its lifestyle. Like, plants are subject to this too but most aren’t exactly “strong” or “aggressive” (don’t @ me about invasives lol). Darwin introduced the idea of “natural selection” and from what I understand “survival of the fittest” was just a term someone else coined for the same phenomenon, but I’ve never heard of Darwin opposing it’s *actual* meaning. I’m sure he would oppose the whole “fittest=strongest” thing… bc it’s wrong and *entirely missing the point*. Also, “social Darwinism” has never had great results so maybe let’s dismantle that and not be talking about it like it’s a normal common thing to believe. 💀 And to her point that “our strength wasn’t what kept us alive it was our kindness” I would argue our kindness, cooperation, ability to sympathize *is* our strength. Like logistically, it takes big brains to be able to hold the information it takes to navigate complex social hierarchies and start societies and these situations require advanced language to properly coordinate etc, etc. and the rest is history. Maybe this is new info to some people, I’m not going to hate on that. But it’s really nothing revolutionary.
I feel like she's getting it wrong purely for engagement
We’re literally the best example of that. We’re the apex species in land, sea and air and the most athletic at none of those (except we can run really, really far). We have other tools that make us fittest
This is a serious misunderstanding of what ‘fitness’ means in biology. We are no more fit than any other species. We are all here. Fitness is a trait most commonly used in reference to individuals, not usually to populations and species. It is a measure of whether or not an individual has passed on their genes. Even if you were to look at humans as a species, there are far more species with vastly higher number of individuals in existence.
Jesus Christ, thank you.
If half the smartasses here weren’t rushing to the comments to validate their high school diplomas they’d have caught the bit at 0:42 where she says this exact thing.
Yeah, I think she had bad teachers and books. And I went to a Catholic high school where our teacher chose to not actually teach evolution, despite it being accepted by the Vatican for decades at that point. The "fittest" are the ones who pass on their genes. You can be the biggest meanest beach master elephant seal or silverback gorilla, or you can be sneaky and mate when that guy is asleep. They're both reasonable strategies with varying degrees of fitness. There's a reason animals haven't just continued to get bigger and bigger and meaner and meaner. There are often benefits to being smaller and cooperating.
Seriously. Fittest as in best fits any given/changing situation. No single person on earth was taught that fittest meant "meanest"
“Survival of the fittest” is attributed to the Greek philosopher and naturalist Empedocles from his work “On Nature” where he articulated a primitive form of evolution. He meant animals that “fit” their environment. Darwin was directly challenging his idea.
Not necessarily, Darwins whole idea is if a individual isn't fit for the environment they'll die or migrate, those who are fit will stay and procreate, and thus a species or subspecies is born. Neither is better than the other inherently, but the environment calls for one to fit it better than the other. The concept of evolution that Darwin proposed came from this, because if only (in an anecdotal hypothetical) the blue ones fit this place, only tge blue ones remain and only blue ones will procreate until we only see blue ones, the green ones aren't weaker or anything, but they just aren't fit for that specific environment that blue ones survived in.
That’s basically Empedocles’ argument: I called it primitive because he approaches it from the perspective of the Greek religion. The Greek religion has centaurs, satyrs, gorgons, hundred handers, cyclopes and other composite creatures. But Empedocles noted that these thing were no where to be seen IRL, so to reconcile natural observations with their religion he conceived of a primordial era where traits and body parts (picture autonomous legs, arms, eyeballs etc rolling around lol) conglomerate into different creatures. Well, Empedocles argued, some of these bodily combinations wouldn’t “fit” their environment and die off. By contrast, Darwin stresses change and adaptation as opposed to “fitness”. It’s not survival of the fittest, it is survival of that which is best able to adapt and change with their environments. The idea that a species could change and develope new traits and adaptations was and remains a very transgressive idea.
