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Using the theory of evolution to get ahead in life
Wednesday, 2 August 2006
Okay, before I get onto this topic lets get one thing out of the way immediately before half the population gets angry with me. This post is not a creationism vs evolution discussion. Nor am I inviting debate on whether man was placed on this earth through divine intervention or is instead a descendent of the first walking fish.
What I do want to discuss is the simple truth that evolution is an extremely interesting idea. Regardless of your religious beliefs, you can use this theory to your advantage in life. To not do so would be a terrible shame.
I'm sure you've all been introduced to the theory before, but if not, here's a quick rundown.
Evolution is the idea that living organisms change over millions of generations so that they can adapt to become more successful in their environment.
As organisms reproduce, some in the new generation contain mutations which can help or hinder them in their struggle for survival. As surviving a reasonable time in the world is a prerequisite to being able to reproduce, those organisms that are most suited to their environment should ultimately be the most reproductively successful.
This is known as survival of the fittest.
Let's take the example of a flu virus that survives and thrives by infecting human beings. The virus enters people's bodies, then reproduces itself until it makes them sick. This makes the human hosts cough and splutter, allowing reproductions of the virus to enter the air and be breathed in by other humans, thus infecting them and spreading the virus's population.
Success!
This particular flu virus is getting along nicely when disaster strikes - the humans discover a drug that kills flu viruses. Suddenly, our hero is no longer able to infect humans.
Drat!
Fortunately, our flu virus has a hidden weapon. When it's reproducing itself, occasionally an imperfect copy is made. These imperfections are usually of no use and often lead to a defective copy of the virus, but every now and again one of those copies turns out to have benefits over its parent.
While our flu virus was happily reproducing itself by the billions, one of those imperfect copies turned out to be immune to the new drug. While all its siblings and ancestors get wiped out, this one copy survives and lives on to reproduce itself. It's able to create billions of copies of itself and reinfect the human population without those lousy drugs being able to stop it. What was once a mutation is now the main population.
Success again - bwahahahahaha!
This is obviously a great way to build an unbeatable flu virus, but how does it help us humans?
Well, since evolution is such a powerful system for creating results that succeed in changing environments - you should use it to design better outcomes for yourself. After all, a changing environment in which it's impossible to have all the available information is exactly where we're all at.
Here are the specific steps to consider:
- Rather than just trying one thing, try many - including those which seem as if they may be unsuccessful.
- Accept that the world will change, and what worked yesterday probably won't work tomorrow.
- Realize that the unexpected is likely - what you think will succeed may fail, what you think will fail may succeed.
- Be ruthless about killing off the unsuccessful.
- Never stop tweaking your designs.
Let's take a high level view of this by looking at a good way to design a nation's economy.
Why does the free-market system, which is favored by Western countries, seem so much more successful than the centrally-planned system the Soviets tried? After all, common sense tells us that anything we carefully plan should work better than something we let run its own course.
How can an economy that's completely under the control of experts fare worse than one which takes the opposite approach? It doesn't make sense.
Evolutionary theory can help to explain this riddle.
The aim of a national economy should be to secure goods and services that people want in the most efficient way possible. In a free-market economy, organizations (in the form of businesses) try out all sorts of different models to supply consumers with what they want. If they get it wrong, they go out of business. It's survival of the fittest on a grand-scale, where the winners live on and the losers die out.
In a centrally-planned economy, experts try to figure out what people want and how to give it to them. If they get it wrong, their organizations often aren't allowed to die. They can live on for years - producing things people don't want in an inefficient way. The experts refuse to believe that their ideas are wrong. Such an economy doesn't use evolution to achieve the best results.
Now let's go down to the personal level and look at a man trying to find a good system for landing himself a girlfriend. Most men (myself included) are born with no idea about how to attract women. We grow up in a confusing world - where what's cool changes constantly and information about what women want is hard to obtain.
How can we form a decent strategy under such conditions?
In comes the theory of evolution to rescue us. Rather than trying out one way of dressing for, talking to, or meeting women - a smart man tries out many. Those ideas that work are allowed to survive and adapt, those that don't die off.
Once you get your head around this idea, you can use it in all sorts of areas of life - your career, your social life, bringing up your family and so on. Realizing that the world is constantly changing and the information available to you is imperfect, design a system for dealing with it that uses the basics of evolution.
Try out all sorts of strategies and designs. Kill off those that don't work and make slight but constant changes to those that do. It's a system that beats the typical human strategy of relying on the first good idea that pops into our heads - and reusing it over and over again until its flaws become painfully obvious to everyone but ourselves.
Regardless of your religious beliefs, use what's a powerful idea to get ahead in life. It will help you survive in an uncertain environment and live on to fight another day.
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