Hacker News Reader

Too bad he came up with "lions eating zebras" and "polar bears eating seals" (if he really did, maybe author just made it up). These are the pictures that are misleading about evolution - when really it is not always physical strength that makes for "fitness".

View on HN

Precisely. It is not the strongest nor the smartest often that survive, but the best adapted. Dawkins has made this point himself, in that the genes which survive are the "mediocre" genes, genes that tend to do well in the "average" of their environments. Evolution is more likely to produce spineless wonders like T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock than Superman, roughly speaking, because Prufrock, dipshit though he may be, is adapted to the meine of his environs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com