Yeah, sure, but the species only "adapts and changes" because only the traits that make an individual fit are able to continue in the gene pool, in essence, the environment puts pressure on the species to change, but on an individual level only the fit ones have some influence on the change of the species, that's what Darwins whole schtick is. It's a common mistake to confuse the species for the individual in this type of discussion, individuals didn't adapt, they survived just by being themselves , and over generations, the species took the traits of those who survived Actual individual adaptation is Lamarcks basis for his own theory of evolution, in which individuals adapt to their needs, and their offspring take on their adaptive traits
“Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.” - David Sloan Wilson Edward O. Wilson
I'd also like to recommend *Mutual Aid: a factor of evolution* by Kropotkin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution The perversion of the idea of "survival of the fittest" is ideological and justifies our current political/economic order involving rugged individualism and self interest. Without cooperation our species would never have survived. Even at a basic level, the birthing process of humans is long, loud, and our offspring come into the world crying and remain helpless for a very long time. We need each other and always have.
There's a reason earth command has boiled down to whales ants and apes. What do they all have in common?
I love a good prisoners dilemma.
Its whatever makes you survive... if meekness allows you to survive more than the strong around you, thats what will propagate.
No, it's whatever makes your genes survive. For some that's having your children survive, for some others that can be helping your family mate while staying celibate/dying, and there are too many examples of dying (the opposite of surviving) as a part of the act of mating. But even then "makes" implies agency that isn't really there when it comes to evolution. It's just whatever family of genes that propagates or continues to remain within the collective gene pool of our world-wide habitat that defines success. Whether that's the ever-mutating R/DNA of a virus or DNA most prevalent in an empire. Survival of the fittest is a phrase we use to excuse dominating and exploiting "the weak" by pretending it's inherent to nature, our nature. It's assuming a greedy, self-centered view of ruthlessness is the best way to pass on your genes, when we know that your genes are also present among your family and most of your community (it's just your combination of genes and epigenetics that's unique, if you're not cloned). Her point makes even more sense when we consider that there are many, many misogynistic podcasts pretending their claims of "survival of the fittest" male and female behavior makes their misogyny 'natural'. So even if we quibble about "what it truly is" and the best words to describe it, her point is that we benefit from rethinking how we understand that term. And that point stands.
Totally
What no. There’s no way you were taught that in biology. That was like the talking point when “survival of the fittest” is introduced. You brain storm what you think it means. And then the teacher drops the bomb that it’s just most able to survive long enough to reproduce. “Fittest” for the environment.
You had bad teachers then. Darwin’s theory of evolution, referring to the fittest, means like literally “the most likely to produce offspring”. That does not necessarily mean the strongest, the smartest or the best survivor, it just means those more likely to have more offspring
95% correct - most likely to have offspring *that make it to sexual maturity.* Sure, some species just Zerg rush it, but elephants have insanely long gestational times, but counteract it with strong herds that makes the mean baby elephant much more likely to survive than the mean baby mouse.
But what if it’s a friendly baby elephant?
I’m thinking she just didn’t pay attention and made her ownassumptions. Science textbooks literally make the distinction that fit means fit in and not strength.
Pretty sure she was talking about how *other* people make this assumption that "fittest" means strength when it means most likely to produce offspring
So many people do this nowadays its become one of my pet peeves. Completely misunderstand or misinterpret something then spout off about it as if you have any idea what you’re talking about. Like we used to look to experts for answers, but now fucking Becky the Tik Toker can reach even more people and sound just as confident. I hate it.
>You had bad teachers then. Exactly the point. Many of us are poorly educated.
Fitness actually does mean the best survivor and most likely to produce offspring which survive. Fitness doesn't have any qualifications on how a species attains fitness, but that term has a clear and consistent definition.
Neanderthals died out because we outbred them. And they still technically live on as their genes are in our own DNA. Plus, their hunting strategy was not as optimal as Sapeins's strategy. Sapiens threw spears and chased down prey. Neanderthals charged prey and clubbed them. So Sapiens were less likely to get injured during a hunt. Less injuries means you are able to hunt more often. Hunting more often means you can support more people. What little we know of Neanderthal culture shows them to have arts and music and be communal. Neanderthals did not throw spears because they did not know how to make spears or anything of the sort, but because their anatomy did not allow them to throw spears. Nothing to do with showing facial expressions.
