I don't think I advocated for any changes specifically, and I am almost positive I never called for women's rights to be taken away. This message was all observational. Should we be concerned with our birthdates? Yep. Is it a potentially civilizational problem? I feel like it is. Can we actually fix it without fundamental changes to our societies? I don't think so. So, I feel like our culture will lose the battle and we will be selected against. I feel like it's already happening.
Yes, you are saying what you think will happen without radical action to stop it rather than advocating radical action to stop it. But I was careful around that by saying that you thought liberals were not acknowledging this when I think they have and have discussed it at length. The indicated solution is not one they/we consider to solve anything though. It's a bit like "If we don't cut our own penises off, an invading penis-chopping tribe will come and chop them off."
My writing is a lot more…informal…but I think I’m largely in agreement with you (and Helen)
I take the stance that our environment is just another selective pressure in the mix and that it’s more of an idea market that will determine the genetic composition in the future.
I’m unsure to what extent it all will push us as a species but I guess we will just have to wait and see.
“If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.”
That’s from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
Whenever the conditions exist:
Replication-Something makes copies of itself.
Variation-The copies are not perfectly identical.
Differential selection-Some variants persist or reproduce more successfully than others,
And I feel that they do in regards to culture, you can't escape the selection dynamics of the process. Adaptive complexity (adaptive through competition) begins accumulating automatically over time. No foresight required.
So I am not arguing for an specific behavior, I am comparing and contrasting reproductive strategies. I argue that we are subject to evolution whether we like it or not.
You are the Professor, I'm the student. You are proudly represented on my bookshelf. I am thankful just to have a chance to be in the conversation with you.
I feel like you misinterpreted a couple of things, and my intention with this was not to be negative.
Did you think I merged a literal commitment to the biological imperative for each individual with the cultural argument? I thought I did when reading the first draft so edited to make that distinct.
I didn't intent to argue for the biological imperative, only to acknowledge it. I don't think any of the adaptions are bad, I just note the consequences. One can evolve themself into a dead end and that's really what it feels like.
Yes, I think you are wrong about that. You might not be and we might go back to a society in which people don't have individual liberty and can't make choices about reproduction either because we get taken over by another very socially conservative culture or become very socially conservative to prevent that. Either way, it's much the same outcome. The only option if we actually want to save western modernity to fight against both of those outcomes and find ways to make liberalism survive.
Within the current framework of the West, how can we address the birthrate issue without fundamentally changes? It feels impossible. I'm not advocating for forced reproduction, so how can we possibly make it more desirable without changing who we are as a culture l?
I'm perplexed. We have an ethical obligation to serve the interests of evolution? As if.
The universe is indifferent and the universe is stranger than we can imagine. As Richard Dawkins has observed, if you could take a photo of your father (or mother) and a photo of his father and so on -- and keep rolling it back -- eventually you get to a single-cell bacteria. If instead you could roll it forward -- your children's grandchildren and their great grandchildren, as Stevie Wonder sang -- eventually you get to descendants who will need to figure out a solution to the impending demise of our Sun. They will resemble us as much as we resemble that bacteria.
I guess what I mean is this: if by "evolution" you mean Darwinian natural selection, culture and evolution unfold across such radically different time scales as to make almost any relation of the one to the other a category mistake. In culture's temporal frame evolution is a still life. In evolution's time frame human cultures are bubbles of froth in a wave crashing on a beach.
if we don't go the way of the stars, the expanding sun will boil off our oceans and sterilize our home long before our sun is reborn into its true form, a white dwarf, which it will exist as for trillions of years after its fetus phase as our sun.
You're still absolutely right, though. In that scenario, the last life that will survive on earth - even past the cockroaches, are bacteria.... so indeed, future bacteria will be as different from us as we are from past bacteria.
Arguments such as these tend to conflate ultimate causation with proximate causation and taint the biological facts of the matter with some moral purport.
I’d argue that the right way to think about these matters is how evolutionary biology and psychology constrains outcomes that we can reasonably expect. That explains the systematic failure’s of progressive feminism in my native Scandinavia: mainly the gender paradox whereby removing cultural norms pertaining to gender roles increased differences between men and women, and hypergamy: how women statistically select partners that are in a hierarchical position above them.
