Are Social Darwinists psychopaths?

[The Widening Gyre]

It's not an ideology at all, it is simply the obvious and apparently uncontroversial observation that natural selection also applies to humans. None of those things you list invalidate it.

It most certainly is an ideology. It's a whole complex of prior assumptions fed with cherrypicked figures and which morphs to fit whatever theory is the current paradigm. It began in a Lamarckian paradigm, attempted to pivot over to a Darwinist one, and now you're trying to defend it with genetics and modern evolutionary theory.

How is 0.5-0.8 precise? Pulled from papers.

Might as well be pulled from your ass as long as you don't cite them.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

At what point is this even a good example?

Do you just happen to believe that everyone who disagrees with the notion of Social Darwinism is a welfare bum?

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

It's not an ideology at all, it is simply the obvious and apparently uncontroversial observation that natural selection also applies to humans. None of those things you list invalidate it.

It most certainly is an ideology. It's a whole complex of prior assumptions fed with cherrypicked figures and which morphs to fit whatever theory is the current paradigm. It began in a Lamarckian paradigm, attempted to pivot over to a Darwinist one, and now you're trying to defend it with genetics and modern evolutionary theory.

Social Darwinism is nothing more than the set of predictions you get when you apply Darwinian theory to society. Unless you think that Darwinism makes no such predictions because humans are some kind of spirit beings created by God and exempted from all that horror, you must believe in social Darwinism. Of course there can be disagreements about what precisely those predictions are, and they can be updated over time in light of new information. That's not what the OP is saying, though, the OP is saying that people are spirit beings to whom evolution does not apply.

How is 0.5-0.8 precise? Pulled from papers.

Might as well be pulled from your ass as long as you don't cite them.

Whatever, you haven't cited anything either.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

See you make these ridiculous assertions as if they prove your argument and fail to prove said assertions.

I mean, the bigger problem with that assertion is that if Social Darwinism was exactly like that, then everyone who disagrees with Social Darwinism is a welfare bum.

Which is rather funny.

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

At what point is this even a good example?

Do you just happen to believe that everyone who disagrees with the notion of Social Darwinism is a welfare bum?

I don't think you read that post very carefully at all.

[Nocturnalis]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

At what point is this even a good example?

Do you just happen to believe that everyone who disagrees with the notion of Social Darwinism is a welfare bum?

No, they were saying that (social) Darwinian theory always applies, even in political-economic systems that are largely considered decidedly anti-social darwinist in nature.

Reading sure is hard, huh?

[The Widening Gyre]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms.

See, there's that Lamarckism - the idea that the life history of an organism imprints upon its hereditary material and is passed on to its offspring.That's been wrong for really a very long time. Just ask Galton. He came up with the idea of regression towards the mean.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Social Darwinism is nothing more than the set of predictions you get when you apply Darwinian theory to society. Unless you think that Darwinism makes no such predictions because humans are some kind of spirit beings created by God and exempted from all that horror, you must believe in social Darwinism. Of course there can be disagreements about what precisely those predictions are, and they can be updated over time in light of new information. That's not what the OP is saying, though, the OP is saying that people are spirit beings to whom evolution does not apply..

I just don't believe you can apply Darwinian theory to society because society, whether it be paradigms or social conditions and class conditions, do not stem from a Darwinian point of view, as society has more than a physical construct behind it, it also has an ideological construct.

And ideas doesn't seem to be what Social Darwinists try to argue happens in society. For that, there's better explanations and philosophies that address the topic of ideas than Social Darwinism.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

At what point is this even a good example?

Do you just happen to believe that everyone who disagrees with the notion of Social Darwinism is a welfare bum?

No, they were saying that (social) Darwinian theory always applies, even in political-economic systems that are largely considered decidedly anti-social darwinist in nature.

Reading sure is hard, huh?

Not as much as being condescending, apparently.

I read what's before the underlined, and you're right about the not underlined part, and I happen to disagree with it and it's a ridiculous notion in my opinion, that Darwinism always applies even in political-economic systems that are largely considered not social Darwinist.

I was largely addressing his example, which apparently you did not read either and now are trying to condescendingly tell me I didn't.

I suggest you try sharpening your reading comprehension skills before telling me mine are dull, because if mine are dull, yours are non-existent.

[The Widening Gyre]

Social Darwinism is nothing more than the set of predictions you get when you apply Darwinian theory to society.

