What does Veeky Forums think of Social Darwinism? Is it a legitimate idea or just a meme?

I dunno, the death by a thousand cuts is a real thing. If i tied you down and let rodents devour you, does that mean the rodents are superior?

If I banded together with fellow degenerates and kill a good man, does that make the degenerates better than the good man?

creationwiki.org/Social_Darwinism

It is highly problematic, and I am triggered by the mere mention of it

>But, the concept focuses on what is fit in the current situation, which I think is valuable.
Not really, because it can only produce tautologies.
> It takes Darwinism out of the jungle and it becomes a filter to view human interaction.
But it's a terrible filter to view human interaction, because humans interact on a lot more levels than reproduction.

>If I banded together with fellow degenerates and kill a good man, does that make the degenerates better than the good man?
Yes. Unless that good man produced a number of viable offspring above replacement rate out the door first.

I think both of your arguments can be reconciled through spirituality, but that only applies if you are a believer. This would then lead to a sort of spiritual darwinism.

I think this is the problem with Social Darwinism. Reproduction makes right is a silly proposition. Reproducing does not make you or your offspring any fitter than someone who has not yet reproduced. Scum can beget scum and destroy good, but in doing so they do not become the new good.

the man was of satan, an expression of anger

Meme. Society changes way faster than evolution can even account for.

>Meme. Society changes way faster than evolution can even account for.
How did Europeans evolve immune systems that could deal with the diseases that amerindians could not?

Depending on the trait being changed and the evolutionary pressure, a people can evolve to have a new trait with 2-4 generations. this would mostly be a change in the percentage with said genes though, from few to almost everyone.

only first order effects exist: the philosophy

memery

Meme? No.
Cancer? Yes.

It's one of those HURR HISTORY POINTS TO A CERTAIN DIRECTION beliefs.

It's an idea Darwin himself utterly rejected.

There's a substantial difference between Europeans adapting to European diseases and evolution.

what about crass genetic defects and heredetary deseases?

it was a legitimate idea at time of its conception but it turned out to be wrong.

>How did Europeans evolve immune systems that could deal with the diseases that amerindians could not?
By being exposed to those diseases for over 15k years.

In absolute terms there's nothing stopping us from using selective breeding to create our own ethnicities of purebred human, just like we breed cows to produce more milk, or breed dogs for obedience.

In practice, however, a human is a heck of a lot more complex a creature than a cow, and breeding for something as poorly understood as "intelligence" might even have the opposite effect, for example, breeding a people to have a high IQ might come at a cost of creative or unorthodox problem solving. There are simply too many variables for us to account for at this stage of technological development.

Similarly, said hypothetical purebred humans would run into the same problems faced by purebred dogs: truly crippling genetic problems caused by an ever dwindling population of individuals with a clean pedigree as the degree of specialization grows more pronounced. Even in the short term we saw this with royal families suffering from ailments like hemophilia due to inbreeding, something like a purebred would have those problems but magnified hugely. Taking our hypothetical high IQ purebred human for example, if their superior analytic mind came at a cost of chronic sickliness and a staggering number of allergies, their quality of life would be extremely poor and the costs of supporting this population would far outstrip the benefits of supporting a genetically healthy "mutt" population.

And then there are the political ramifications as well. In real terms a policy of social Darwinism is simply giving busy bodies the right to determine who gets to marry who, invariably resulting in an oppressive police state dominated by a status quo of hard line reactionaries.

You basically just described Ashkenazi jews. And they do very very well everywhere they go.

Yes but this was a natural development, not a deliberate design. You're talking about 11 million people from an ethnic group nearly 2,000 years old who were forced into positions of finance for many centuries because those were the only career opportunities open to them so they naturally selected for people who were better in these sort of white collar positions and then rose to prominence when those types of skills became more important in the modern era.

The problem with social darwinism isn't that no one is inferior and we are all equal and should sit by campfire singing kumbaya. It is the opposite.