By far the stronges evolutionary pressure today is quite simply a desire for children. This is especially true in wealthy countries, and especially true for women -- but it's true even for men and even in medium to poor countries. No other single factor influences your likely number of grandchildren by nearly as much.
Thus if evolution still was relevant, the biggest change we should expect is that more people and especially more women will WANT many kids. (this assumes that a desire for children is to a nonzero degree influenced by genetics -- that assumption seems reasonable to me)
But it's not. Absent EXTREMELY strong pressures it takes dozens to thousands of generations for evolution to result in substantial genetic drift, and given current rates of medical progress it's very implausible that we'll leave the genetics of our offspring up to random permutations of the parents genetics for even 2 additional generations, nevermind dozens to thousands.
Instead we'll in some way or other either edit the genetics to be what we WANT them to be, or we'll no longer reproduce in the biological way at all.
Evolution HAS shaped us in the past -- but our future will be determined by other means.
"It is true that nothing but reproductive success matters to biological fitness. Evolutionary forces do not care if any individual is happy, good, free, loved, intellectually fulfilled or productive of anything else. An individual who lived 25 years experiencing nothing but misery and suffering and causing nothing but misery and suffering to others but produced 10 children would be a resounding success in evolutionary terms. One who lived 100 happy, joyful years bringing love and joy to others while discovering the cure to multiple fatal diseases, writing great literature and composing great music but had no children would be an utter evolutionary failure."
Evolutionary forces actually do 'care' if individuals are happy, good, free, loved, intellectually fulfilled', etc. but 'care' is not the best word. (If evolutionary forces didn't 'care' we'd have very different brains, since our brains are hardwired for bonding.) Those states of being, in an individual - contribute to a fortified shared experience in a social group - which fosters the biological fitness of those in the group. Others' happiness, freedom, talents and fulfillment contributes enormous value to their siblings, their parents, their friends, lovers, and neighbors. That value becomes their security, biological fitness, their wellness, and adaptability into the future.
That dead 25 year old with 10 children has only created mouths for someone else to feed. Hopefully they had community containing the long-lived happy person.
I agree. David Lodge's book "The Art of Fiction" has a line that goes:
"Literature is very much about having sex and not much at all about raising children - Life's the other way around."
In other words: It is not enough that a man has lots of sex and impregnates lots of women. Rather: THE CHILDREN NEED TO SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE AND RAISE CHILDREN OF THEIR OWN.
This is why monogamous cultures came to dominate the world while polygamous cultures have been dying out. Polygamous cultures are economically weak and have VERY HIGH child mortality rates (for a number of reasons). Monogamous cultures, meanwhile, are more economically productive and have lower child mortality rates because monogamy incentivizes men to become responsible and devoted husbands and fathers. In short: monogamy rewards the dads and it punishes the cads.
This lends further credence to your point: a civilization that does not care AT ALL about human happiness or compassion is ill-suited for family formation and reproduction.
Granted: antisocial behavior CAN be adaptive in times of WARFARE, where you cannot afford to hesitate and/or empathize with the enemy (e.g., sociopaths often make for the best soldiers/killers, so long as you reward them with sex, money and power).
However, antisocial behavior is highly MALADAPTIVE in peacetime. A culture that continues to reward such people in times of PEACE will not survive, because callous and antisocial people do not make for good husbands and fathers.
Great rebuttal and food for thought. I think there is a sort of reactionism in the conservative right worldview that easily defaults to a 'reduced autonomy for women' argument - and that seems to happen in response to just about any facet of progress / modernity. It happened with bicycles.
Women having fewer children is considered to be a problem, specifically because our western societies' debt based financial systems need increasing numbers of taxpayers. Of course the low birth rate is contextually a problem when your financial system is a Ponzi scheme. Minus that context, it's just shaping up to be another bottleneck. Neither good nor bad.