Clearly not, since you're repeating old Lamarckist yarns about the poor and stupid outbreeding the smart/rich. If you really cared about applying Darwinian theory to society you wouldn't be doing the equivalent of walking into a debate about human health and declaring that humoral imbalances are the cause of all disease.

Whatever, you haven't cited anything either.

I don't need to, I haven't made any positive claims. You have. Your refusal to actually source yours is telling.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

At what point is this even a good example?

Do you just happen to believe that everyone who disagrees with the notion of Social Darwinism is a welfare bum?

I don't think you read that post very carefully at all.

I think you need to express yourself better, then, if you wish not to sound like you're calling your opponents bums.

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

Social Darwinism is nothing more than the set of predictions you get when you apply Darwinian theory to society. Unless you think that Darwinism makes no such predictions because humans are some kind of spirit beings created by God and exempted from all that horror, you must believe in social Darwinism. Of course there can be disagreements about what precisely those predictions are, and they can be updated over time in light of new information. That's not what the OP is saying, though, the OP is saying that people are spirit beings to whom evolution does not apply..

I just don't believe you can apply Darwinian theory to society because society, whether it be paradigms or social conditions and class conditions, do not stem from a Darwinian point of view, as society has more than a physical construct behind it, it also has an ideological construct.

And ideas doesn't seem to be what Social Darwinists try to argue happens in society. For that, there's better explanations and philosophies that address the topic of ideas than Social Darwinism.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Any society is going to favour certain types of people breeding over others. Obviously, which types are favoured is determined in part by ideologies, institutional structures, etc. In other words, all those things feed in to social Darwinism. Their presence doesn't invalidate social Darwinism, rather it is what makes social Darwinism different from regular Darwinism (and many animals also have societies anyway, just simpler ones).

[Olerand]

Which is nonsensical, unrealistic, and pathetically out of touch. If someone genuinely believes this, then they are ignorant beyond human redemption. Never has human need or want been fully met, and it never will be. To argue that you are responsible for securing your needs and wants because "you can't possibly be poor in our system" (even though you will be, because no system ever devised by humanity can ever solve the basic element of the scarcity and finite status of wealth and resources in our world and unequal acquisition), is to argue for mass impoverishment and bad conditions for the poor.

And charity, especially "voluntary" (you first, me later) type charity never solved this problem. Not when it was practiced on a massive scale during the Industrial Revolution, not today with the tech giants, and not tomorrow with whomever.

I don't see the difference.

Hence why I call them naïve. Because they are naïve and out of touch.

I don't necessarily think they are psychopaths though, same as I don't think Spencer and Galton (two prominent social Darwinist writers) were psychopaths.

I don't see the difference.
First, I don't believe libertarians are "naïve". I believe they know that their economic model will lead to mass impoverishment and misery. They don't care.

Second, if they were genuinely naive (which again, I do not believe they are), then their naïveté is so harmful that I don't accept it as an excuse. When faced with proof of how wrong you are/how harmful your views are (as was the case with America in Iraq, for example) I don't accept the argument of ignorance anymore.

I think you're mistaking social Darwinism with biological Darwinism.

biological Darwinism does propose that natural selection happens to humans, but that we are too new a species as homo sapiens sapiens to see any significant differences between, say, who we were 3000 years ago and who we are now.

Social Darwinism believes that the rules of natural selection apply to society, and that is a whole different ballpark.

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

I don't believe you can escape biological Darwinism.

However, I do believe the welfare State alleviates social Darwinism, as we should. I also fail to see how "welfare bums" are the true beneficiaries of the welfare State. Ignoring the numerous benefits it brings to the "middle class" as you call them and the wealthy too, I fail to see how "welfare bums" win out anyway. Are the wealthy prevented from procreation by the welfare State? Has anyone ever had so much luxury, so many possessions, that they have repulsed future mates? Has anyone had so much capital, or so much social capital (as Bourdieu defines it) that it has harmed his prospects of continuing his biological line?
You might argue the welfare State encourages the poor to procreate for the child subsidies. Fine. Who's stopping the rich? In France, they receive the child subsidies too.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

I just don't believe you can apply Darwinian theory to society because society, whether it be paradigms or social conditions and class conditions, do not stem from a Darwinian point of view, as society has more than a physical construct behind it, it also has an ideological construct.

