Russell McMahon wrote:
>> Compare with evolution: a
>> stable environment favours species that are very well adapted to 
>> that
>> specific environment (risk avoiders). A rapidly changing environment
>> favours 'general purpose / opportunistic' creatures like rats and 
>> gulls
>> (risk takers).
>>     
>
> Hijacking my own thread :-) :
>
> Your example is apposite to the discussion BUT that's not evolution in 
> any normal sense that you are dealing with :-). Evolution is meant to 
> be about the generation and then subsequent selection of genetic 
> material within an individual species to suit changing conditions. 
> [[FWIW the latter is well enough demonstrated, the former is, as yet 
> at least, nearly pure hypothesis with no properly demonstrated 
> mechanism of operation. Ideas about how it might work or does work or 
> MUST work abound and may be had for free by the bushel without asking. 
> Just watch and see :-).]].
>
> While people use the tautology* "survival of the fittest" to talk 
> about competition in all sorts of areas, including inter-species 
> competition such as you posit, this is not what the term formally 
> means except in the most general terms. Speciation may occur, the 
> theory says, as a result of selection pressure, but the eg rats & 
> gulls versus eg wombats distinction is far beyond this.
>
> * fwiw:  That "survival of the fittest" (SOTF) is a meaningless 
> tautology, which fact is well recognised by the Philosophy of Science 
> experts (a discipline unknown to many) who walk away verrrry slowly 
> making no rapid movements, and  with their hands clearly in sight when 
> asked to explain or defend this subject, is not generally realised by 
> the vast majority of people. Those who best know that it is 
> meaningless are in large part the least desirous that it be realised 
> so it is generally downplayed.  SOTF means that the fittest are those 
> who survive and that those who survive are the fittest and ... . 
> Infinite regress. The term SOUNDS so right at first blush that people 
> are liable to wade in and attempt to defend it (just watch and see) 
> when such defence has proved beyond the greater minds of our age (see 
> above). The default argument at lower levels is something like 'the 
> concept is so obviously correct that it would be stupid to try to 
> explain or defend it'. Of such phantasms are fairy castles made - but 
> they are remarkably effective at blocking progress towards a greater 
> knowledge of truth, despite their frailty.
>
> SOTF and any such concept only has scientific validity when one is 
> able to make a priori predictions based on a model. It helps not a 
> whit to afterwards say "obviously the furcoated ones with long sharp 
> claws and prehensile tails were the fittest" if we can't say that in 
> advance. And we have been and are remarkably poor at describing 
> "fittest" in the real world in advance. Survival of the Survivors [[ 
> SOTS ??]] just doesn't have the same ring to it.
>
> Discretion being the better part of valour, I just deleted aborning 
> part of a paragraph on Pepper Moths :-). Let's not even start on 
> finches :-)
>
>
>
>             Russell
>   

Is "survival" really the object of the game?
Reproduction of(by?) the survivors is my bet. (ROTS, nice acronym too ;->)
The ones that live will make babies.

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