
Survival of the Friendliest - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/survival-of-the-friendliest
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ajarmst
About every 18 months someone in the popular press feels the need to point out
"exciting new research" that shows that nature isn't really red in tooth and
claw, but that evolutionary biology even seems to show that cooperation and
even altruism can be adaptive! Except that's hardly news. Darwin himself
pointed it out. It's nice that we keep confirming it and exploring its
complexity, but could we just stop being so shocked by it? If nothing else,
explain that the problem is that people have weird preconceived ideas about
evolution, not that evolutionary theory keeps getting revised.

~~~
good_vibes
It keeps coming up because I believe media is a self-fulfilling prophecy for
civilization. As much as we keep being reminded of this truth, we are also
SOLD the idea of competing by consumption and status. Social media breeds this
mentality more and more while also making the world more connected. There is a
lot of cognitive dissonance happening on a global scale like never before
right now.

~~~
samirillian
This isn't just a social media mentality; it's a capitalist mentality and an
American mentality.

~~~
good_vibes
True. I tend to see the world through the lenses of media and technology more
and more. I feel they have the largest influence over us. I agree that is this
a byproduct of capitalism and America as well.

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vinceguidry
Even warfare is a highly collaborative activity. Everything about preparing
and engaging in the most violent activity known to nature is governed by
cooperation. Training, logistics, tactics, strategy, all of these things are
greatly aided by working together.

In the wild, the _only_ creatures that can hunt alone are apex predators, of
which there are only a handful in any given ecosystem. Every single other
species has to band together to eat and protect themselves.

That we ever thought anything different is just silly.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
> That we ever thought anything different is just silly.

Despite having the hindsight of history, people still try to apply Darwinian
theory to the social realm at almost every chance...the rat race, climbing the
social ladder, or pointy-haired managers invoking quotes from _The Art of War_
or some other general even though they haven't been in any real type of
physical altercation or conflict

Social insects, pollinating plants, slime molds, pack hunters, etc. It seems
to me that the history of life is the history of cooperation as the default
state punctuated by selective pressures shocks usually due to a loss of some
type of vital resource. Even our smallest functional unit, the cell, is most
likely an example of cooperation between the eukaryote and mitochondria. All
of our cells cooperating with our microbiome to make us who we are

I've come to the conclusion that humanity's greatest asset over other species
is our unparalleled ability to cooperate in large scales societies using
collective fictions like religion, justice/virtue, and the corporation to give
us the motivation and structure for organization. The cognitive revolution
kick started this and led to the agricultural revolution and the scientific
revolution Yuval Noah Harari's _A Brief History of Humankind_ is a fantastic
read exploring this topic. He also did a MOOC on the same subject, but I don't
know if it's still available.

~~~
clock_tower
You might also be interested in Peter Turchin's _War and Peace and War_ \--
which depicts social cohesion as the measure of social health, and internal
competition among like-minded members of a society as the beginning of the
end. (This is confirmed repeatedly by history, especially Chinese history; I'm
also reminded of how corruption and lack of internal cohesion doomed the post-
Roman British kingdoms in their should've-been-a-cakewalk defense against the
Anglo-Saxons.)

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
Competition is likely what doomed the Roman Republic as the fall of Rome did
not happen with the barbarians at the gate. I remember that the rules stated
Consulship was only suppposed to last for one year, but certain people became
consul 7 times in a row, another guy 3 times, then the triumvirates formed,
Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Roman soldiers were made up of warriors who had
never seen Rome and didn't give an eff about the Republic or the Empire, etc.

All too often, we are taught in school the great man, big event view of
history, like Alexander was some superhuman solely responsible for the
creation of his empire (No one ever brings up the biggest, the Mongol Empire).

~~~
clock_tower
Remember that the Caesars saved Rome from collapse; Octavian (Augustus Caesar)
was one of the most influential and successful people in history. For the fall
of the Western Empire, see _The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization_ ,
but even then remember that the Roman Empire continued in the east until 1453.

I don't know why you condemn the Great Man theory while talking about
Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan -- two of the clearest-cut examples of
how the Great Man theory isn't entirely wrong.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
Ghengis, and the Mongol Empire in general, is the most exceptional empire in
history. What I mean by exception is that it broke all the
rules...circumstances that doomed any other empire didn't have the same effect
on them.

I'm not going to discount Alexander's successes. From all sources, he was very
talented, if impulsive, cavalry calendar

Greece's climate and proximity to the coast made it one of the wealthiest
areas in the world at the time due to exports of olive oil and wine. This
allowed the free citizenry to be outfitted with the finest armor available at
the time. That the Hoplites were free citizens, and not slaves, endowed them
with a greater amount of morale than a number of other militaries at the time.
Also, I believe his father was the one who created the phalanx formation. Put
simply, he inherited the greatest fighting force at the time while being
extremely well-funded.

The Great Man theory isn't entirely wrong, Napoleon springs to mind as another
person who had an outsized influence on history. It's just that much of the
history taught in US schools is about singular individuals and dates. They
don't really go into the overall conditions of the times and that history is
also the result of the decisions of everyday people like you and I

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aphextron
>"We’ve taken these metaphors for evolution to heart, reading them to mean
that life is a race to kill or be killed. “Darwinian” stands in for
“cutthroat,” “survival of the fittest” signifies survival of the ruthless."

This is a complete perversion of the intent Darwin expressed with the term
"survival of the fittest". Here it is conflated with "survival of the
strongest", but that is not what Darwin meant. His point was that any species
more able to _adapt to change_ , and thus maintain their level of "fitness" to
an ecological niche would be dominant.

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wu-ikkyu
Closing sentence:

>For those most invested in the old-school Darwinian view of the survival of
the fittest and violence as virtue, then, the message is clear: Just relax.

Reminds me of the Oppenheimer quote:

>It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only
possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from
doing so

