# Educate me about current Anarchist thought and strategy. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 3, 2017, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865 "2017-02-03T00:27:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/41 "2017-02-09T23:49:34Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > So you’re paying your private police force. A gang of guys with guns. What happens when they demand more money? You’re just going to go over to the other gang of guys with guns and ask them to help you out? Hey, ask the people who think private free market police forces are a good thing, not me. The fact that you think their ideology is unworkable doesn’t mean it’s not their ideology. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/42 "2017-02-10T02:17:13Z")
Let me put it this way… My Trump loving co-worker says “Did you see all those Lib-Dem protesters this weekend? What a bunch of sore losers! They lost the election, so what do they do? They riot and vandalize and overturn police cars and start fires. They all need to be shot!” My response…"Those are not Libs or Dems, those are \_\_\_\_\_(?) and their purpose is to \_\_\_\_ (?) My point is that whether or not they are “anarchists” in the academic sense of the word they are playing in to the narrative of the right. Do they think achieving “anarchist utopia” is going to be easier under a fascist regime than a centrist democratic one? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/43 "2017-02-10T02:44:51Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > My point is that whether or not they are “anarchists” in the academic sense of the word they are playing in to the narrative of the right. Do they think achieving “anarchist utopia” is going to be easier under a fascist regime than a centrist democratic one? They’re not trying to achieve anarchist utopia through their actions. They are sowing chaos as a protest against the establishment of both the left and right. They see the left as distracting people from more radical politics. Many of the folks you see are making the statement that there’s so much gridlock that destruction and chaos are the only way to change anything (hints of Steve Bannon there). And some of them just like to stir up shit with the police for the thrill of it. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/44 "2017-02-10T06:45:32Z")
I will defer to the profound speech of John Lydon on the matter Right Now ha ha ha ha ha… I am an antichrist I am an anarchist Don’t know what I want But I know how to get it I wanna destroy passer by … [rest of content deleted by **Bone**] ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/45 "2017-02-10T15:12:55Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I’m under the impression that I already addressed that in the post to which you are responding. I don’t think you did. Where in that post, or any other, have you addressed the question of what to do about the percentage of people who don’t voluntarily cooperate? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/46 "2017-02-10T17:59:52Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t think you did. Where in that post, or any other, have you addressed the question of what to do about the percentage of people who don’t voluntarily cooperate? > > Regards, > Shodan Don’t cooperate with them? Not everyone behaves how you’d like them to. That’s a basic fact of being human. Roll with it, and stop trying to control everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/47 "2017-02-10T18:09:18Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Don’t cooperate with them? What if they don’t give me a choice? > [@](#): > > Not everyone behaves how you’d like them to. That’s a basic fact of being human. I think you just expressed the basic objection to anarchism. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/48 "2017-02-10T18:20:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I don’t think you did. Where in that post, or any other, have you addressed the question of what to do about the percentage of people who don’t voluntarily cooperate? > > Regards, > Shodan I think I did, and I think I am not inclined to contend with your impression to the contrary. We both have better things to do with our time. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/49 "2017-02-10T19:33:28Z")
OP, the particulars don’t really matter because your Trump friends would denounce any leftist protest as a riot consisting of sore losers and lazy bums, whereas any right protest is We The People and True Patriots taking their country back. No one’s going to amaze them with their glittering knowledge of leftist philosophy or a history of protest movements. Factual, nuanced analysis didn’t work during the election, it certainly won’t be relevant now. Anarchism and libertarianism started as far left anti-capitalist movements. When people equate right-libertarianism with anarchism (often the case on this board), they’re thinking of anarchist-capitalists, or ancaps for short. Left anarchists don’t tend to view them as real anarchists, since anarchism is about doing away with coercive hierarchical social structures (their power structure is horizontal instead of vertical), whereas ancaps embrace capitalism and the boss/worker/wage system. Lefty anarchists generally think it’s basically neo-feudalism. Ancaps view left-anarchists as [communists.](http://i.imgur.com/kaWXb2a.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/50 "2017-02-10T19:37:34Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I think I did I don’t see where you did. That’s at least three people now who have somehow missed your argument. If your wish is to communicate, you might consider a different strategy than just re-affirming your personal belief that you have already expressed yourself sufficiently well. