Thursday, July 25, 2013

Dirk Ehnts — Survival of the least skilled?

Recently I have been thinking whether intelligence is aimed at finding the truth or aimed at survival. I came to the conclusion that the latter was right, but that we can use reason to build a society where the two coincide. Institutions matter....
...the lesson is to create institutions that bring out the best behavior of human beings. And for those that say that this suppresses freedom: we already have lots of institutions that influence us. Think of school, families and so on. These are not natural, so we might as well think about how to improve those institutions. The result could be a survival of the most social.
econoblog 101
Survival of the least skilled?
Dirk Ehnts | Berlin School for Economics and Law

"Survival of the fittest" is about species survival through natural selection, not individual survival through competition as social Darwinism has it wrongly. The most "fit" supposedly have more chances at leaving offspring, hence their DNA, which on balance favors the survival and spread of a species over time through adaptation to emerging environmental challenges.


1 comment:

Carlos said...

Finding the truth requires deep reflection and an open inquiring mind. Attributes that don't mesh with the "teaching to the exam" imperative foisted on schools by neoliberal, corporate lackeys.