And ideas doesn't seem to be what Social Darwinists try to argue happens in society. For that, there's better explanations and philosophies that address the topic of ideas than Social Darwinism.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Any society is going to favour certain types of people breeding over others. Obviously, which types are favoured is determined in part by ideologies, institutional structures, etc. In other words, all those things feed in to social Darwinism. Their presence doesn't invalidate social Darwinism, rather it is what makes social Darwinism different from regular Darwinism (and many animals also have societies anyway, just simpler ones).

Ideas do not work like this, at all.

That's such a ridiculous appeal to nature that I have a hard time believing you yourself think ideas work by means of sexual reproduction with people who think alike.

[Genivaria]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms.

See, there's that Lamarckism - the idea that the life history of an organism imprints upon its hereditary material and is passed on to its offspring.That's been wrong for really a very long time. Just ask Galton. He came up with the idea of regression towards the mean.

Please fix your quote so it doesn't look like I'm the one saying that garbage.

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

Social Darwinism is nothing more than the set of predictions you get when you apply Darwinian theory to society.

Clearly not, since you're repeating old Lamarckist yarns about the poor and stupid outbreeding the smart/rich. If you really cared about applying Darwinian theory to society you wouldn't be doing the equivalent of walking into a debate about human health and declaring that humoral imbalances are the cause of all disease.

Taken at such a level of generalisation, the poor and stupid are outbreeding the smart and rich.

Whatever, you haven't cited anything either.

I don't need to, I haven't made any positive claims. You have. Your refusal to actually source yours is telling.

You have claimed that the smart and rich are outbreeding the poor and stupid.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Taken at such a level of generalisation, the poor and stupid are outbreeding the smart and rich.

Define "poor and stupid" and "smart and rich".

Do you mean to say rich people are smart (which is an absurd statement), or that rich people happen to be smart?

And why, if the former, would you define intellect by wealth?

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

Social Darwinism is literally how Darwinism operates in society - and it always operates. If you have a welfare state then the Darwinian selection operates in favour of welfare bums who hate condoms. You don't somehow escape Darwinism as people like Olerand and the OP are implying. The fact that it's obviously horribly bad for welfare bums who hate condoms to be the evolutionary direction of mankind is why they react with horror and fright to social Darwinism, because they are deeply emotionally invested in continuing the welfare state.

I don't believe you can escape biological Darwinism.

However, I do believe the welfare State alleviates social Darwinism

Then we're talking about wholly different concepts. Social Darwinism just means that someone's winning the evolutionary game. That can be the top-hatted capitalist with his young wife, or it can be the welfare bum who hates condoms and his revolving door of casual girlfriends. You want the state to tilt the scales so that it's the bum and not the capitalist. That doesn't "alleviate social Darwinism", it just changes the winner. That it does so in an obviously anti-social and destructive direction is why you prefer not to think about it.

Are the wealthy prevented from procreation by the welfare State?

The very wealthy? No. The middle class? Yes. If a single mother can earn the median income by manufacturing children (as they were recently limited to in the UK to howls of protest from the left), guys who earn less than the median income can't compete with the state financially for women, while guys who earn just a bit more than the median income are only marginally valuable financially. They might be desirable for other reasons but their incomes are no longer a serious factor. In the past, their incomes would have been seriously valuable on the marriage market.

[The Widening Gyre]

See, there's that Lamarckism - the idea that the life history of an organism imprints upon its hereditary material and is passed on to its offspring.That's been wrong for really a very long time. Just ask Galton. He came up with the idea of regression towards the mean.

Please fix your quote so it doesn't look like I'm the one saying that garbage.

Oops, sorry - edit en route.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

The very wealthy? No. The middle class? Yes. If a single mother can earn the median income by manufacturing children (as they were recently limited to in the UK to howls of protest from the left), guys who earn less than the median income can't compete with the state financially for women, while guys who earn just a bit more than the median income are only marginally valuable financially. They might be desirable for other reasons but their incomes are no longer a serious factor. In the past, their incomes would have been seriously valuable on the marriage market.

I think, quite frankly, that the shift from women marrying for money to women marrying for other circumstances is a factor that helps tremendously.

I'm not a bum by any means, but the notion that my wife would depend on me is seriously a drag. I would have never gotten married back then if I thought the same and I was living in the past, because it really makes me feel uncomfortable to think that my wife depends solely on me for her sustenance. That means her life lies in my hands, do you have any idea how difficult it is to manage my own life, to have to manage hers too?

I already have enough problems as it is, I don't want someone who's going to compound my problems.

[Olerand]

I don't believe you can escape biological Darwinism.