Only a tiny proportion of humans have a large number of beneficial genes or beneficial genes that haven't spread through the population yet. Instead of breeding snowniggers you'd have to do something like perfom a global genetic census and acquire millions of surrogate mothers. You would be picking from a broad range of humans and racemixing a lot so the end product wouldn't be qt aryans.

The problem is people are too selfish and egotistical, they would never allow this even though it would be for the greater good.

Your distinction between artificial and natural selection is totally arbitrary when placed in the context of what "society" selects for.

Within a generation people are going to have designer babies thanks to CRISPR anyway.

It literally observably occurs so it is technically legitimate. It's sort of like how the world technically operates as a libertarian anarchy. Sure you can disagree with it and some people might be confused enough to support it as an abstract ideal, but when it comes down to it it's how existence works.

>Your distinction between artificial and natural selection is totally arbitrary when placed in the context of what "society" selects for.
nonsense. At no point did a committee of fancy assholes sit down and decide to start breeding Ashkenazi Jews for "intelligence". They were literally just adapting to circumstances and those circumstances changed favorably for them in the modern era

>Within a generation people are going to have designer babies thanks to CRISPR anyway.
But it will almost certainly come with controls that will maximize the long term genetic health prospects for the infant, and that will probably remain a limiting factor for a long time. There will probably never be a "chose your child's intelligence on a scale of 1 to 10" chart, it will be more like using fresher ingredients to make a better tasting cake (or in this case, a healthier and longer lived person)

And genetic manipulation is a different beast than eugenics

Controls as in law?

What about breeding people with conflicting traits? A simple example - ever seen someone with calves bigger than their thighs? It's weird. Breed that person with someone who lacks calves. Success?

among others

genes don't work that way. they're not blueprints and they're not code. You couldn't just copy the genes for an elephant's trunk and make a person with an elephant trunk. Genes are to a person what ingredients are to a casserole..

ruined by edgy manbaby tantrums

Its friggin right wing reactionary meanie bullcrap!!! Obviously humans are completely immune to any selection pressures!!!

I think social darwinism is obviously right, but vanity prevents us from seeing it.

Here is the most obvious fact: people kill themselves all the time. It's almost always because they think their life isn't worth living, because they can't compete in some way. They're usually right. But society treats suicide as a sickness.

So if someone says social darwinism is wrong because everyone's life is worth living, just remember that lots of people explicitly say their lives aren't worth living and you never listen to them.

Of course it's a legitimate idea. Certain cultural groups reproduce more or less than other cultural groups even when existing side by side in the same economy. You can't tell me that a liberal urbanite couple who wait until they're 35 to have kids have the same level of Darwinian 'success' as the Islamic couple down the block who have 8 kids by the time they're 25. That's just objectively wrong.

The problem is you can't draw any reliable conclusions from any of this because we don't have an accurate, or even mildly successful model of the comprehensive human society. Certainly not any that take culture into account, if such a thing is even possible. And then there's then there's the problem of bleed-off. Rural Christians have more reproductive success than urban Atheists but cities and Atheism grow while country living and Christianity fall off over time. Urban Muslims don't seem to have this problem though. Their numbers grow steadily even in the West. Why is this? Is there a cultural cause? An economic one? Can anyone say reliably? How do federal programs like Planned Parenthood, Affordable Care, Social Assistance or even the Army effect which groups and ideas proliferate? Can anyone say with certainty?

The study of evolution is a study of emergent phenomenon. It's hard enough to model this type of thing in nature but doing it for humans is so much more complicated. You have to take the regular models and multiply their complexity by the total product of all human action and reaction, both to nature and himself. We don't even have an accurate model of the human brain yet, let alone the product of billions of these brains interacting in a pattern our economic and social models barely scratch the surface of.

Social Darwinism may be a real realm of study one day but we'd need Foundation-tier super math to pull it off.

