Can we get a less misreading summary of evolution than "Survival of the fittest"?

IMO to say evolution is summarized as 'survival of the fittest' shows a incomplete understanding of the theory.

OK, this might clear a lot of misunderstanding up for you. When scientist and evolutionist talk about fit they don't imply an animal is strong, fast, smart or clever.

What they mean is how successful is that animal in reproducing offspring.

Fitness is reproductive success.

Being smart, strong and fast might help a particular species in a particular habitat become more fit, that is to say reproductively successful but it doesn't suggest that it will reproduce. Predation, disease and death from an injury can otherwise remove that strong, fast and smart animal from the rest of the population.

But when it comes down to it, reproducing and having offspring that carry your genes is the evolutionary name of the game. That is what drives evolution and it is the sole reason for ALL the animal diversity today. No different in human beings.

But as another term for it...I'm lost. Cant help there.

Sorry if I said what as been said already...didnt read the whole thing.

 

Well, that was basically my point. The phrase is commonly used as a "fits on a T-shirt" summary of it though.

 

oh, i stand corrected.

 

This was the main thing I was thinking though. Reproductive ability doesn't necessarily guarantee long term survival - if a species reproduces too much, it can end up spreading the available food sources too thinly among its members, to the extent where less survive than would have done had they been less virile/fecund.

Fittest probably is the appropriate word, in truth. But meaning fitness for what the times demand. No trait is universally beneficial.

 

Let us imagine a world without human beings...for the sake of this discussion.

I would have you consider that in most balanced ecosystems there is an equilibrium. Let's use an example of mice. Say the parental generation for whatever reasons (food abundance, less competition, new habbitat...) produced more off-spring than their ecosystem can support. The new generation (F2) would face different selection pressures.

Different traits would now be selected for in this high numbered mice population. Traits for avoiding predation would be favored and selected for as slower, less aware traits are preyed upon at higher rates. Gathering would be even more competitive for as resources become scarce. Those that possess traits that are successful in food gathering are going to have a higher fitness and pass on those traits.

As we saw in the parental generation, food was abundant and intraspecifc (within species) competition was low. Different traits were selected for under those conditions or habitat type. Low numbers could also mean that predators looked else where for food and put a low selection pressures on traits or genes that are good for avoiding predation.

So, in other words, ecosystems are never static. They are always changing. Traits that are selected for one generation might not be selected for the next. That is evolution. What might favor reproductive ability at point x in time might be unfavorable at y point in time.

I couldn't agree more. No trait is universally beneficial, it's the combination of traits that work for a individual in it's particular habitat at any given time.

 

Indeed. Evolution if anything prevents true equilibrium. Stillness cannot occur, because variation and mutation - even something as small as whether a strain has 3 offspring instead of 2 - continually crop up. The only way to create equilibrium would surely require a closed system, in which nothing can cause mutation. I'm not a science expert, but I'm pretty sure that would mean removing the entire universe from the equation.

I think creationists fail by trying to disprove evolution as a means to prove their own theories. It seems so foolish to me that someone would deny evolution's existence purely because they think it proves that God exists. Aside from the fact that evidence against one theory is not evidence for another purely because they have been placed in opposition, asserting that evolution does not happen is as absurd as asserting that the earth is flat: it's not true, and it wouldn't prove anything even if it was.

 

Equilibrium to me is always shifting and adjusting. Going back to the mice. The F2 population was too large to sustain its numbers. This population boom surly affected other species. The mice might be taking up all the food in a patch of habitat or on the flip side, providing too easy a meal for other species.

This change surely, over a generation would select for certain traits in these other species (interspecific competition).

One species might find itself having to compete with the mice for the same resource (food, territory etc). Another species might now have plenty of food resources.

The effects of one species on another is complex and its all interconnected in a particular ecosystem. One population effects the other. This to me is the equilibrium. Populations are kept at the right levels so it can sustain itself into future generations.

I agree. People will fight and turn the other check to hold on to something they desperately want to believe. Thankfully, for me, as we progress in time and understanding more and more people are seeing religion and a concept of a god to be obsolete and false.

 

I see what you are saying about equilibrium, but I don't believe that it's rational to imagine it as a natural state. The universe is, by all accounts, not managed in its fluctuations. Neither is an ecosystem. The diminution of one species might lead to a corresponding increase in another species, and on a long enough time frame, we'd all die before we could say for sure that it didn't happen. But extinction happens. Humans have bred out of control and our intelligence potentially prevents that imbalance from being "redressed". We might like to believe that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" applies as well as a metaphor as it does as a physical law. But there is no reason for it to. An ecosystem might well fluctuate, however wildly, around a stable centre. It might also head out towards irrevocable destruction. And we might easily dismiss this, by saying that it is all part of a larger system. But how long do we keep making this "turtles all the way down" argument before we admit that we have no idea whether order exists, or whether we simply serve a desperate Panglossian need to see and believe otherwise?

