• Lvxferre
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      41 year ago

      This is from Darwin, I think. It describes the mechanism of selection in evolution: the organisms that are better adapted to their environments are the ones more likely to survive.

      Bady likely hates it because it’s often misused, by transforming it in a prescriptive statement (from “the fittest survives” to "the fittest deserves to survive) and/or ignoring that what’s considered the fittest depends on the environment (e.g. a fish isn’t fit in a dry environment, but a cactus isn’t fit in the sea).

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Also the word ‘fitness’ is colored a bit by our current corporal culture (‘fit’ is something one can become of one aspires to be it). Whilst in the Darwinian reading it’s more like an accidental occurrence (a mutation made the species more fit by accident).

      • Thelsim
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        01 year ago

        Worse, he probably refers to social darwinism.
        A very nasty school of thought that’s (partly) responsible for everything from genocide to eugenics.

        • Lvxferre
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          11 year ago

          Social “Darwinism” relies on the fallacy that I mentioned, where you treat a descriptive statement as if it was prescriptive. (And yes, it’s nasty.)