An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
"Over time, after the Civil War, embraced a doctrine of a debased, heartless form of Darwinism that proclaimed that those that had emerged at the top of the conniving heap were the best fitted to survive. They claimed to be choicest flower of civilization. When the philosopher Herbert Spencer visited New York, it was almost a state occasion. Spencer, of course, was a close friend of Andrew Carnegie."
Correct..... Still going on....
Stochastic process of anthropomorphicized "natural selection"...
Why does anyone beliving Darwinism is true have any problem with the current economic pov of tptb?
Why wouldn't we want this stochastic process that led to our existence in the first place to somehow still be operating in our economic policy approach?
Are you referring to our physiological existence? That process is too slow, according to transhumanists.
Our relationship to the environment and to each other is another matter. Chimps flinging shit is not the end of the world, until that shit goes nuclear.
As for the economy, increases in productivity are making the labour force redundant. Thus, economic 'natural selection' would lead to a tiny number of owners, and a small number of operating personnel. Is that desirable? Will it be tolerated?
First, the biological theory of evolution based on natural selection doesn't apply to social Darwinism. It's unscientific to make that jump.
Secondly, the free rider problem applies to an individual or small group taking advantage of the larger group. Free riders are eliminated by the larger group or their behavior put to the use of the larger group quite far down the evolutionary chain.
Social Darwinism is philosophy based on assumptions rather than science based on evidence, and it is bad philosophy at that since it illegitimately conflates philosophy and science based on a superficial similarity.
Darwin;s theory of natural selection explained how randomness gave rise to the proliferation of spices and genera through genetic traits that resulted in fitness for survival in various environments. It has nothing to do with competition among individuals.
Can Darwinism be interpreted that way? Of course. There is even evidence that Darwin thought that it could extended socially based on competition among individuals, which is the basis of laissez-faire economics as well as the theories of "scientific racism" and eugenics (think Nazism).
But I know of no contemporary biologist that still think that social Darwinism is scientific. If it were the case, humans would be developing to be more competitive and cooperation would be rare. Management theory, for example, is based on organization, a form of cooperation, rather than on competition among individuals. The most successful people are those who can elicit cooperation toward shared goals based on teamwork.
They use the 'free market' as an analogy for the ecosystem. If you cannot compete in the market, you perish. Them are the rules.
Businesses are organized collectively, living organisms are organized collections of cells. If you buy into Dawkins' metaphor, the phenotype is merely a means to propagate 'selfish' genes. Hence the business owner or CEO could be considered larger manifestations of selfishness. It's not about the business (phenotype), it's all about them (genotype).
~
Another explanation is our propensity to do comparisons between individuals. This often results in an inferiority or superiority complex. The rest is just window dressing i.e. rationalization.
In a firm, they are competing to see who is most cooperative... They get rid of the people who are not team players....
Right, Those with lower cooperation abilities get selected out.
In human organization, there's a balance between individual competition and intra-group cooperation. This extends up to the national level, the most successful groups and nations being the one's that are best organized, not "the most individually competitive."
Increasingly this is taking place on the international and global levels. Cooperation and coordination are more important traits for developmental success than individual competition. and this has been a defining characteristic of human development.
Historically, intra-group competition has been fierce is among classes, and this has been a limiting factor. Caste rigidity (class structure determined by birth) is the most limiting. The US has less rigid class structure (most liberal) than other national groups, and it has been the most successful overall.
Well if you guys think you have a figured out a way how to differentiate Darwinism from so called Social Darwinism I would encourage you guys to develop it and get it out there as imo not many can make the distinction.... And here we are with all the economic dysfunction because of it....
Social Darwinism has its own set of rules. Unlike other animals we don't have to play by those rules once we realize they aren't in our best interests.
I find the prohibition against violence curious given that there are individuals who are good at it. Such an approach would select against those are averse to violence. Many of the elite would be like lambs before the wolf.
Social Darwinism has not much to do with natural selection: 1) sets arbitrary set of rules to what is allowed against what isn't. 2) assumes we still operate within a society (hence there are written and unwritten rules) 3) doesn't recognize the different patterns and adaptive behaviours that happen in nature (including within nature humankind), including cooperative behaviour
basically social darwinism is an ideology out of the mental masturbation of the aristocracy and nouveau aristocracy (the new capitalist class) in the XIX century to justify the established status quo. Neoliberalism, neoclassical economics and all that mental masturbation just inherit from it.
