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Comment by bunchofdweebs | Hacker News Reader

But is it necessarily a bad thing? It seems like a way for nature to filter out less competitive genetic material. There are always going to be hierarchies and there will always be people at the bottom. It's an inherent part of how matter organises itself.

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Logical fallacy. Social status ≠ genetics. Social status is unfortunately often determined by income, race, religion, and a host of other nonlogical designations.

In this experiment, social status was determined by "newness" to the group. Nothing to do with genetics.

But if social status has an impact on sexual selection or individual survival then it does have something to do with genetics. It's a selective pressure meaning that genetics will likely drift in that direction.

Social status is determined by social status of forebears, intelligence, physical attractiveness, good health.

These are all heritable. This is not a matter of (formal) logic (so stop throwing 'fallacy' around); it's genetics.

You can't just name a fallacy from the wiki 'List of Fallacies' and try and win an argument.

Social status in humans and other animals is a large part genetic. This is take as fact by many people. If you believe it's not you really need proof.

The original OP didn't need to provide proof as they took it as a given and was talking a different interesting premise.

Given how seniority (older being more dominant) was supposedly the major predictor to dominance ranking, it doesn't seem as if the macaque's ranking criterion reflected any kind of genetic fitness.

Well, we also organize the systems that organize people into hierarchies, and our normative choices are just as "natural." And, to continue this kind of thinking, the mushroom clouds of the next nuclear war will also be nature's means of expression, as was slavery, and also the emancipation of slaves.

The human side of your comment aside, it isn't absolute. So it may 'filter out more competitive genetic material,' from the bottom of more competitive pools than the 'less competitive material' at the top of worse performing pools.

Trolling HN is really low status, though.

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