Somewhere around 40,000 to 100,000 years ago, our species was favored for the development of large brains that could use logic, think abstractly, make distinctive mouth noises to communicate complex ideas, and form complex kinship ties and social bonds. An idea that I'm exploring is that at that crucial period for our species, our continued existence absolutely required non-zero sum thinking. Our ancestors had to have been extremely cooperative - they had to have engaged in mutually-ensured survival strategies or else we wouldn't be here with these big ol' feelsy brains. Our minds contain the firmware for logic, empathy, care, diplomacy, justice - and (getting to the point) individual liberty. Our big ol' feelsy brains consume an absolutely enormous amount of calories thinking about: love; what is just and unjust; how we can make our loved ones well in times of sickness; protecting what we love... It's not a small thing in terms of evolution.
And I'll offer this to sum it up - as sort of a diagnosis: Right now, we don't value any of those things as a structural institution. We say we do, but sentimental mouth noises are about as far as it goes. Our whole global culture is about as zero-sum as it could be - and interestingly, it looks like a negative feedback loop... so it's becoming more zero-sum over time. It's a whole other discussion. I see what's happening with the declining birthrate (maybe it's obvious to anyone reading) - as an extraordinarily good thing. Not that I'm happy that fewer people are being born, or that our species has chosen 'lack of care' as an elevated form of intelligence over 'care' - but maybe it's an opportunity for a species-wide self reflection.
I don't think your point ever was exactly clear to me. Forgive me for saying so, but it seems just vague enough to slide out from under saying outright that it's women who bear the obligation and moral duty to procreate.
We don't.
Neither is it correct to insist it's your moral obligation to give a child your kidney to save his life.
When favorable conditions for increased procreation exist, women will have more children. It's our choice - and right now, it's a no. The smart thing to do would be to find out why beyond 'Women are selfish'.
Individuals make choices.
Culture is what arises from those individual choices. Not the other way around.
Authoritarianism - i.e. enforced obligation / moral duty - is a zero sum strategy. It's unsustainable, because humans are hardwired for liberty - not obligatory obedience. Zero sum strategies are best for short-term, low-stakes games like football and chess. Not long-term, high-stakes games like human culture. The last few thousand years bears witness to it's best (and bloodiest) attempts to make an unsustainable strategy - sustain culture.
In ordinary language, “fit” sounds evaluative: stronger, better, healthier, more deserving.
In evolution? It just means reproductive success under particular conditions.
That word imports moral weight it doesn’t actually have.
“Fit” starts sounding like “better,” and from there people start building ladders, where evolution only describes branching, pressure, adaptation, and persistence. But nature doesn’t do ladders. It does trees.
I’ve never liked the slogan “survival of the fittest”. It’s incomplete to the point of inaccuracy.
I recently wrote up my own less-catchy version:
“Survival of those best suited to their current environment, who also produce offspring that survive long enough to reproduce”.
If you prefer your evolutionary slogans more pithy, though, the TL;DR of the above is: “Have grandkids and you win at evolution”.
Yes. The word "fit" in the context of evolution is more akin in meaning to the verb or the noun "fit": as in "the key fits the lock, " "you can't fit a square peg in a round hole," or "this jacket is a perfect fit".
Well done on an interesting extended argument and admirable humility. I would argue that liberalism doesn't need genetic transmission to continue. It just needs new adopters. On evolution: Groups are not acted on by natural selection. Groups are really a folk concept, a figment of the way we constitute our social practices - not substantial continuous entities. Yes culture are social practices are all extended phenotype, but the interaction of genes with culture is complex and dynamic. Treating groups as super organisms is a kind of romanticism.
I acknowledge that group adaptation is not accepted science. Still, I feel any time you have reproduction with variation, competition and selection, you will inevitably find yourself subject to evolution. Culture can be scape this. I refer to Dennett here, but the idea is inescapable in that context.
In the end, one can evolve themselves into a dead end. Think Koalas or Pandas. And that's how it works I think. Not every line has a future.
What does "one" refer to here? I think your account is kind of a mix of science and motivated points without the motivation made explicit. I don't share your concern for group survival. Cultural evolution is a good scientific theory.
Okay, but I don't think you are addressing the core issue. One does not have to consider evolution a moral yardstick to be opposed to extinction. One needs to make a different argument here.