Darwin is so 19th century. We don't know the full story yet, but we've come a long way since Darwin.
Darwin played a role in biology similar to Newton in physics as founders of modern scientific understanding. But they just got the ball rolling in a direction that is still being explored. Similarly, Wundt founded experimental psychology, Freud founded modern psychoanalysis and Durkheim founded modern sociology, Of course, they stood on the shoulders of giants themselves, but they set a direction that is still being followed. This period is one of the most influential regarding discovery, and it was the culmination of the modern period launched by Galileo and Descartes in the 17th century.
Just as these disciplines have come a long way since then, so has biology since Darwin. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” — Theodosius Dobzhansky
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution builds on three principles: natural selection, heredity, and variation. At the time that Darwin wrote, the principles underlying heredity and variation were poorly understood. In the 1940s, however, biologists incorporated Gregor Mendel's principles of genetics to explain both, resulting in the modern synthesis. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s, however, when more comparative molecular sequence data between different kinds of organisms was amassed and detailed, that an understanding of the molecular basis of the developmental mechanisms began to form.
That's putting it kindly. One of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century and this century, who almost single-handedly created the field and to whom every evolutionary biologist almost worships, Robert Trivers isn't too kind to social darwinism. Cooperation, not competition is the most important factor. Trivers and others don't deny that there isn't competition - of course there is. It'd be stupid to deny it. Without cooperation humans wouldn't have survived. Many people just don't notice how much cooperation there goes on every day, and not just between humans but within all species.
Like the new atheists, the new social darwinists are just propagandists for a world view they wish to see come to fruition, not scientists. They're the Mont Pelerin society of the social and natural sciences. The original social darwinists like E.O Wilson never went so far as the "red in tooth and claw" view of the pseudo-scientists.
19 comments:
"Over time, after the Civil War, embraced a doctrine of a debased, heartless form of Darwinism that proclaimed that those that had emerged at the top of the conniving heap were the best fitted to survive. They claimed to be choicest flower of civilization. When the philosopher Herbert Spencer visited New York, it was almost a state occasion. Spencer, of course, was a close friend of Andrew Carnegie."
Correct..... Still going on....
Stochastic process of anthropomorphicized "natural selection"...
Why does anyone beliving Darwinism is true have any problem with the current economic pov of tptb?
Why wouldn't we want this stochastic process that led to our existence in the first place to somehow still be operating in our economic policy approach?
Not that it's true, that's besides the point - that it's "good" and "just".
Well if it led to our existence in the first place why would we not consider it good?
We owe our entire existence to it.... Why not let it continue to operate then?
Are you referring to our physiological existence? That process is too slow, according to transhumanists.
Our relationship to the environment and to each other is another matter. Chimps flinging shit is not the end of the world, until that shit goes nuclear.
As for the economy, increases in productivity are making the labour force redundant. Thus, economic 'natural selection' would lead to a tiny number of owners, and a small number of operating personnel. Is that desirable? Will it be tolerated?
First, the biological theory of evolution based on natural selection doesn't apply to social Darwinism. It's unscientific to make that jump.
Secondly, the free rider problem applies to an individual or small group taking advantage of the larger group. Free riders are eliminated by the larger group or their behavior put to the use of the larger group quite far down the evolutionary chain.
Social Darwinism is philosophy based on assumptions rather than science based on evidence, and it is bad philosophy at that since it illegitimately conflates philosophy and science based on a superficial similarity.
Yes Tom, but they do want people to die.
That's part of the process Bob, whatever common ancestor we and the bonobo have has died off....
Today you might say it is going nuclear but the result is the same ... What is the difference?
Tom you are making a distinction without a difference....
I don't know how you guys can differentiate this and neither can many others....
Darwin;s theory of natural selection explained how randomness gave rise to the proliferation of spices and genera through genetic traits that resulted in fitness for survival in various environments. It has nothing to do with competition among individuals.
Can Darwinism be interpreted that way? Of course. There is even evidence that Darwin thought that it could extended socially based on competition among individuals, which is the basis of laissez-faire economics as well as the theories of "scientific racism" and eugenics (think Nazism).
But I know of no contemporary biologist that still think that social Darwinism is scientific. If it were the case, humans would be developing to be more competitive and cooperation would be rare. Management theory, for example, is based on organization, a form of cooperation, rather than on competition among individuals. The most successful people are those who can elicit cooperation toward shared goals based on teamwork.
