General News Thread

[Snow]

The ideal human being is fit, fucks a lot, brings home food, puts a roof over people's heads, makes a ton of kids, raises those kids grow up with their heads on straight so they can do everything the ideal human did but better, and makes sure those kids have kids themselves. The vast majority of people strive to be at least some approximation of that ideal, with minor variations between them.

But of course in every population, there are those failures who don't approach that ideal and don't manage to pass on their seed. Perhaps they weren't raised right, or suffer from a low sex drive, or have a number of other flaws and shortcomings that lower overall fitness and ensure they die alone.

Don't self-hate like this, friend.

[Five_X]

i barely can bring home my own food

[Kareshy]

That'd be great if the human population were at a point where it might go extinct if not for those behaviors, but it really isn't like that anymore. (And, arguably never really was.) The existential threats which breeding can solve are no longer a factor, and the ones that are or are potentially won't be solved by fucking until it goes away. This concept "Ideal human" is based on a lot of presumption of the world continuing to be as it was, and even then a lot of the "Survival of the fittest" crowd are not really founding those beliefs on how it actually was. As far back as we go humans that develop culture also tended toward taking care of each other.

[Bloble]

Okay but do you know what the original context that brought us to this is?

Oh right, that.

Gender roles are hard-wired, but moreso into our culture than our biology. The latter is mostly mating rituals, responses to pheremones and such, and physical traits like women tending to be weaker but more long-lived and guys being stronger but shorter-lived, because dudes are expendable and women need to raise children and whatnot. Behaviour-wise, however, the story is different. Religion exists because genes alone came up short when it came to improving fitness, so we turned to memes (using the scientific term here) to finish that job.

The big problem with gender roles is that just like Religion, they're in a limbo between useful and harmful. Back in the day gender roles saved thousands of lives, and now they get in the way more often than not, and stifle growth. Stay in the kitchen used to be to keep women alive and making babies in a dangerous world, but now staying in the kitchen will cause you to lose out on potential profits and result in poverty more often than not. This is a result of new natural selection clashing with old both culturally and biologically: it's much more difficult to discard a trait that's now vestigial than it is to establish a completely new one. We still have wisdom teeth even though we don't need them, we still have five toes even though grasping with the feet is useless, and we still enforce certain gender norms even though they are no longer as necessary to improve fitness.

So yeah, give it some time, we'll see some improvement. Culture as a whole is still fucked though; most of that shit just leads right back around to banging.

[2Bad]

Holy fuck just post about ladder theory and get it over with

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Also this is actually straight up some homophobic/transonic shit you're spewing so mods?

[Bloble]

Also this is actually straight up some homophobic/transonic shit you're spewing so mods?

My opinions are not those of natural selection, and historical speculation into the role of gender norms/roles does not represent my personal viewpoint. Claiming I'm bigoted in that way is an insult and I take offense to that. Apologize.

[Kareshy]

When you put the perspective out there that you think anyone who avoids the call of reproduction are being failures of human beings you're skirting pretty close to it already.

[Mcjon01]

My opinions are not those of natural selection, and historical speculation into the role of gender norms/roles does not represent my personal viewpoint. Claiming I'm bigoted in that way is an insult and I take offense to that. Apologize.

Sorry, but you two disagree so he's biologically hard wired to challenge you for alpha dominance. No reason to apologize for natural behavior.

[2Bad]

"if you aren't pumping em out you're basically a genetic failure THAT'S JUST MY OPINION DON'T SHAME"

[Frostyvale]

As much as it's comfortable to pretend we've escaped the influence of biology, that's not close to the case. The central purpose of any living organism, and this is quite clearly written into the definition of the term, is to replicate itself and preserve the genetic pattern.

From that frame, the failure to reproduce is most certainly a failure to keep your genes at maximum expression in future generations. So, get over it. It's not that bad.

[2Bad]

Shocking source of backup.

[Neir]

I mean, he's kind of right?? Biological urges do not magically cease to exist once you hit the 20th century, whether they logically "should" apply or not. Of course, the specific ways to apply that are still very much up in the air and it'd be equally naïve to assume every social tradition in the modern (and only modern) day is a result of hard-wired biological fact. I'm certainly skeptical of evolutionary psychology as its applied in a lot of public discourse, but saying humans are no longer bound by an animal nature seems like outright nonsense to me.

see, yeah, the drive still exists. But's almost entirely vestigial at this point. When was the last time you felt the need to murder a man to fuck his wife or kill your dog to eat it.

then you can talk about urges and being controlled by biology

[Frostyvale]

see, yeah, the drive still exists. But's almost entirely vestigial at this point. When was the last time you felt the need to murder a man to fuck his wife or kill your dog to eat it.

then you can talk about urges and being controlled by biology

Instinct certainly can experience a kind of genetic drift after a few thousand years of less intense selection, but they're not so diluted that they have no effect. Flight/fight responses and sexual arousal, for instance, work almost essentially the same way as they always have.

Of course, it's not to say that humans aren't in some capacity different from chimpanzees. We've developed a taste for replicating and preserving ideas instead of leaving it up to our muscles and our senses. The proliferation and maintenance of knowledge is what gives us our advantage over the various other fleshy, furry things that are by all rights stronger, faster, and more durable than us.

Phenotypes win battles, but memes win the war. That's why we're seven billion strong, and everything else is approaching the last bottleneck.

So relax. It's OK. We're all gonna make it, in some capacity.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Let's talk about honeybees.

Most of those bees don't mate, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own biological/"sociological" niche (if we liken bee groups to human societies) that they fulfill.

So no sweat if one doesn't mate and pass on their genetic code. As long as you're doing something of value to yourself and society, you're 'fit' and have your own 'niche.'

(this is, of course, presupposing that everything in one's genetic portfolio has 'purpose', and isn't actually just a byproduct of some random, benign mutation that was acquired generations prior)

[SeiKeo]

If evolution is real why do chimpanzees exist still?

[Neir]

Oh yeah, and in response to ad absurdem responses, that's the whole fucking point. If it doesn't physically drive your behavior, it's influence is reduced to the point of being irrelevant.

don't like gays cause they don't make babies? On you. Don't like women in power? Super on you since it happens all over the place in nature. And so on, and so forth.

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If evolution is real why do chimpanzees exist still?

i know you're being ironic but it's called divergent evolution

[Mcjon01]

If that exists, then convergent evolution must also exist, in which case why haven't we turned back into chimpanzees yet? Checkmate, atheist.

[Kirby]

[Frostyvale]

Analogous traits, my dude...

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[Arashi_Leonhart]

If that exists, then convergent evolution must also exist, in which case why haven't we turned back into chimpanzees yet? Checkmate, atheist.

No, I'm pretty sure the process has already begun.