Like this: the population of developed countries in 1925 was about half of today. And yet Mussolini invented the concept of spazio vitale, which the Nazis adopted as Lebensraum, meaning they felt their country is overcrowded, not enough people can be independent farmers, so they sought lands to conquer to export the surplus population to.
There are no reasons to be alarmed when population drops after an absolute historic maximum. Wake me up when we are back to 1925 levels.
A more serious reason for alarm is population structure. Looks like we are going to work until 75.
I would probably just have scrolled past had the sentiment been “I am opposed to extinction.” It was somebody quotestacking the “Nothing else matters” series of statements that drew me in and led me to write three paragraphs which were then expanded into the piece. I then situated that in the broader argument which was not that either but “Western culture will become extinct if it continues being liberal and feminist and considering fertility as a lifestyle choice. I am not saying we should do anything about that (but I am implying we should)”
I am honored that you took the time to read it and I value and appreciate your feedback.
Excellent attitude!
I don't think I advocated for any changes specifically, and I am almost positive I never called for women's rights to be taken away. This message was all observational. Should we be concerned with our birthdates? Yep. Is it a potentially civilizational problem? I feel like it is. Can we actually fix it without fundamental changes to our societies? I don't think so. So, I feel like our culture will lose the battle and we will be selected against. I feel like it's already happening.
Yes, you are saying what you think will happen without radical action to stop it rather than advocating radical action to stop it. But I was careful around that by saying that you thought liberals were not acknowledging this when I think they have and have discussed it at length. The indicated solution is not one they/we consider to solve anything though. It's a bit like "If we don't cut our own penises off, an invading penis-chopping tribe will come and chop them off."
My writing is a lot more…informal…but I think I’m largely in agreement with you (and Helen)
I take the stance that our environment is just another selective pressure in the mix and that it’s more of an idea market that will determine the genetic composition in the future.
I’m unsure to what extent it all will push us as a species but I guess we will just have to wait and see.
https://substack.com/@nathanpignone/note/p-197302581?r=5yv2q&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I am very inspired by Dennett here:
“If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.”
That’s from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
Whenever the conditions exist:
Replication-Something makes copies of itself.
Variation-The copies are not perfectly identical.
Differential selection-Some variants persist or reproduce more successfully than others,
And I feel that they do in regards to culture, you can't escape the selection dynamics of the process. Adaptive complexity (adaptive through competition) begins accumulating automatically over time. No foresight required.
So I am not arguing for an specific behavior, I am comparing and contrasting reproductive strategies. I argue that we are subject to evolution whether we like it or not.
You are the Professor, I'm the student. You are proudly represented on my bookshelf. I am thankful just to have a chance to be in the conversation with you.
I feel like you misinterpreted a couple of things, and my intention with this was not to be negative.
Did you think I merged a literal commitment to the biological imperative for each individual with the cultural argument? I thought I did when reading the first draft so edited to make that distinct.
I didn't intent to argue for the biological imperative, only to acknowledge it. I don't think any of the adaptions are bad, I just note the consequences. One can evolve themself into a dead end and that's really what it feels like.
Yes, I think you are wrong about that. You might not be and we might go back to a society in which people don't have individual liberty and can't make choices about reproduction either because we get taken over by another very socially conservative culture or become very socially conservative to prevent that. Either way, it's much the same outcome. The only option if we actually want to save western modernity to fight against both of those outcomes and find ways to make liberalism survive.
Within the current framework of the West, how can we address the birthrate issue without fundamentally changes? It feels impossible. I'm not advocating for forced reproduction, so how can we possibly make it more desirable without changing who we are as a culture l?
I am loving the respectful dialogue as opposed to some of the responses Helen’s writing receives.
I'm perplexed. We have an ethical obligation to serve the interests of evolution? As if.
The universe is indifferent and the universe is stranger than we can imagine. As Richard Dawkins has observed, if you could take a photo of your father (or mother) and a photo of his father and so on -- and keep rolling it back -- eventually you get to a single-cell bacteria. If instead you could roll it forward -- your children's grandchildren and their great grandchildren, as Stevie Wonder sang -- eventually you get to descendants who will need to figure out a solution to the impending demise of our Sun. They will resemble us as much as we resemble that bacteria.