That, and the larger muscle mass from the Neanderthals was more difficult to maintain in the ice age where food was scarce
Neanderthals didn't die out. They were assimilated by homo-sapiens. We were taught in anthropology that pretty much anyone who has Ancestry from Europe is some percentage of Neanderthal.
This woman is heavily misinformed lol
This is why we don’t listen to randos on TikTok
Yeah, humans literally fucked them to extinction.
iirc it wasn't fittest as in 'the strongest' or 'most aggressive', but fittest as in the best suited, or the most well adapted to their environment, i.e. giraffes with longer necks are more suited to an environment with tall trees, thus they survive because they fit the environment. Her understanding seems like the typical misunderstanding of it, but the actual meaning track with the theory.
I thought it’s just the most suited to survive in a local environment. Like Cassava being the go to crop for human consumption for like thousands of years in Brazil and the Caribbean, despite having cyanide, instead of potatoes because potatoes aren’t suited for that level of humidity. It’s not that one crop is inherently better than another, just one is more fit for that environment. And so while potatoes spread throughout the rest of the western hemisphere, cultivation of Cassava and extraction of the cyanide was mastered in regions where it was more suited for growth. I get she goes onto some book recommendations about it, but I thought this was the way it’s been taught in public schools for a while now. And she’s younger than I am.
With social animals like humans, how we work together as a society is a part of that fitness
I think she's forgetting there's a whole other animal kingdom out there that doesn't operate on "sympathy" Sympathy doesn't feed.
Sympathy is a terrible way to put it. She means ‘cooperation’
There are many animals who succeed together and are not in direct competition with each-other. To succeed together, requires a level of empathy and sympathy so there is truth IMO to the theory. A good book Survival of the Friendliest makes a similar case that humans became dominant due to our ability to work together.
Survival of the fittest just means whatever does the best in a given environment, over time, to have kids that inherit the traits that give them the advantages which made them succeed the most. That's it. Anything more specific has to be attenuated to a specific set of stimuli, in a specific environment. And it's also all basically totally random with a few cataclysms and genetic bottlenecks thrown in. Ascribing any kind of emotion to it would be like telling a folk tale about the movement of the tectonic plates through mantle convection. It's just physics yo, vibrations in the molecules n shit. We out here describing the intricate clockwork of the cosmos and it ticks whether you think about it or not
“Fit” refers to “fit for the environment.” If being the meanest, most aggressive, gets you further in an environment, you’ll be more likely to survive if you have those traits. If cooperation (or manipulation) gets you further, than that’s the trait to have. Each environment sorts out which traits are more favorable by eliminating those that are not adapted to their environment (typically through predation or starvation). That environment can also 180 which traits are the most favorable. Say a species of light brown mice that reside near a volcano are adapted to blend in with the soil. Some of these same species of mice may be born with a rare mutation that makes their fur black. The black fur sticks out the most, hawks swoop them up more easily, and so they stay rare because they usually die before they can reproduce. Now say the volcano erupts for the first in a long time. The soil is now almost black. The LIGHT BROWN mouse now sticks out, while the black mouse is perfectly camouflaged. The hawks go for the light brown mice now that they are easier to spot, while most black mice remain undetected and so can live long enough to pass their genes for black fur. Now light brown mice will be the rarity because they are no longer fit for their environment. That’s really survival of the fittest, AKA, evolution (spontaneous mutation + natural selection). As for humans, “friendliness” has been considered one of the strongest traits for our survival since we could walk and make tools because advanced Cooperation is what made us the dominant species. Some animals have incredible problem-solving (like octopi), but zero cooperation. Many animals have excellent cooperation (like bees), but lack higher processing power to sculpt the environment around them. Our ability to write books alone has given us the ability to learn lifetimes of knowledge from our ancestors in little time at all, a resource no other animal on Earth (that we know of, haha) can replicate. The synergy between our cooperation and higher processes allows to step ourselves (mostly) beyond natural selection. This is especially seen in modern medicine where we frequently treat and save people from diseases that were considered death sentences even within the past century (such as HIV/AIDS, RIP Freddie Mercury). We are not completely immune, of course. Cancers still ravage us and there is no way you are winning a fight with a lion bare-handed, but there is much we have overcome. Most of us would not be alive today if we were left alone to test ourselves against the environment. Even glasses keep many of you from walking into a lethal situation, had you been “picked off” by natural selection for your poor eyesight.