~~~
gadders
>For those most invested in the old-school Darwinian view of the survival of
the fittest and violence as virtue, then, the message is clear: Just relax.

You can't have laws without violence.

~~~
eru
That's not true.

Laws can be useful just as a Schelling point, even without any enforcement.

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ajarmst
"Survival of the Fittest" was not Darwin's idea. The phrase was coined by
Spencer, who misinterpreted Darwin's work. It has since been used primarily to
either further misunderstanding or to apply Darwinism to realms like society
and race, generally to distasteful or even horrific result. It's a reliable
marker for writing that will irritate people who've actually studied
evolutionary biology.

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partycoder
It happens at every level... we as organisms are made from smaller
collaborating organisms:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfNEHl44hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfNEHl44hc)

~~~
mturmon
This is a really great little video (with references!). The article seems to
acknowledge this evolutionary path when it says

"Billions of years ago, another ancient cyanobacteria was engulfed and
“domesticated” by an ancestor of plants. It shed most of the genes it needed
for an independent existence and became what we now know as the chloroplast.
In return for a safe environment, these chloroplasts performed photosynthesis
for their hosts, fueling a new form of life that eventually spread over much
of the Earth."

This seems to be talking about the same hypothesis, but I'm not enough of a
biologist to be sure.

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gfo
Putting this in the category of "almost seems like common sense, but I never
connected the thoughts to come up with this".

Let's look at house pets for example - many dogs still exist because of their
friendliness towards humans (we feed and shelter them). Same with certain
breeds of cats.

I wonder what would happen to this ecosystem if say, humans went extinct
someday? It's pretty easy to imagine we'll be the cause of our own demise so
any of these animals relying on us to survive would probably go with that, but
if we disappeared tomorrow I'd be curious to see how they would survive.

~~~
superioritycplx
There's been cases of pets eating their owners who suddenly passed away. When
push comes to shove, the beast will come out.

~~~
danharaj
It's a corpse at that point.

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mjfl
I don't see a contradiction between "fittest" and "friendliest", at least in
certain contexts.

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zasz
Well, the point is not that _you_ don't, it's that lots of people who like to
talk about evolution don't. "Nature red in tooth and claw" and all that.

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justinclift
Open Source Software Communities relate to this too. Possibly a fairly obvious
point to many. :)

There seems to be evolutionary (fitness?) pressure, helping shape the
Communities, software, their norms, etc.

* In areas without proprietary competitors, new proprietary entrants seem to be rare.

* In many areas previously dominated by proprietary software, the Open Source alternatives are now often credible if not preferred.

This evolution of increasing fitness seems to be continuing.

If Open Source Software represents the "mammals" :D of the software ecosystem,
what do the walled gardens (app stores, etc) represent?

~~~
Radim
I don't know -- photosynthesing organisms that generate primary resources?

Which resources are then indirectly consumed by OSS (at least its "free as in
beer" variant), acting as a parasite in your analogy :) The money has to
ultimately come from somewhere, you know, or the music stops.

What would software devs do if all the oh-so-evil proprietary software
disappeared? Exchange FOSS PRs with each other, until they die of hunger?

~~~
visarga
They would make money by using open source tools to implement specific
projects for companies and end users. The fact that Node and Mongo exist is of
no use, if you don't know how they work together. It takes work and experience
to use the open source tools at their fullest.

~~~
Radim
Make money from "specific projects" that are free open source software? O_o

I think you missed the part where a vital piece of the ecosystem, namely
proprietary/non-free software, no longer exists.

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solidsnack9000
This passage seems to be deliberately looking the other way:

> Our evolution has been profoundly influenced by our selection-buffering
> behaviors. For instance, the appearance of some modern human features
> appears to be correlated with a rise in energy consumption, linked to the
> introduction of meat in our diet.

Does buffering _ourselves_ from selection by hunting and eating animals not
subject them to _more_ selection?

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kusmi
> peace treaty among interdependent nation

It is more commonly referred to as the prisoner's dilemma.

This is a strange article, and I'm curious who the author wrote it for. It's
certainly not written for biologists familiar with the research she refers to.

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ycmbntrthrwaway
Related:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution)

