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EVOLN NOT FOR GOOD OF SPECIES
Natural selection works almost entirely within species. Lions with sharper teeth do better than other lions at capturing prey. Gazelles with faster hooves do better than other gazelles at evading lions. Sharp teeth and fast hooves evolved because they’re good for their owners, not because they’re good for the species. Certainly, these traits are also good for the species. If lions or gazelles didn’t keep getting better at catching or evading each other, they could very well go extinct. But that’s not why these traits were favored. We know it’s not because, in some cases, traits are favored despite being bad for the species. The primatologist Jane Goodall discovered in the 1960s, much to her surprise, that male chimpanzees occasionally band together to kill members of other groups.4 This gives the killers an advantage, gaining them territory and females. But it’s hardly advantageous for the species. Chimps are endangered, and thus the last thing they ought to be doing is going around murdering each other. Nonetheless, as long as killer chimps do better than pacifists, violence will be the norm, even if it’s suboptimal for the species as a whole. Bottom line: Evolution ain’t about the good of the species.
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SURVVL OF TH QRETTIEST
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“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.”
― Thinking, Fast and Slow
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