I think half the people in this thread think social Darwinism means "populations tend towards my concept of what is good" rather than "populations change over time by mutation and selection, and society is one aspect of selection".

I social darwinism was right, people wouldn't kill themselves all the time, because that behavior would be non-competitive.

This!!!

Isn't it ridiculous that right wingers don't think that human evolution stopped above the neck, precisely starting 100k years ago like we do?!

Ridiculous!!!

>Social Darwinism has many definitions, and some of them are incompatible with each other. As such, social Darwinism has been criticized for being an inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear political conclusions

genes are literally quatrenary code. LITERALLY CODE. code doesn't have to be universally hashable in order to be code. are you a retard?

>not getting to choose your kid's intelligence
that's exactly the point of crispr and embryo selection. embryos can be screened with a reasonable confidence interval for intelligence, and augmented by crispr treatments.

>It operates regardless of what anyones says

Evolutionary fitness operates yes, but not "Social Darwinism".

Social Darwinism is an ideology that was cooked up by racists with too much free time on their hands.

One thing is acknowledging some form of the "survival of fitness" actually is real in nature, another is advocating an essentially psychopathic attitude towards your fellow humans.

>psychopathic
you're being cis-heteronormative there, friend

social darwinism was teh basic recognition that human traits are also derived from darwinian processes, which is correct.

they advocated EUGENICS, which is the advocation of improving the gene pool. which is not only practicable, but demonstrable.

the only thing subjective here is whether you think the social darwinists were psychopaths whose opinions should be repressed, or whether the murderers they wanted to castrate were teh psychopathic behavior that society should discourage.

>social darwinism was teh basic recognition that human traits are also derived from darwinian processes, which is correct.

No it wasn't. It was an ideology that was created to specifically justify the destruction and oppression of other races.

E.g

>"Hey Cletus, do you know why the black man takes so well to bein' a slave?
>"No, I don't Johnny, why's that?"
>"Because dees evolutionists be sayin' the negro is inferior to the white man, just by nature itself!"
>"Well who whudda thunk it ! Gosh darn!"

and the republicans are an ideology created to specifically justify the oppression of other races, right?

it's not like these things have internal dynamics tied to them, right? everything revolves around oppressing other races.

it makes so much sense that an ideology whose very name suggests that social behaviors are darwinian, is instead, actually a secret plot to oppress the black man.

oh, now give me oppressionbux

>it makes so much sense that an ideology whose very name suggests that social behaviors are darwinian, is instead, actually a secret plot to oppress the black man.

Exactly, so:

"Social behaviors are darwinian, e.g the black man deserves to be a slave, because his slavish behavior is caused by evolution".

Which is the kind of argument social darwinists used.

so you're saying human social behavior is not darwinian, but instead, derived from the ether, or god?

it's obvious human social behavior is darwinian. we punish criminals because they threaten our survival. that's darwinian. we dance because it signals health. that's darwinan.

you're an idiot if you draw some arbitrary between darwinian and nondarwinian human behavior. everything we do has a darwinian cause because you think it was beamed into our souls via god, or some sort of higher dimension of spiritual equality.

Saying something is darwinian doesn't cut it. You actually have to explain how it is darwinian.

For example, explain how a scat fetish is darwinian. Or a Christmas tree. Or Beethoven's 5th. Or a toilet. Or a computer.

are you stupid?

tradition is darwinian, study game theory. things like music are peacock feathers for people who can produce them. people who are smart enough to produce more productive technology, e.g. intensive farming, computers, reap reproductive benefit, thus, technology spreads.

scat fetishes are weird, but there's a reason people have those, and not, say, tenser field fetishes.

you're an idiot if you think these things don't have darwinian bases. you want to arbitrarily declare behavior arises form NO darwinian context so you can say it all comes from a place of "warm feelings and hapiness" on a transcendent plane of existence.

it doesn't. kill yourself.

You're projecting a lot here m8. Might want to cut back on it.