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/51 "2017-02-10T21:26:14Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > What if they don’t give me a choice? They would be wrong and you’d be right to defend yourself against such an assault. > [@Shodan](#): > > I think you just expressed the basic objection to anarchism. What can I say? People who need to assert control over others will need to find willing volunteers. And not all control is bad. Negotiation, incentives, voluntary transactions, leadership, and debates are all forms of human control. It’s the force and threats of violence that are wrong. We’re smart enough to do better. We can raise decent children without beating them these days, and we can have a healthy, thriving society without threatening grown adults with organized violence, too. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/52 "2017-02-10T22:06:43Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > I don’t see where you did. > > That’s at least three people now who have somehow missed your argument. > > If your wish is to communicate, you might consider a different strategy than just re-affirming your personal belief that you have already expressed yourself sufficiently well. OK. > [@AHunter3](#): > > I see no reason to posit something horrible in “human nature” when the rules of the system we’re using are guaranteed to elicit pretty nasty behaviors. If we sit down and play Monopoly and Risk, we will see a lot of extortionate rent and deliberate bankrupting of opponents, a lot of violent invasion and conquering of enemies, not because those behaviors are characteristics of the players but because those are the behaviors that are rewarded by the rules of the game. > > Anarchy must provide non-saintly, ordinarily self-interested participants with reasons to play by the baseline assumptions of anarchy, or you don’t get to have an anarchy. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/53 "2017-02-10T22:38:00Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > Do they think achieving “anarchist utopia” is going to be easier under a fascist regime than a centrist democratic one? Possibly. A centrist democratic regime will tack and gibe, just enough to maintain a reasonable semblance of order, so it it very difficult to push people out of their comfortable complacency. As long as the majority of the people are comfortable or feel impotent, things will sail on as they are. A fascist regime, OTOH, is more likely to become increasingly oppressive, to the point that enough people feel the tentacles of misery or fear that they ultimately can no longer go along with the system. As I recall from _The Prince_ (or the lengthy, detailed introduction in the version I had), Nicky observed that societies tend to go through cycles of anarchy -\> monarchy -\> democracy, though the cycle it is in at any given moment may last for months or for generations. He also noted that even the most repressive dictatorship has its limits, with respect to what the citizens will tolerate: there is no system that is no at least to some nominal degree democratic, because there are more citizens than there are leaders. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/54 "2017-02-10T22:59:06Z")
It’s the old “the worse, the better”, under the theory that happy comfortable anesthetized sheeple will never rise up and throw of the shackles of their oppression. So fascist arbitrary authority is better in their minds, because it radicalizes the people. Never mind that the number of times a fascist authoritarian regime has been spontaneously overthrown by a revolt of the people and replaced by an anarchist utopia can be counted on the fingers of one foot. Sure, there have been successful populist uprisings…that either were coopted from within by authoritarians, or crushed from without by authoritarians. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/55 "2017-02-10T23:32:21Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > OK. That’s helpful, thank you. > [@AHunter3](#): > > I see no reason to posit something horrible in “human nature”… This is not something that we are “positing”. At least, not all of us. This not the starting point for our analysis. That there is something horrible in human nature – or more precisely, something horrible in _literally any reproductively successful species_ – is not some position we have arbitrarily chosen to serve as an axiom from which all our other conclusions must derive. It is instead an unavoidable _conclusion_ derived from other scientific principles. (An exception to this might be Christian thought with the posited idea of original sin, but I for one am thoroughly non-religious.) There was a GQ thread recently [about sex ratios](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19978673#post19978673). The OP was asking why male and female offspring were roughly equal in numbers, at least for species who reproduced like humans. (We’re not talking about bees here.) This is actually a classic question in biology. Very famous. The evolutionary answer to that question is [Fisher’s principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher's_principle). This is evolutionary theory we’re talking about here. Biologists use game theory in order to understand evolution: an important idea is the [Evolutionarily Stable Strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy), or ESS. I’m not talking about anarchism here, I’m talking about sex ratios, okay? Sex ratios for offspring tend to be close to 50/50, and _there is a very specific reason for that_. You don’t have to do the mathematics to get the idea. You don’t have to solve the equations in order to understand the biological principle at play here. The English-language story is exactly the same idea as the equations, so if you understand the story, you understand the idea. The idea is quite horribly important. It is an absolutely essential idea. It’s very, very important to understand why sex ratios are so close to 50-50. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy idea. Even biologists tended to have a lot of trouble with it until… well, until evolutionarily game theory was properly developed. (Sometimes the math legitimately helps…) As I said in the GQ thread: “Evolution is not about the survival of the group. It’s about the survival of the individual, sometimes even at the expense of the group.” Again, this is not something that we are _positing_. This is not the beginning of the analysis, but rather the _end_ of the analysis. Genes are in it for themselves. They’re not in it for their species, not in it even for their families (except to the extent that their families are a copy of themselves). Altruism exists, certainly. Genes look out for Number One, and that’s _why_ altruism exists. If altruism hindered the reproduction of individuals, then it would be strongly selected against. I’m talking about sex ratios here. The discussion is sex ratios. And in order to understand why sex ratios are roughly where they are, we need to learn how to **solve the equilibrium**. It doesn’t have to be solved in math, it can be solved in strictly logical and precise English, but before we can discuss anything else, we need to _be able_ to solve the equilibrium. And once we learn how to solve the equilibrium once, well then, that’s a tool. It’s a scientific tool that we can use in different circumstances. Now, you wrote this in your second post in this thread and then you repeated it again later. > [@AHunter3](#): > > For all that this board is generally pretty good about debating various positions and being a diverse enough place that a wide range of different perspectives can get some modicum of respect, there is a severe knee-jerk reaction to the subject of anarchy every time it comes up. (Links provided if anyone requests them). Yes it would be nice to have a debate that didn’t consist in its entirety of someone insisting “It will never work, it’s against human nature, the day after you declare anarchy we have gang rule, hey I just stole your wheat and your corn whatcha gonna do now anarchist, etc” while ignoring the content of every post written by any anarchists participating in the thread. I can talk about my own experience, too. In my experience, when people sense that learning how to solve the equilibrium is powerful enough to dislodge previously held beliefs, they refuse to learn how to do so. They don’t look at the cites, don’t try to engage the arguments. They check out. Much easier. I’m talking about sex ratios here. The reason why the sex ratio is close to 50/50 is because genes are actually looking out for Number One. Genes are “trying” to reproduce. Each and every living creature on this planet is the result of 3.8 billion years of successful reproduction, parent to offspring, parent to offspring, parent to offspring. I’m not being figurative there. We’re talking, literally, billions of years of this. Even sexual reproduction has been going on for more than a billion years. Our ancestors were the ones who won the battle. They were the survivors. Each. And. Every. Damn. One. Of. Them. Was. A. Winner. An unbroken chain of reproductive victory stretching back billions of years. They won because their genes were looking out for Number One. So to speak. They won because their genes created an organism that was quite especially suited to the environment it was placed in, even given fierce and often violent competition from other organisms whose genes were also a direct link of winners back to the beginning of life on this planet. That is why we exist. I’m not positing that. I am _concluding_ that from the available evidence. And it is really rather important to know why sex ratios are close to 50-50. It is very important to be able to solve the equilibrium in this problem. Because once you can do it once, you can do again. To grasp the overwhelming, and quite frankly even ridiculous power to answer questions that this technique brings – questions like the sex ratio, and the evolution of altruism – is to have a much deeper understanding of the world. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/56 "2017-02-10T23:35:28Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > It’s the old “the worse, the better”, under the theory that happy comfortable anesthetized sheeple will never rise up and throw of the shackles of their oppression. So fascist arbitrary authority is better in their minds, because it radicalizes the people. > > Never mind that the number of times a fascist authoritarian regime has been spontaneously overthrown by a revolt of the people and replaced by an anarchist utopia can be counted on the fingers of one foot. Absolutely. Because if there’s one human activity that really really does not lend itself to anarchic decision-making, it’s military activity. So you’re gonna rise up with a Fearless Leader and fervent but typically blind obedience to same, in order to conquer the fascist regime etc etc, “and then” the revolutionary military state’s gonna do a quick fade and “give way” to an egalitarian non-hierarchical non-coercive form of decision-making… uh huh… ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/57 "2017-02-11T00:15:07Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > **OP, the particulars don’t really matter because your Trump friends would denounce any leftist protest as a riot consisting of sore losers and lazy bums, whereas any right protest is We The People and True Patriots taking their country back. No one’s going to amaze them with their glittering knowledge of leftist philosophy or a history of protest movements. Factual, nuanced analysis didn’t work during the election, it certainly won’t be relevant now**. > > Anarchism and libertarianism started as far left anti-capitalist movements. When people equate right-libertarianism with anarchism (often the case on this board), they’re thinking of anarchist-capitalists, or ancaps for short. Left anarchists don’t tend to view them as real anarchists, since anarchism is about doing away with coercive hierarchical social structures (their power structure is horizontal instead of vertical), whereas ancaps embrace capitalism and the boss/worker/wage system. Lefty anarchists generally think it’s basically neo-feudalism. Ancaps view left-anarchists as [communists.](http://i.imgur.com/kaWXb2a.jpg) Bolding mine. Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. I knew this all along but this is really what it’s all about. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/58 "2017-02-11T01:49:00Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Far more people are killed _by_ governments than would have been killed without them. I think that’s an indisputable fact I shouldn’t have to cite. [Almost 200 million people were killed by governments in the 20th century](http://necrometrics.com/all20c.htm), versus maybe 10 million by civilian homocide. You know the old saw about how you can’t be reasoned out of a position you didn’t reason yourself into? This reason, about the mass murder committed by governments and how it eclipsed the murders committed by private citizens, was the reason I became an anarchist as a teenager. As an adult, I read **The Better Angels of Our Nature** , Stephen Pinker’s massive tome about the history of human violence. He lays out a convincing case that societies with little to no overarching governments have a homicide rate vastly higher than that in almost all states–that 10-25% of people in such societies die by homicide. And that’s the reason I stopped being an anarchist. If we can build a social structure superior to the state, I am all about that. But I don’t see that structure right now, and I don’t think it’ll be built in the absence of a state. So as awful as states can be, I think that a state that monopolized violence but is somewhat under the control of its citizens is the best of a bunch of bad choices we have right now (always setting aside the choice where you jokers choose me to be your dictator and just follow my supremely reasonable orders to Knock That Shit Off, of course). ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/59 "2017-02-11T07:08:40Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > I will defer to the profound speech of John Lydon on the matter > Right > Now > ha ha ha ha ha… > > I am an antichrist > I am an anarchist > Don’t know what I want > But I know how to get it > I wanna destroy passer by > > … > > [rest of content deleted by **Bone**] Please be sure to stay within fair use guidelines. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2017, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865/60 "2017-02-11T16:27:02Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > That’s helpful, thank you. > > This [that there is something horribel in human nature] not the starting point for our analysis. That there is something horrible in human nature – or more precisely, something horrible in _literally any reproductively successful species_ – is not some position we have arbitrarily chosen to serve as an axiom from which all our other conclusions must derive. It is instead an unavoidable _conclusion_ derived from other scientific principles. No it isn’t, actually. Our studies of such things are strongly tainted by our preexisting assumptions and belief systems. One person may stare at the data and conclude that evolutionary processes reward competition and hence foment strife between the competitors. Someone else examining the same data might conclude that evolutionary processes reward the best adaptations, with no particular stress on competition. Certainly the evolutionary processes that are likely to select for the success of a social species need not reward intraspecies competition more than intraspecies cooperation, the latter being far more likey to ensure the survival of that species. Competition is generally rewarded when scarcity of resources imposes a zero-sum game, but that’s not always the case. Homo sap is an extremely social species and the survival of its individuals (and thus a specific set of genes) is far more dependent on interaction and cooperation than on eliminating one’s competitors. > [@](#): > > This is evolutionary theory we’re talking about here. Biologists use game theory in order to understand evolution: an important idea is the [Evolutionarily Stable Strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy), or ESS. I’m not talking about anarchism here, I’m talking about sex ratios, okay? Sex ratios for offspring tend to be close to 50/50, and _there is a very specific reason for that_. You don’t have to do the mathematics to get the idea. You don’t have to solve the equations in order to understand the biological principle at play here. The English-language story is exactly the same idea as the equations, so if you understand the story, you understand the idea. > > The idea is quite horribly important. Perhaps you could explain it then, a bit more specifically and perhaps with an example or two or something? I’m a gender theorist and I’m always up for any interesting analysis that involves sex and gender dynamics but I have frankly no freaking idea what you’re alluding to here. Wikipedia link didn’t help — there’s scarcely even a mention of sex ratio on that page. > [@](#): > > “Evolution is not about the survival of the group. It’s about the survival of the individual, sometimes even at the expense of the group.” The survival of the individual is increasingly dependent on the survival of the group the more the species happens to be a social species. We are the apex social species. To say evolution is about the survival of the individual not the survival of the group is akin to saying that it is about the survival of the gene not the survival of the individual. It isn’t untrue but I don’t think it means what you’re trying to make it mean. > [@](#): > > Genes look out for Number One, and that’s _why_ altruism exists. If altruism hindered the reproduction of individuals, then it would be strongly selected against. Agreed. > [@](#): > > I’m talking about sex ratios here. The discussion is sex ratios. And in order to understand why sex ratios are roughly where they are, we need to learn how to **solve the equilibrium**. It doesn’t have to be solved in math, it can be solved in strictly logical and precise English, but before we can discuss anything else, we need to _be able_ to solve the equilibrium. First I need to solve the “I don’t have the vaguest fucking idea what you’re talking about here” problem. I’m pretty sure sex ratios are roughly 50/50 is that roughly 50% of haploid sperm contain X and roughly half contain Y, and that the individual survival rates aren’t horribly different. The 50/50 ratio is not, I believe, universal among sexually reproducing species. I’m rusty on my bio but I think there are some insect species and some plant species where the sex ratio is asymmetrical. I don’t see any connection to the rest of what we’re discussing here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/educate-me-about-current-anarchist-thought-and-strategy/778865.md?page=4)