Men, det är ändå intressant att beakta, om vi nu ska se kapitalismens företräde som att den är lite av en blind utomjordisk gud och således en optimeringsprocess som vi inte behöver styra politiskt... Att en optimeringsprocess optimerar på något kriterium. Och att vi måste vara noga med att stämma av huruvida detta kriterium är vad vi vill optimera på.
"It is a very common misconception that an evolution works for the good of its species /.../
It's yet another case where you've got to simultaneously consider multiple abstract concepts and keep them distinct. Evolution doesn't operate on particular individuals; individuals keep whatever genes they're born with. Evolution operates on a reproducing population, a species, over time. There's a natural tendency to think that if an Evolution Fairy is operating on the species, she must be optimizing for the species. But what really changes are the gene frequencies, and frequencies don't increase or decrease according to how much the gene helps the species as a whole. As we shall later see, it's quite possible for a species to evolve to extinction.
/.../
The real struggle in natural selection is not the competition of organisms for resources; this is an ephemeral thing when all the participants will vanish in another generation. The real struggle is the competition of alleles for frequency in the gene pool. This is the lasting consequence that creates lasting information. The two rams bellowing and locking horns are only passing shadows.
It's perfectly possible for an allele to spread to fixation by outcompeting an alternative allele which was 'better for the species'. If the Flying Spaghetti Monster magically created a species whose gender mix was perfectly optimized to ensure the survival of the species—the optimal gender mix to bounce back reliably from near-extinction events, adapt to new niches, etcetera—then the evolution would rapidly degrade this species optimum back into the individual-selection optimum of equal parental investment in males and females.
Imagine a 'Frodo gene' that sacrifices its vehicle to save its entire species from an extinction event. What happens to the allele frequency as a result? It goes down. Kthxbye.
/.../
In viruses, there's the tension between individual viruses replicating as fast as possible, versus the benefit of leaving the host alive long enough to transmit the illness. This is a good real-world example of group selection, and if the virus evolves to a point on the fitness landscape where the group selection pressures fail to overcome individual pressures, the virus could vanish shortly thereafter. I don't know if a disease has ever been caught in the act of evolving to extinction, but it's probably happened any number of times."
Det är ju uppenbart att kapitalismen inte optimerar för långsiktig överlevnad, mänsklig lycka, eller något annat högre värde. Om kapitalismen alls kan liknas vid en evolutionär process, så är det en process som optimerar för ett fåtals kortsiktiga vinning.
"Cancerous cells do pretty well in the body, prospering and amassing more resources, far outcompeting their more obedient counterparts. For a while.
Multicellular organisms can only exist because they've evolved powerful internal mechanisms to outlaw evolution. If the cells start evolving, they rapidly evolve to extinction: the organism dies."
Vad lär vi oss av detta tro? Om "organismen" är ekonomin, eller samhället, så vill vi ha interna mekanismer för att förhindra evolutionen inom.
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