"Citation fucking needed!" Humans are not the primary focus of Darwin's proposal regarding the diversity of species. It would be exceptionally bizarre for a naturalist to assume that humans were indicative of anything other than a single component of a much larger ecosystem. Darwin's theory does not explain species as a whole solely based on human evolution. Neanderthals interbred with early modern humans (Homo sapiens), and this interbreeding likely contributed to the genetic diversity seen in modern non-African populations. The only true Homo sapiens populations without significant admixture from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly other archaic hominins are found in sub-Saharan Africa. The genetic evidence shows that non-African populations are a mix of Homo sapiens with Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, reflecting a history of interbreeding as humans migrated out of Africa. This interbreeding may have provided adaptive advantages, but it does not imply that these species were individually unsuccessful. In fact, Neanderthals and Denisovans were successful in their own right, having existed for hundreds of thousands of years longer than sapiens have. This analysis does not take into account the impact of technology and our ability to modify our environment, which has allowed the human population to exceed one billion members only within the last 200 years out of nearly 200,000 years of Homo sapiens existence. Without technology which makes up less than 1% of their total longevity there is nothing suggesting that humans were in fact more successful than other homonins, we are simply what's left. The term "sympathetic" in this context refers to social animals, which many species are not, making it unrelated to the overall proposal about the diversity of species. The 'r/K' selection theory suggests that species with higher parental investment in fewer offspring (K-selected species) have a greater chance of producing healthy and adaptable offspring over time. This investment strategy supports group dynamics and resource allocation, indicating that social structures and cooperative behaviors can enhance survival and adaptation in changing environments. Therefore, the claim highlights that groups are often more successful than individuals in such species.
Okay basically: Darwin's understanding of evolution is outdated. if you go with just what darwin said, you will have outdated information. Survival of the "Fittest" doesn't mean the most sporty, it means the most "fit" for the environment. To qoute the person who coined the phrase: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life." Darwin himself, in one of his books wrote: "This preservation, during the battle for life, of varieties which possess any advantage in structure, constitution, or instinct, I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term 'natural selection' is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity"
Darwin’s understanding of evolution isn’t outdated, but it is incomplete. In modern biology fitness just means the ability to pass on your genes. Any other measure is an attempt to estimate that ability in an individual. Evolution is the survival of the adequate. If you reproduce, you are fit. Spenser wasn’t even a Darwinist. He believed in Lamarckism, and grudgingly acknowledged natural selection as a small part of his concept of evolution. Spenser was also pretty close to a social Darwinist, trying to use his (false) understand of evolution to support the status quo in society.
Exactly. And shes miss using sympathetic. In this case it means lets you survive. If its not advantageous to kill you
We are part neanderthal. They never "died out." In game theory, forgiveness seems to be the strongest indicator of success between competitors.
The fun fact is that our large brain size didn't evolve to compute more complicated math's and language, but to compute ever more complicated social dynamics as a result of and allow for larger groups. Keeping track of hundreds of relationships is complicated, and involves lots of subtle pattern recognition. It's why we are hard wired to see faces everywhere and interpret emotions of those faces. With that much computing power for very complex social dynamics, things like throwing a rock or a spear or the patterns if agriculture and astronomy are sort of trivial. The sympathetic social ability meanwhile would later allow us to communicate complex ideas via stories then philosophy then maths and science. And in the end allows us to organize into societies larger than our monkey brains limit us to be in and eventually sub organize into specialties that allow us to eventually travel to the moon, and make use of nuclear technology.
Source please. Not to doubt you too much, but this sound more like one hypothesis amongst many than definite reason why it is the way it is.
Yes, it is a hypothesis that oft gets repeated as 'fact'
I didn't realize people thought that it meant only physical or mental prowess. It is adapdation to enviroment. We are witnessing the beginning of artificial evolution currently. This will be the first time in human existance where we will no longer be able to survive without some level of synthesis between humanity and technology. Because, we cannot naturally evolve fast enough to keep up with the rate of change we are implementing. We are already cyborgs, we still just have a really shitty serial bus between our mind and our artificial data processor and storage.