I think we disagree. I would certainly not see the likelihood of evolution as evidence against the possibility or the concept of god. And even if the concept of a god were proven to be human artifice, that would only rank it alongside scores of other concepts - money, value, justice, mercy - that are equally intangible but never the less rendered real enough by mutual belief, expectation and resolve.

 

I guess it's up to ones own understanding of what he or she thinks equilibrium means.

That fact that different species can even coexist with other species and sustain itself for multiple generations is equilibrium to me. To me the natural state is what we see everywhere around us...evolution. Though it is happening now it is never seen. Evolution is always ongoing and will continue as long as their is life.

Order existing is an abstract concept. As you point out, so is money, value and justice. Simply, life finds ways to survive. That's basically it. It uses its evolved adaptations to survive in an ever changing environment.

What is the "turtles all the way down" argument?

Can you clarify what you mean here? I don't want to comment and be totally off because I'm not sure what you mean.

Evolution can give some insight against creation IMO.

 

Essentially, the bleeding obvious: if we don't believe in a creator, we believe the universe is either an accident or an inevitability. Certain theories about the direction and end of the universe predict that, in the very distant future, heat death will drive the universe to a standstill, to a point where motion is neither extant nor possible.

There are other theories that are, one might say, more cyclic, that see the universe ending with conditions that in turn cause either its own rebirth, or the birth of another.

The latter of these is what I would call fluctuating equilibrium, literally flux between the vastest thing possible and the tiniest, but ultimately self-sustaining.

The former, by contrast, suggests that, however the universe started, it will at some point end, at least to all intents and purposes, and that there will be no reason to expect it to return, to "flux" back and maintain a "natural order". If we do not believe in a designer, we have little reason to expect equilibrium, certainly not enough to assume that it will occur, that all things happen to an end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Not sure if that's what I meant actually, but certainly it could refer to any theory that refuses to admit defeat. In reference to ecosystems, we could discover that our universe is doomed (as with heat death), and as believers in equilibrium, we could say "ah, but it could be part of a bigger system of universes that is sustained". But we'd have no proof, and no reason, to believe this. Constant motion is as natural as being at rest, so to my mind, there's no reason to think that a decaying system will right itself or contribute to some greater good purely because the idea is desireable. Evolution seems inevitable to us, because we live in a world where rough equilibrium has occurred; we will, once we leave our solar system, likely encounter ecosystems where evolution "burned out", so to speak.

 

maybe you should rethink that?

 

I don't understand what you're asking me to rethink. I have an inkling of what you might be getting at, based on what little I know of your other posts, but I wouldn't want to assume.

So yeah, can you elaborate on this?

 

it looks like you are assuming that not believing something means believing something else

 

Well given the subject of the thread I don't think that it's an unfair assumption that someone would have some belief about the nature of the universe. I know there are some who attempt to debate these things without ever taking a position. Those people suck.

 

i think that the possibilities you listed are an unfair assumption. because it's not compulsary to have a belief and after that you have not proven that those are the only beliefs

 

Well okay. But if you're going to pick holes, maybe tell me some other explanations? Assuming we have a belief (in this context I see no point in accommodating those who choose not to have one), if one does not believe the universe is created deliberately, and one does not believe it is created by accident, and if one does not believe that it is inevitable (a cycle or whatever), what else is left?

I'm not going to feel stupid for making assumptions in a discussion that inherently demands them, especially when you don't seem willing or able to tell me why they're wrong.

 

I didn't see any mention of this in the thread: Evolution and "survival of the fittest" is equal to long-term, genetic adaptation. But human, short-term adaptation is different than other species' adaptation:

We want happiness. Other animals don't/can't care for happiness. We all are subjected to stress, but no other animals commit suicide or manage to get by while suffering from severe depression and unable to fend for themselves.

Depression has increased 1,000% since 1960 in all Western developing/developed countries, and every developing country is now following suit. For example, 20% of Chinese children are now depressed, and an average of 287,000 Chinese kill themselves every year.

Survival of the fittest has, for humans, increasingly turned into an internal mechanism of stress resistance. Humans in sedentary societies perceive stress, and their perception determines whether or not a stressor becomes distress or eustress (the good stress), and in the long-term, whether or not a human being becomes stressed out, depressed, and possibly commits suicide.

Human survival depends on compassion (the antidote to distress), and considering global warming and possible environmental wars, our survival will hinge on whether we show compassion for ourselves and each other first, in order to show compassion for the environment and other species that we depend on second.

Survival of the fittest is becoming survival of the compassionate.

 

Evolution is perhaps so evident because it is a truism -

It is not really survival of the fittest

because we define 'fittest' by 'that which survives'

thus it is 'Survival of that which survives'

 

Darwin FTW

He's on the ten pound note, he should be on the 50

 

Well this is a valid point. The notion of "survival of the fittest" is catchy and all, but it seems like the word "fittest" now has so many qualifiers attached to it that it is next to useless. Fitness can, for example, mean that individuals are unlikely to survive, so that there is more food to go around for those that do. To me, that's so contrary to what we typically understand the word to mean that it must be time for some reformulation.