>you want to arbitrarily declare behavior arises form NO darwinian context so you can say it all comes from a place of "warm feelings and hapiness" on a transcendent plane of existence.

I never said anything remotely like that.

What I said was that Social Darwinism was an ideology created by 18th century white upper-class men that wanted to have an intellectual justification to continue to be oppressors.

Now this might be uncomfortable for you, but it's still the truth.

if human behavior is derived from a darwinian context, then you can't really say that examning human behavior in terms of how it evolved, racist

because it's obvious that if human behavior is evolved, then humans have different behaviors due to evolution. including intelligence

that's not an ideology if it's true. it's reality

>then you can't really say that examning human behavior in terms of how it evolved, racist

Sure I can. Whether or not humanity functions according to specific natural laws, it's still racist to hate another race and want to oppress and destroy them.

acknowledging the fact that all behavior is evolved, therefore behavioral diferences are teh result of evolution, doesn't entail destruction

The question isn't whether or not people are different moron. The question is what you do about it. Everyone is different. My mother and I am different, you and I are different, and so am I and everyone else on the planet.

But you are trying to argue that because people are different, they should have a specific place in society; this is a fallacy.

you are saying that social darwinists wanted to kill anyone who was remotely different from them. that's wrong. many of them wanted to eugenicize criminals to reduce criminality. some of them wanted to use eugenics to lift up other races.

the only one who is acting aggressive right now is you, who is trying to paint a target on anyone who acknowledges genetics as a "murderous racist" and surely whatever happens to those eople, including getting murdered is "totally justified."

you're the one being aggressive here.

You're just baiting me right now, so I'm done.

THIS GUY IS A RACIST HE DESERVES TO DIE. HE'S SO AGGRESSIVE, GO KILL HIM. KILL THE RACISTS. KILL THE COPS. BLACK LIVES MATTER.

yeah, sure, the social darwinists are the aggressive ones.

reality isn't bait, idiot

No, but the fact that I have to repeat myself like 4 times in the span of 20 posts, leads me to believe that you're either lacking seriously in reading comprehension, or that you're trolling, so which is it?

the only thing you've said is that the fact they believe in something that is true, which is the genetic origin of behavior, means anything they were correct about is irrelevant because some of them encouraged imperialism.

you're trying to impose a singular monolithic identity on something that was a complex historical phenomenon. why would you do that? to discredit science, obviously.

I'm not gonna play your stupid game.

the fact of the matter is that the social darwinists were right.

>means anything they were correct about is irrelevant because some of them encouraged imperialism.

But that's not what I said at all.

This is the last time I repeat myself.

They engineered an ideology to justify their imperialism. Not that they were actual scientists(which is a respectable thing to be btw, regardless of your pathetic assumption that I supposedly want to discredit science), trying to figure out truths about the universe, and just happened to be imperialists.

social darwinists like margaret sanger, who was an old fucking woman, were not imperialists. they didnt' have gigantic gunships. they were community organizers who saw a useful fucking piece of knowledge that could be applied.

imperialists also saw the value in this knowledge.

chinese emperors put social darwinism into practice before they even had explicit knowledge about evolution. are they imperialists too? did the chinese emperor create an elaborate social policy to justify hatred of black people, who he didn't kow existed, and whom he never invaded?

the social darwinists were CORRECT. fucking get over it.

ot the entire world makes oppressing the lesser races its top priority, you dickhead

>they were community organizers who saw a useful fucking piece of knowledge that could be applied.

Applied to what exactly?

>ignoring the fact that your entire argument hinges on the fact that somehow a bunch of old women were imperialists
they were community organizers. one of them started planned parenthood. what FUCK do you THINK they did you idiot?

apparently you think they ran the dutch east india company and genocided the indians.

So, you have nothing to say?

community organizers fucking community organize. that includes allocating welfare resources, reviewing the cases, what's happening, attempting to provide medical care and education.

now fuck off you idiot