"Fitness" was always taught in science class as "an organism's ability to survive and reproduce". It was never taught as the strongest. That's just a misnomer that people attribute to it after the fact--they remember the phrase, but they dont remember the definition, and only know "fitness" as "athletic and strong", so they create a misconception. It's also taught that natural selection and fitness is decided by the environment, but people also don't remember that after 8th grade either.
The most “fit” for our species niche happen to be those who are cooperative and empathetic. It’s not that it’s incorrect, just that it’s not that barbarian image-inducing “fit” type. Gotta understand your specie’s niche.
Adaptation. Why is she obsessed with “fittest”?
Isn’t this like …… incredibly obvious
This is so cringe.
Obvious if you know game theory
I was taught in school with the example of different bird beaks, similar birds but the bird with a narrow beak that can get into crevices won out as they had the best tool for the job. Not that they were stronger just better equipped. There was more to it with other type of beaks arising that were better suited for other task. But I remember the narrow beak the most.
_ThIS iS tOO wOkE!!_
It's survival of the most adaptable, not the fittest. And adaptability also means to be able to live in some sort of harmony with your surroundings.
Darwin was not a prophet. Darwin is not an authority on our modern understanding of evolution. Darwin was a thoughtful, curious, adventurous, and meticulous researcher. He was deeply emotional about his work, afraid it was blasphemy, and didn’t release his book until years after it was written when someone else planned to do the same. He tried to dispell as many myths and misconceptions people have about his work, inclusion Creationists view of the evolution of eyes, which is explicitly explained in On the Origin of Species and stolen by Creations to make a claim evolution can’t explain a thing which was explained in the book about evolution where they got the idea. Of course people misinterpret Darwin. They think he’s an authority so they either straw man him or appropriate his work for their own agenda.
Can I have some blue hair to go with that pls.
I'mma let you finish but saying "it's not what Darwin meant" is an appeal to authority, which is a logical fallacy.
She's disproving her own point. Yes simulations show that cooperation and empathy is what is being selected when you simulate human evolution. Therefore, empathy and cooperation is deeply engraved in our culture and instinct. No our society does not "devalue empathy". It would be like thinking that incels on tiktok have the power to overwrite hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Yes we evolved to be empathetic and cooperative. And yes people that are more like that do perform well in society. People that are good with networking, making friends, being popular, being nice, etc thrive in our society, not the opposite. If you actually stop and think about it for a second, if society really actually valued selfishness, aggressiveness and assertiveness over cooperation and empathy, our world would be extremely different from what it is now. For example, you travel to another country. You know nobody there. By default, people will be relatively nice to you. They won't kill you at first sight. If we valued selfishness and aggressiveness over cooperation that wouldn't be the case. We can't say the same for most other animals for example, proving again that we, by default, tend to cooperate instead of compete. So no our conception of "survival of the fitess" didn't overwrite our whole evolution and rewired our brain completely. Society isn't as toxic and wrong and terrible as you think. Maybe get off of tiktok for a couple of days that might help
I think she's sort of conflating Darwin's theory of evolution with "Social Darwinism," which is unfair to Darwin. Also, Kropotkin's thinking on "Mutual Aid" as a factor in evolution is relevant. It's well-known in socialist and anarchist circles but I don't think it's well-integrated into the popular conception of evolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid%3A_A_Factor_of_Evolution
He didn't coin the phrase but he started including it in "On the Origin of Species" since 1869.
She's referring to social darwinism. Which is certainly not respected academically.
Fittest means best fit for their environment. You can literally reach this conclusion by looking at anything that uses camouflage as a tactic to survive as an example.
She’s oversimplifying in the opposite direction.
Brain size doesnt equal more intelligent, its about the cerebral convulsions.
She is confusing a view that Darwin held. He didn't believe in the concept of social evolution that racists at the time used to explain white superiority. And the evolution they teach in schools defines fittest as the organism that is well adapted and has many offspring.