However, I do believe the welfare State alleviates social Darwinism

Then we're talking about wholly different concepts. Social Darwinism just means that someone's winning the evolutionary game. That can be the top-hatted capitalist with his young wife, or it can be the welfare bum who hates condoms and his revolving door of casual girlfriends. You want the state to tilt the scales so that it's the bum and not the capitalist. That doesn't "alleviate social Darwinism", it just changes the winner. That it does so in an obviously anti-social and destructive direction is why you prefer not to think about it.

Are the wealthy prevented from procreation by the welfare State?

The very wealthy? No. The middle class? Yes. If a single mother can earn the median income by manufacturing children (as they were recently limited to in the UK to howls of protest from the left), guys who earn less than the median income can't compete with the state financially for women, while guys who earn just a bit more than the median income are only marginally valuable financially. They might be desirable for other reasons but their incomes are no longer a serious factor. In the past, their incomes would have been seriously valuable on the marriage market.

Again, I fail to see how the welfare State prevents the wealthy capitalist from procreating to his heart's desire. I see the welfare State alleviating the negative aspects of social Darwinism, and I don't see it harming the wealthy. So again, how do the "welfare bums" benefit? By being providing basic sustenance income?

How does the welfare State not benefit the middle class? They need not pay the exorbitant American rates for their or their children's healthcare, or education. They qualify for social housing, and receive the universal child subsidies.
I also fail to see the relation of marriage to this. Most children in France today are born to two-parent unwed couples. How does this affect anything?
The only thing the welfare State does do is ensure that a single mother and her children not starve. But in no way is a single mother provided with a better lifestyle by the welfare State than a middle class two-parent family.

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

I don't understand what you mean here.

Any society is going to favour certain types of people breeding over others. Obviously, which types are favoured is determined in part by ideologies, institutional structures, etc. In other words, all those things feed in to social Darwinism. Their presence doesn't invalidate social Darwinism, rather it is what makes social Darwinism different from regular Darwinism (and many animals also have societies anyway, just simpler ones).

Ideas do not work like this, at all.

That's such a ridiculous appeal to nature that I have a hard time believing you yourself think ideas work by means of sexual reproduction with people who think alike.

It seems like you read a post that said "differential birth rates determine what ideologies are adopted", when I actually wrote "ideologies partly determine differential birth rates". Of course it does work both ways but that isn't what I wrote.

[The Widening Gyre]

Taken at such a level of generalisation, the poor and stupid are outbreeding the smart and rich.

They're not. Intelligence, as with all phenotypic expressions, regresses towards the mean in natural populations.

You have claimed that the smart and rich are outbreeding the poor and stupid.

No I haven't.

[HMS Queen Elizabeth]

Then we're talking about wholly different concepts. Social Darwinism just means that someone's winning the evolutionary game. That can be the top-hatted capitalist with his young wife, or it can be the welfare bum who hates condoms and his revolving door of casual girlfriends. You want the state to tilt the scales so that it's the bum and not the capitalist. That doesn't "alleviate social Darwinism", it just changes the winner. That it does so in an obviously anti-social and destructive direction is why you prefer not to think about it.


The very wealthy? No. The middle class? Yes. If a single mother can earn the median income by manufacturing children (as they were recently limited to in the UK to howls of protest from the left), guys who earn less than the median income can't compete with the state financially for women, while guys who earn just a bit more than the median income are only marginally valuable financially. They might be desirable for other reasons but their incomes are no longer a serious factor. In the past, their incomes would have been seriously valuable on the marriage market.

Again, I fail to see how the welfare prevents the wealthy capitalist from procreating to his heart's desire.

I think you're just stalling at this point. I clearly explained how it works and the fact you don't even acknowledge I wrote anything worthy of rebuttal suggests you don't have one.

I see the welfare State alleviating the negative aspects of social Darwinism

Once again, welfare state society is just as socially Darwinian as free market society. It just has different winners - basically, antisocial bums instead of useful people.

[Genivaria]

Clearly not, since you're repeating old Lamarckist yarns about the poor and stupid outbreeding the smart/rich. If you really cared about applying Darwinian theory to society you wouldn't be doing the equivalent of walking into a debate about human health and declaring that humoral imbalances are the cause of all disease.

Taken at such a level of generalisation, the poor and stupid are outbreeding the smart and rich.

I don't need to, I haven't made any positive claims. You have. Your refusal to actually source yours is telling.

You have claimed that the smart and rich are outbreeding the poor and stupid.

No he didn't.