Natural selection isn't actually a thing; there is no reason as to why, when or how it is supposed to act. We just like to pretend that there is actual system, direction, and reason for changes to happen. But fact is that sometimes changes DO NOT happen. There actual are forms of life on this planet, which have survived for absurdly long time, without functionally any change; we call these "Living fossils". To assume there is some sort of a real mechanism in play which selects things in the nature, we'd need to explain to why there are "living fossils" which are not subject to this selection anymore. There are also many organisms which keep on living happily, and are the only (as far as we know) existing forms of that life. Encephalartos Woodii is an example of this, all existing E.Woodii cycads are clones of this one plant, and it can not reproduce as it a male, and no one has found a female of this plant anywhere in the world; it is also suspected that it is a natural hybrid of two different plants, and therefor there actually are no female plants for it to reproduce with. Yet it existed, and was found in 1895, and brought to England, from which it has been cloned.
The reason this annoys me is that it assume that there is some greater agenda in the world, and that a static system couldn't even potentially exist. Along with this it assume that every currently living thing - which can reproduce - is "the best" form of living due to "natural selection". However a meteor hitting the planet and wiping out a superior form of life was not "natural selection". A isolated cave deep underground, which due to earthquake gets destroyed, was not "natural selection". If we want to broaden the definition to include that, then we'd need to consider something like a genocide killing a entire group of people's is "natural selection". Or someone with unique beneficial trait making the superior in some metric, gets killed by drunk driver that passed out in their car being considered "natural selection", Or someone being able to have offspring because they won a lottery and could afford medical treatment to correct an issue, while someone else who couldn't afford this because a shareholder wanted to maximise dividens next quarter - as being "natural selection". This would lead us to an absurd scenario where insurances companies denying coverage to people is just "natural selection" and nothing can be done about it... Or government deciding that unique one of a kind habitat must be destroyed along with all life forms in it, because some oligarch wanted to turn it into a radioactive waste, asbestos, and heavymetals dump, so they could get lucrative government contracts. Nothing can be done about this... It is just "natural selection"... Right?
There is no rule which says that the superior individual should survive.
I pretty sure that natural selection is just that the ones most fit to the environment will survive. It’s not a rule or anything but if an organism isn’t fit to survive they won’t be able to pass down their traits Because they’ll die
By what definition is something "most fit" for it's environment. That is the issue here. There can be a type of life, that is more fit for the environment, but it died because of one off event like a meteor strike or whatever. There is no reason as to why the best should survive, or the worst wouldn't. If we wanted to attribute every bossible event as natural selection, then we'd have have allow things likd genocide, death due to governments deciding that shareholder's profits are more imporyant, or extinction because we humans wanted to build a datacentre to make numbers with and then pretend these numbers are valuable, as just extensions of "natural selection".
"best fit" means they are able to survive their environment including the predators in it. if a meteor strikes and only some animals with dark fur survive because they can blend in now, they are now the best fit for that area. the worst wouldn't survive because their legs can't work or their fur doesn't blend in so predators get to them or they can't get food or water, so they can't pass down their traits. genocides,death due to government, etc. aren't really natural
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u/SinisterCheese 29d ago
Natural selection isn't actually a thing; there is no reason as to why, when or how it is supposed to act. We just like to pretend that there is actual system, direction, and reason for changes to happen. But fact is that sometimes changes DO NOT happen. There actual are forms of life on this planet, which have survived for absurdly long time, without functionally any change; we call these "Living fossils". To assume there is some sort of a real mechanism in play which selects things in the nature, we'd need to explain to why there are "living fossils" which are not subject to this selection anymore. There are also many organisms which keep on living happily, and are the only (as far as we know) existing forms of that life. Encephalartos Woodii is an example of this, all existing E.Woodii cycads are clones of this one plant, and it can not reproduce as it a male, and no one has found a female of this plant anywhere in the world; it is also suspected that it is a natural hybrid of two different plants, and therefor there actually are no female plants for it to reproduce with. Yet it existed, and was found in 1895, and brought to England, from which it has been cloned.
The reason this annoys me is that it assume that there is some greater agenda in the world, and that a static system couldn't even potentially exist. Along with this it assume that every currently living thing - which can reproduce - is "the best" form of living due to "natural selection". However a meteor hitting the planet and wiping out a superior form of life was not "natural selection". A isolated cave deep underground, which due to earthquake gets destroyed, was not "natural selection". If we want to broaden the definition to include that, then we'd need to consider something like a genocide killing a entire group of people's is "natural selection". Or someone with unique beneficial trait making the superior in some metric, gets killed by drunk driver that passed out in their car being considered "natural selection", Or someone being able to have offspring because they won a lottery and could afford medical treatment to correct an issue, while someone else who couldn't afford this because a shareholder wanted to maximise dividens next quarter - as being "natural selection". This would lead us to an absurd scenario where insurances companies denying coverage to people is just "natural selection" and nothing can be done about it... Or government deciding that unique one of a kind habitat must be destroyed along with all life forms in it, because some oligarch wanted to turn it into a radioactive waste, asbestos, and heavymetals dump, so they could get lucrative government contracts. Nothing can be done about this... It is just "natural selection"... Right?
There is no rule which says that the superior individual should survive.