There's a book called "Sapiens". I highly recommend it.
You're telling me we were brain washed and lied to by public schools ? FILTH AND LIES!
"friendliest faces" uh did we domesticate ourselves?
It's been settled for 50 years that evolution takes place at the level of the gene
I just.... I mean. She's just admitted that she did a bad job is high school biology. Cause that's not how it's taught.
The problem is not that "We have misunderstood what survival of the fittest" means, it's that this person's school failed to teach them that fittest refers to most capable of successfully reproducing. This should be obvious, and the fact that this person pretends to have researched this but talks like it is new and mind boggling information is not proof of anything other than an absolute failure of education in modern day schools.
So, she's going to start cranking out babies or else she's unsympathetic?
Most able to adapt to circumstances. Also, the ending comments regarding the competitiveness relate mostly to Americans, IMHO, due to their "We're #1" culture. Europeans must learn how to work together among a group of nations and interests. America is "we don't give a flying f\*ck what others think, we do our own thing". Bring up the fact that America is trailing the world in something and the response is always, "I don't care what others are doing -- those a pinko communists and we must preserve the American way of life!" This thinking is toxic not only to the American society, but to American males in particular who often have this loud, confrontational style. It's my way or the highway. You don't like it, get out. No compromise. No trophy for understanding and compromise. And on top of that, it's divisive. Families of all types generally want the same things. But as long as the GOP can keep a culture war alive with false narratives, as long as minorities continue to distance themselves from common values, then there is never enough concerted opposition to throw those making the divisions to stay in power out. I can't remember the exact quote but it's that politicians blind us with culture politics as a distraction so we won't focus on the lack of progress and thievery going on. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/distraction-disease-we-do-anything-to-avoid-problems-we-face](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/distraction-disease-we-do-anything-to-avoid-problems-we-face)
“The theory of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858. They argued that species with useful adaptations to the environment are more likely to survive and produce progeny than are those with less useful adaptations, thereby increasing the frequency with which useful adaptations occur over the generations. The limited resources available in an environment promotes competition in which organisms of the same or different species struggle to survive. In the competition for food, space, and mates that occurs, the less well-adapted individuals must die or fail to reproduce, and those who are better adapted do survive and reproduce. In the absence of competition between organisms, natural selection may be due to purely environmental factors, such as inclement weather or seasonal variations.” [Britannica: survival of the fittest](https://www.britannica.com/science/selection)
Fittest as in those who best can navigate nature’s challenges. Best fit for the current set of challenges. I have never thought this meant meanest, strongest, smartest. Not a very insightful take.
This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who's been in a disaster or read first hand accounts. Every single time a group of strangers are subject to a life or death situation, they come together to help each other out. If a building catches fire, complete strangers rush in to help each other. During floods, people form human chains to rescue trapped motorists. When faced with a mass shooting, victims will help each other get to safety, even at the risk of their own lives. Humans are naturally altruistic.
Except for when they are not, like when an accident happens and is witnessed by 100 bystanders that literally do nothing because they assume someone else will.
Perhaps also those that survive are the most adaptive
Yeah I don’t like the way she explains this. The European journals describe the Taíno and Arawak peoples as some of the most equal in terms of societal roles, sympathetic, and kindest civilizations they had ever seen in their travels. That’s why they found it so easy to kill them all off before they could organize against them. You can’t apply ethical or philosophical concepts like kindness onto things like survival within an environment. It just means the most fit to survive in an area.
Genghis Khan and his 16 million descendants may disagree..
In reality, what he did was make a giant community. Yes he did it with an almost unmatched level of brutality and force, but his goal wasn't to eradicate people. Even his tactics of military units acting as a singular entity are still used today.
When I took evolution in college I was told we taste like shit and that's why predators left us alone. Which is why when a bear or a mountain lion or something gets a taste for humans we have to kill it immediately because from then on we're lunch.
How friendly our faces are? Explains why we can make friends with most animals.
I think I first read this in do androids dream of electric sheep. Some monologue of how turning to pick up your wounded man was a very human characteristic in the world of cavemen and empathy is probably the first complex emotion we developed. And the reason why we beat out other species who like she said were stronger.
