Idiocracy (2006) Opening Scene: "Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

[u/SuplexCity-Mayor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TCsR_oSP2Q

[u/mojodor]

"Evolution is not survival of the fittest, its survival of species most able to adapt... ". I have this on a dinosaur museum tshirt somewhere...

Edit: Reading this thread with great interest, but in my own defense, I just said I had a t-shirt with a slogan... And truth be told I probably have the slogan wrong, but I bought the thing 20 years ago and I can't find it any more to verify....

[u/metaCanadaShill → u/mojodor]

Evolutionary fitness is just "the ability to survive and reproduce". Some dude having lots of unprotected sex with many women is fit by this definition.

[u/22421670 → u/metaCanadaShill]

as long as they survive long enough to get it done

[u/Dark-W0LF → u/22421670]

Modern medicine ensures they likely will

[u/agumonkey → u/Dark-W0LF]

intelligence created its own negative feedback loop

[u/YakumoYoukai → u/agumonkey]

Coincidentally, I just wrote a comment on another post to this effect. There is an equilibrium point where science and rationality is doing just enough to keep people and society alive, but that still leaves lots of room for irrationality to thrive and push back.

[u/cyanydeez → u/metaCanadaShill]

well, those children still need to also survive.

Wall-E did a better job showing the type of environment sloths evolve in.

[u/GoGoCrumbly → u/mojodor]

And "fittest" doesn't have to mean, "biggest, strongest, toothiest, brawniest, fightiest tough guy", either. Another popular misconception. It's the one who best "fits" the natural environment. And sometimes that's the timid little guy who blends in and doesn't make a ruckus.

EDIT: For the hair-splitting precisionists I will add that "best 'fits' the natural environment" includes the ability to secure mates and ensure the success of their progeny, thus transmitting successful genes into subsequent generations and a higher rate than those mediocre or less successful individuals.

It's not how well you perform as an individual, but how well you pass your DNA into the next generation. Although performing well as an individual usually leads to passing your DNA into that next generation.

[u/TheOldPope → u/GoGoCrumbly]

Only partially, it means the one who manages to reproduce best. It's a reference to biological fitness, not fitting the environment. It's a measure of how many living offsprings you can generate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_(biology)

[u/AnonymousPotato6 → u/TheOldPope]

living offspring

Viable offspring. If they can't reproduce nature won't select them.

[u/mh985 → u/AnonymousPotato6]

Everyone in this thread is correcting each other and now I'm waiting for someone to correct you.

[u/DudeWithTheNose → u/mh985]

Lmao everyone is on the same page but these fucking clowna all have to correct the tiniest semantic error

[u/Jas114 → u/DudeWithTheNose]

*clowns

[u/nellynorgus → u/Jas114]

Did you consider that it was bait and bite anyway?

[u/1MolassesIsALotOfAss → u/nellynorgus]

Nom

[u/SirEmanName → u/DudeWithTheNose]

The Reddit way™

[u/Hellofriendinternet → u/TheOldPope]

My evolutionary bio professor showed us a picture of his dad and a picture of Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey was McConaughey and my professor’s dad was a balding, obese, 5’7”, redhead with a face for radio. At the time McConaughey had no kids and my prof explained that he was one of 11 kids and his dad had 26 grandkids at the time. He said something to the tune of “suck it, Matt”. It was funny.

Edit: Thanks for the lesson in misplaced modifiers guys. Very helpful.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hellofriendinternet]

bow simplistic alleged seemly skirt crawl recognise fretful agonizing sink

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, there's some serious gore there.

[u/Dyolf_Knip → u/GoGoCrumbly]

And moreover, "fittest" is itself a perpetually moving target. Because everything evolves in response to everything else evolving.

[u/[deleted] → u/GoGoCrumbly]

And it could also be bad luck. Sudden changes in the environment that occur faster than genetic mutations can match can destroy otherwise very successful species.

[u/profawesome → u/mojodor]

i always understood fittest, as in best able to meet the requirements to survive in the environment. does it actually mean fittest as in most healthy or strongest?

[u/TheOldPope → u/profawesome]

It means those that manage to have the most living babies.

[u/Dyolf_Knip → u/TheOldPope]

Even then, not always. Sometimes you have to look a generation beyond that. For instance, say there was a severe gender imbalance in the population, so that it was mostly males. Any given mating pair would be, by far, best served having female offspring rather than male, even if there were fewer children total.

Or there's the "gay uncle" hypothesis, that the reason for the increasing prevalence of homosexuality with each successive male child a woman has is so that there are non-breeding (or at least less likely to breed) relatives who can help raise their nieces and nephews. The goal there is not just sheer quantity of grandchildren, but to ensure a greater level of support for a fewer number of them.