Our ethical obligations are to each other.
I think my closing might help clear up my intentions a little.
"A culture may choose autonomy over obligation. Evolution will favor the cultures that choose obligation.
A culture may choose individual identity over family identity. Evolution will favor the cultures that keep family central.
A culture may choose freedom from reproductive expectation. Evolution will favor the cultures that embed reproduction into moral duty.
A culture may choose boundaryless compassion. Evolution will favor the cultures that maintain boundaries strong enough to sustain themselves.
The West is free to choose whatever values it wishes. It is not free to choose the consequences.
Biology casts the final vote."
I guess what I mean is this: if by "evolution" you mean Darwinian natural selection, culture and evolution unfold across such radically different time scales as to make almost any relation of the one to the other a category mistake. In culture's temporal frame evolution is a still life. In evolution's time frame human cultures are bubbles of froth in a wave crashing on a beach.
There is a part called culture is a phenotype
I never argued that we have an obligation to it, only that we are bound by it's rules.
if we don't go the way of the stars, the expanding sun will boil off our oceans and sterilize our home long before our sun is reborn into its true form, a white dwarf, which it will exist as for trillions of years after its fetus phase as our sun.
You're still absolutely right, though. In that scenario, the last life that will survive on earth - even past the cockroaches, are bacteria.... so indeed, future bacteria will be as different from us as we are from past bacteria.
Arguments such as these tend to conflate ultimate causation with proximate causation and taint the biological facts of the matter with some moral purport.
I’d argue that the right way to think about these matters is how evolutionary biology and psychology constrains outcomes that we can reasonably expect. That explains the systematic failure’s of progressive feminism in my native Scandinavia: mainly the gender paradox whereby removing cultural norms pertaining to gender roles increased differences between men and women, and hypergamy: how women statistically select partners that are in a hierarchical position above them.
https://paulspooner2.substack.com/p/description-is-not-prescription?r=7lg80u&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
This is giving strong Matt Yglesias vibes, and I mean that as a compliment.
By far the stronges evolutionary pressure today is quite simply a desire for children. This is especially true in wealthy countries, and especially true for women -- but it's true even for men and even in medium to poor countries. No other single factor influences your likely number of grandchildren by nearly as much.
Thus if evolution still was relevant, the biggest change we should expect is that more people and especially more women will WANT many kids. (this assumes that a desire for children is to a nonzero degree influenced by genetics -- that assumption seems reasonable to me)
But it's not. Absent EXTREMELY strong pressures it takes dozens to thousands of generations for evolution to result in substantial genetic drift, and given current rates of medical progress it's very implausible that we'll leave the genetics of our offspring up to random permutations of the parents genetics for even 2 additional generations, nevermind dozens to thousands.
Instead we'll in some way or other either edit the genetics to be what we WANT them to be, or we'll no longer reproduce in the biological way at all.
Evolution HAS shaped us in the past -- but our future will be determined by other means.
Also, I need to push back a little on this:
"It is true that nothing but reproductive success matters to biological fitness. Evolutionary forces do not care if any individual is happy, good, free, loved, intellectually fulfilled or productive of anything else. An individual who lived 25 years experiencing nothing but misery and suffering and causing nothing but misery and suffering to others but produced 10 children would be a resounding success in evolutionary terms. One who lived 100 happy, joyful years bringing love and joy to others while discovering the cure to multiple fatal diseases, writing great literature and composing great music but had no children would be an utter evolutionary failure."
Evolutionary forces actually do 'care' if individuals are happy, good, free, loved, intellectually fulfilled', etc. but 'care' is not the best word. (If evolutionary forces didn't 'care' we'd have very different brains, since our brains are hardwired for bonding.) Those states of being, in an individual - contribute to a fortified shared experience in a social group - which fosters the biological fitness of those in the group. Others' happiness, freedom, talents and fulfillment contributes enormous value to their siblings, their parents, their friends, lovers, and neighbors. That value becomes their security, biological fitness, their wellness, and adaptability into the future.