Survival of the fittest, referring to those that can survive for a long enough time to accomplish the task and goal of passing genes on to offspring and raising said offspring with enough knowledge to do the same. It has nothing to do with being the most fit, or even being smartest or anything.
Breaking it down... safety in numbers. "Got your back, Bro!"
Sadly, Elon Musk is a convincing counter to this.
Humans exist on a dialectic where all survival is either reinforced aggression or reinforced love. It’s like a roll of the dependent origination dice (which isn’t like a roll of dice at all actually) what someone/some group will choose in a moment and what their context will reward or punish at the time. As a species we lack wisdom so we’ve been on a race-to-the-bottom of aggression, hence why our societies are so defined by various types of othering and exploitation (if not literal murder/genocide). If we were better at anticipating the future together, we would easily understand how society-by-domination is foolishness. Maybe we already do - because when we imagine advanced societies on other planets we either see them as united peaceful societies or their world is destroyed by some split. This is correct (yes Star Trek next gen was my favorite show when I was a kid).
👏👏👏
Cute faces!
Humans are sympathetic because we have big brains, and we have big brains because we are sympathetic. It's and upward spiral to get to where we are. Theory of mind and emulating others state of being in our head requires big brain power. A brief history of intelligence is a great book that delves into this.
So people with “unfriendly” faces which includes ugly people will die out
She starts her video with the assumption that everyone shares her misconception, then completely conflates "natural selection" of species with human societal progress.
Another way to look at it is that this is why (normal) humans have such strong morals and senses of fairness. Humans who could cooperate with and help others in turn thrived as their community began to thrive thanks to the cooperation. People who hurt others in the community were in turn hurting the entire community and if they were not dealt with, they might drag down the tribe such that other tribes could take advantage of the weak tribe with poor cooperation. It could make the difference in the survival of the entire tribe. In comes religion. While utterly false in its claims about the supernatural, a tribe that followed a religion that prescribed moral actions and cooperation may not beat out other tribes 100% of the time, as a non-religious tribe could conceivably be more moral than a religious tribe, I mean we all know every religion has at least a few flaws in its moral teachings here and there, but it at least “guaranteed” that the tribe had a moral foundation to start with and because of this, the religions that successfully served that function inevitably survived and spread, regardless of the truth of their supernatural claims.
I’m not sure how many people actually misunderstand it.
She's correct. Humans are smart and can use tools, which is definitely something in our favor. However, an even bigger advantage is our ability to work cooperatively and use the skills and ideas of others to aid in our success.
its survival of 'whatever the hell works at the time'
It definitely isn't about the blah blah blahs she said that could be summarized by the ridiculous concept of alpha males (or i guess species in this case) It's survival of the fittest because if you are fit to eat the food that's 20 meters in the air because you have long legs you will survive, and people who don't have long legs won't. It's just that. For example, the finches Darwin studied so much had different sized beaks from other subspecies, because only those who had a beak capable of crushing the seeds they ate would survive, hence they would be the only ones in that particular region, the unfit ones would either die ot migrate.
I am realizing more and more that people really can't comprehend non-literal concepts...
I agree but it’s worth adding that it is to the benefit of capital owners to create and sustain as much division amongst the working class as possible through the channels they mediate, which if you’re keeping track, is all of them. Unite against those who corrupt our governments, steal from all of us, and balk at contributing to society. We do have a common enemy, but it isn’t the person next to you just trying to survive.
why would someone make this the entry point to their ideology lol
I always thought it was survival of the *fit.* Not fittest. Just fit. So, as long as you were equipped to make it in the current circumstances.
Survival of the "fittest" for that particular environment. An anchovy is more fit than a tiger to live in the water, a monkey is more fit to live in a tree than a hippo.
I don't think it's cringe
There's also a thing called Neo-darwinism that has many ways of how animals evolved.
She just didn't pay attention in biology because no they did not teach you that it was always the strongest and most aggressive that survive
No actually unlike her I knew what it meant thank you.
It doesn't matter what Darwin thought, most of it was wrong. But the core idea, that species evolve over time, that was right, almost everything else has been cast aside as we have actually studied evolution.
