Hacker News Reader

The same phrase "survival of the fittest", which was so much misinterpreted, could be fixed by adding one extra word: group, family, clan, team, company or country. "Survival of the fittest family" or "fittest group" implies both competition and cooperation to an equal measure. But I love the shock value in "Survival of the friendliest". Good title, and good to drive this point again and again through the mind of the public.

View on HN

As usual, another title selection that has been passed through the finely tuned media/techno filters for maximum shock value. Survival of the Fittest Group is actually more to the point.

Except that group selection isn't a non-controversial idea in evolutionary biology, and shouldn't be causally invoked unless you're prepared to get into multi-level selection theory, kin-selection and haplodiploidy, replicator theory, cultural evolution, etc. The idea that this is simple or obvious really needs to be resisted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com