That dead 25 year old with 10 children has only created mouths for someone else to feed. Hopefully they had community containing the long-lived happy person.
I agree. David Lodge's book "The Art of Fiction" has a line that goes:
"Literature is very much about having sex and not much at all about raising children - Life's the other way around."
In other words: It is not enough that a man has lots of sex and impregnates lots of women. Rather: THE CHILDREN NEED TO SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE AND RAISE CHILDREN OF THEIR OWN.
This is why monogamous cultures came to dominate the world while polygamous cultures have been dying out. Polygamous cultures are economically weak and have VERY HIGH child mortality rates (for a number of reasons). Monogamous cultures, meanwhile, are more economically productive and have lower child mortality rates because monogamy incentivizes men to become responsible and devoted husbands and fathers. In short: monogamy rewards the dads and it punishes the cads.
This lends further credence to your point: a civilization that does not care AT ALL about human happiness or compassion is ill-suited for family formation and reproduction.
Granted: antisocial behavior CAN be adaptive in times of WARFARE, where you cannot afford to hesitate and/or empathize with the enemy (e.g., sociopaths often make for the best soldiers/killers, so long as you reward them with sex, money and power).
However, antisocial behavior is highly MALADAPTIVE in peacetime. A culture that continues to reward such people in times of PEACE will not survive, because callous and antisocial people do not make for good husbands and fathers.
If you want to win at evolution, have grandkids.
The arguement wasn't just about pure numbers, but the cultures that exist to foster them. This is ultimately a cultural arguement.
Great rebuttal and food for thought. I think there is a sort of reactionism in the conservative right worldview that easily defaults to a 'reduced autonomy for women' argument - and that seems to happen in response to just about any facet of progress / modernity. It happened with bicycles.
Women having fewer children is considered to be a problem, specifically because our western societies' debt based financial systems need increasing numbers of taxpayers. Of course the low birth rate is contextually a problem when your financial system is a Ponzi scheme. Minus that context, it's just shaping up to be another bottleneck. Neither good nor bad.
Somewhere around 40,000 to 100,000 years ago, our species was favored for the development of large brains that could use logic, think abstractly, make distinctive mouth noises to communicate complex ideas, and form complex kinship ties and social bonds. An idea that I'm exploring is that at that crucial period for our species, our continued existence absolutely required non-zero sum thinking. Our ancestors had to have been extremely cooperative - they had to have engaged in mutually-ensured survival strategies or else we wouldn't be here with these big ol' feelsy brains. Our minds contain the firmware for logic, empathy, care, diplomacy, justice - and (getting to the point) individual liberty. Our big ol' feelsy brains consume an absolutely enormous amount of calories thinking about: love; what is just and unjust; how we can make our loved ones well in times of sickness; protecting what we love... It's not a small thing in terms of evolution.
And I'll offer this to sum it up - as sort of a diagnosis: Right now, we don't value any of those things as a structural institution. We say we do, but sentimental mouth noises are about as far as it goes. Our whole global culture is about as zero-sum as it could be - and interestingly, it looks like a negative feedback loop... so it's becoming more zero-sum over time. It's a whole other discussion. I see what's happening with the declining birthrate (maybe it's obvious to anyone reading) - as an extraordinarily good thing. Not that I'm happy that fewer people are being born, or that our species has chosen 'lack of care' as an elevated form of intelligence over 'care' - but maybe it's an opportunity for a species-wide self reflection.
I think my closing might help clear up my intentions.
"A culture may choose autonomy over obligation. Evolution will favor the cultures that choose obligation.
A culture may choose individual identity over family identity. Evolution will favor the cultures that keep family central.
A culture may choose freedom from reproductive expectation. Evolution will favor the cultures that embed reproduction into moral duty.
A culture may choose boundaryless compassion. Evolution will favor the cultures that maintain boundaries strong enough to sustain themselves.
The West is free to choose whatever values it wishes. It is not free to choose the consequences.
Biology casts the final vote."
I don't think your point ever was exactly clear to me. Forgive me for saying so, but it seems just vague enough to slide out from under saying outright that it's women who bear the obligation and moral duty to procreate.