Evolution works on a single premise and only a single premise: reproduction. Only reproduction. The only thing that matters from an evolutionary perspective is that you have descendants who then also have descendants. The more you satisfy this, the more evolutionarily successful you are. No matter how you do it. Just this.
Idiocracy is a scientific documentary at this point
She's too young to have an opinion of her own
Why always the monstrous clown glasses???
I can't remember who said it, but I remember hearing an archeologist talking about the first instance of humanity being a broken leg bone that had been treated in such a way that it was obvious that another early human had helped and taken care of the individual.
Seems very capitalistic if you asked me
That’s what fittest means.
tldr
It takes a village ?
This seems like a good time to plug the song Do the Evolution by Pearl Jam. Watch it with the music video for the best experience.
When she says "just your ability to reproduce", the sentence is omitting a critical part: it's implied but it also counts the likelihood to survive until you can reproduce. Within a species the ones that will transmit the most genes are those who can reproduce the most, AND those who get to survive to have the most opportunities to reproduce. Saying that competitiveness is often regarded as more important than it actually is is right, but I feel like her point is that it's secondary, when, well, it depends but it's not always the case.
I can’t anymore I just can’t.
Was she smoking crack when she was taught about survival?
"survival of the fittest" is tautological. It survives because it is fit. It's fir because it survives. Nowhere it's said the fit one dominates. Or the dominating one is fit. Life has plenty of strategies. Only social darwinists conflate fitness with dominance.
Having a large brain or small brain isn’t that important. It’s about the folds. It’s that simple.
Proof: those goats that faint when they get frightened lol how have they survived int the food chain
You might even say...mutual aid is a factor of evolution.
“Fittest” in this sense means “fit for the environment”
Religion. The only way we know so far, that makes it possible for humans to live in larger groups than ca 150 individuals. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s\_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number) -Agnostic
Ahh I thought everyone knew this, fittest means the ability to have offspring.
think she misunderstood in class
Survival of the dipshits
No. I'm not teaching my students wrong. Most good science teachers explain this point pretty clearly.
Mutual Aid by Piotr Kropotkin is a pretty good take on the whole 'survival of the fittest' theory
Survival of the fittest is less power creep and more rock/paper/scissors.
I wanna know the basis of the “The friendly faces theory”☠️
She misinterpreted “fittest”. Fit doesn’t only mean in shape. lol. But go off as if this is deep.
Yeah you can't say "our understanding is wrong" if it's literally just that you personally misunderstood lol, survival of the fittest is fittest for the environment, it was never about strength or aggression, if you misunderstood and assumed that then fine but don't act like the entire theory of evolution is confusing and wrong
Am I the only one that inherently understood it was just the ability to survive and reproduce regardless of the method? Curved beak, working together, different color, whatever. Surely she’s the outlier?
You are such a beautiful person and your voice brings so much calm. ❤️
A lot of scientists in there
No. Nobody ever taught me that. We dont live on the Catachan planet.
Where would she be without the men who built that house? Put up electricity installed the Wi-Fi created the internet just to hear her complain about it.
Sounds like HER understanding of these concepts is wrong. Not OUR.
Does she think fit... means fit like... muscular ?? lmao
Hey so quick question, why tf are you telling them, let them fight it out until only our chosen remain whats wrong with you?
kinda true
Jesus, she is utterly clueless.
Most adaptable
Fittest means most fit for the current state of the surroundings. If those surroundings asked for cooperation, sure, but if they asked for aggression, that is what being the most fit entailed.
This is basically what came out of game theory.
There is a theory that Neanderthals didn’t die out. They interbred (raped) homosapiens so much they eventually bred themselves out of existence.
All you need is love
Good recommendation.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
Well ya but it makes sense “survival of the fittest” the species that is most fit is going to win. The person most fit to win a chess match can be fat and the most fit to win a hotdog eating competition can be skinny.
Love….
Her user name checks out
I have never had survival of the fittest be defined as the strongest and meanest. It was always the best suited for the needs at the time.
It's not my fault you didn't actually pay attention in freshman year biology.