In a firm, they are competing to see who is most cooperative... They get rid of the people who are not team players....
So you are saying that a beehive is being coordinated by the Queen?
The drone bees are free will choosing to cooperate?
They use the 'free market' as an analogy for the ecosystem. If you cannot compete in the market, you perish. Them are the rules.
Businesses are organized collectively, living organisms are organized collections of cells. If you buy into Dawkins' metaphor, the phenotype is merely a means to propagate 'selfish' genes. Hence the business owner or CEO could be considered larger manifestations of selfishness. It's not about the business (phenotype), it's all about them (genotype).
~
Another explanation is our propensity to do comparisons between individuals. This often results in an inferiority or superiority complex. The rest is just window dressing i.e. rationalization.
In a firm, they are competing to see who is most cooperative... They get rid of the people who are not team players....
Right, Those with lower cooperation abilities get selected out.
In human organization, there's a balance between individual competition and intra-group cooperation. This extends up to the national level, the most successful groups and nations being the one's that are best organized, not "the most individually competitive."
Increasingly this is taking place on the international and global levels. Cooperation and coordination are more important traits for developmental success than individual competition. and this has been a defining characteristic of human development.
Historically, intra-group competition has been fierce is among classes, and this has been a limiting factor. Caste rigidity (class structure determined by birth) is the most limiting. The US has less rigid class structure (most liberal) than other national groups, and it has been the most successful overall.
Well if you guys think you have a figured out a way how to differentiate Darwinism from so called Social Darwinism I would encourage you guys to develop it and get it out there as imo not many can make the distinction.... And here we are with all the economic dysfunction because of it....
Social Darwinism has its own set of rules. Unlike other animals we don't have to play by those rules once we realize they aren't in our best interests.
I find the prohibition against violence curious given that there are individuals who are good at it. Such an approach would select against those are averse to violence. Many of the elite would be like lambs before the wolf.
Social Darwinism has not much to do with natural selection:
1) sets arbitrary set of rules to what is allowed against what isn't.
2) assumes we still operate within a society (hence there are written and unwritten rules)
3) doesn't recognize the different patterns and adaptive behaviours that happen in nature (including within nature humankind), including cooperative behaviour
basically social darwinism is an ideology out of the mental masturbation of the aristocracy and nouveau aristocracy (the new capitalist class) in the XIX century to justify the established status quo. Neoliberalism, neoclassical economics and all that mental masturbation just inherit from it.
Darwin is so 19th century. We don't know the full story yet, but we've come a long way since Darwin.
Darwin played a role in biology similar to Newton in physics as founders of modern scientific understanding. But they just got the ball rolling in a direction that is still being explored. Similarly, Wundt founded experimental psychology, Freud founded modern psychoanalysis and Durkheim founded modern sociology, Of course, they stood on the shoulders of giants themselves, but they set a direction that is still being followed. This period is one of the most influential regarding discovery, and it was the culmination of the modern period launched by Galileo and Descartes in the 17th century.
Just as these disciplines have come a long way since then, so has biology since Darwin. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” — Theodosius Dobzhansky
Natural Selection — Zero to do with competition among individuals.
History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary biology
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution builds on three principles: natural selection, heredity, and variation. At the time that Darwin wrote, the principles underlying heredity and variation were poorly understood. In the 1940s, however, biologists incorporated Gregor Mendel's principles of genetics to explain both, resulting in the modern synthesis. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s, however, when more comparative molecular sequence data between different kinds of organisms was amassed and detailed, that an understanding of the molecular basis of the developmental mechanisms began to form.
Evolutionary developmental biology
Tom: "It's unscientific to make that jump."
That's putting it kindly. One of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century and this century, who almost single-handedly created the field and to whom every evolutionary biologist almost worships, Robert Trivers isn't too kind to social darwinism. Cooperation, not competition is the most important factor. Trivers and others don't deny that there isn't competition - of course there is. It'd be stupid to deny it. Without cooperation humans wouldn't have survived. Many people just don't notice how much cooperation there goes on every day, and not just between humans but within all species.
Like the new atheists, the new social darwinists are just propagandists for a world view they wish to see come to fruition, not scientists. They're the Mont Pelerin society of the social and natural sciences. The original social darwinists like E.O Wilson never went so far as the "red in tooth and claw" view of the pseudo-scientists.
Post a Comment