We don't.
Neither is it correct to insist it's your moral obligation to give a child your kidney to save his life.
When favorable conditions for increased procreation exist, women will have more children. It's our choice - and right now, it's a no. The smart thing to do would be to find out why beyond 'Women are selfish'.
Individuals make choices.
Culture is what arises from those individual choices. Not the other way around.
Authoritarianism - i.e. enforced obligation / moral duty - is a zero sum strategy. It's unsustainable, because humans are hardwired for liberty - not obligatory obedience. Zero sum strategies are best for short-term, low-stakes games like football and chess. Not long-term, high-stakes games like human culture. The last few thousand years bears witness to it's best (and bloodiest) attempts to make an unsustainable strategy - sustain culture.
But it - authoritarianism - fails every time.
I ask that because it appears that you have no idea of the point I made. You appear to be arguing against things I haven't supporter
Did you read the series?
The word “fitness” is a trap.
In ordinary language, “fit” sounds evaluative: stronger, better, healthier, more deserving.
In evolution? It just means reproductive success under particular conditions.
That word imports moral weight it doesn’t actually have.
“Fit” starts sounding like “better,” and from there people start building ladders, where evolution only describes branching, pressure, adaptation, and persistence. But nature doesn’t do ladders. It does trees.
I’ve never liked the slogan “survival of the fittest”. It’s incomplete to the point of inaccuracy.
I recently wrote up my own less-catchy version:
“Survival of those best suited to their current environment, who also produce offspring that survive long enough to reproduce”.
If you prefer your evolutionary slogans more pithy, though, the TL;DR of the above is: “Have grandkids and you win at evolution”.
Yes. The word "fit" in the context of evolution is more akin in meaning to the verb or the noun "fit": as in "the key fits the lock, " "you can't fit a square peg in a round hole," or "this jacket is a perfect fit".
Holy crap...lol.
Well done on an interesting extended argument and admirable humility. I would argue that liberalism doesn't need genetic transmission to continue. It just needs new adopters. On evolution: Groups are not acted on by natural selection. Groups are really a folk concept, a figment of the way we constitute our social practices - not substantial continuous entities. Yes culture are social practices are all extended phenotype, but the interaction of genes with culture is complex and dynamic. Treating groups as super organisms is a kind of romanticism.
Indeed, yes.
I acknowledge that group adaptation is not accepted science. Still, I feel any time you have reproduction with variation, competition and selection, you will inevitably find yourself subject to evolution. Culture can be scape this. I refer to Dennett here, but the idea is inescapable in that context.
In the end, one can evolve themselves into a dead end. Think Koalas or Pandas. And that's how it works I think. Not every line has a future.
What does "one" refer to here? I think your account is kind of a mix of science and motivated points without the motivation made explicit. I don't share your concern for group survival. Cultural evolution is a good scientific theory.
The Stoics advocated life in accordance with nature. With human nature being that of a rational, social animal.
History is also not a moral authority
We humans are separate from the normal biological conditions that affect other beings. It's just our thing. It is what it is.
Brilliant article. Thank you for writing it.
Okay, but I don't think you are addressing the core issue. One does not have to consider evolution a moral yardstick to be opposed to extinction. One needs to make a different argument here.
Like this: the population of developed countries in 1925 was about half of today. And yet Mussolini invented the concept of spazio vitale, which the Nazis adopted as Lebensraum, meaning they felt their country is overcrowded, not enough people can be independent farmers, so they sought lands to conquer to export the surplus population to.
There are no reasons to be alarmed when population drops after an absolute historic maximum. Wake me up when we are back to 1925 levels.
A more serious reason for alarm is population structure. Looks like we are going to work until 75.
I would probably just have scrolled past had the sentiment been “I am opposed to extinction.” It was somebody quotestacking the “Nothing else matters” series of statements that drew me in and led me to write three paragraphs which were then expanded into the piece. I then situated that in the broader argument which was not that either but “Western culture will become extinct if it continues being liberal and feminist and considering fertility as a lifestyle choice. I am not saying we should do anything about that (but I am implying we should)”