[HN Gopher] The meek did inherit the Earth, at least among ants
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The meek did inherit the Earth, at least among ants
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/science/ants-exoskeletons...
https://archive.ph/yIEV6
Author : marojejian
Score : 19 points
Date : 2026-01-05 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| marojejian wrote:
| Paper: "The evolution of cheaper workers facilitated larger
| societies and accelerated diversification in ants"
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx8068
|
| NYT gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/science/ants-
| exoskeletons...
|
| I love it when biology converges like economics. And there are so
| many cases in both where scale beats unit quality, in ways that
| might defy our intuition (or desires).
|
| "Quantity has a Quality all its own" (Stalin?)
|
| Consider: - Roman Legions (or Rome's scale in general) - US WWII
| tanks vs. Germany's - China's success with low price point
| products (e.g. solar panels) - (Hopefully) the future success of
| OS machine learning vs. giant proprietary models
|
| I admit to find attractive the (totally speculative) idea that
| Neanderthals might have been as (or more) "smart" as sapiens
| sapiens, 1:1, but we were just much more social and would expand
| faster / better.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > And there are so many cases in both where scale beats unit
| quality
|
| In human economics, scale and quality usually come together,
| not in competition.
|
| But of course, you follow into military examples. Those are
| really not as clear cut as you put.
|
| Stalin's quantity soon stopped being plentiful because of
| neglect. Roman military was strong because of advanced
| techniques and the willingness to throw the status-quo away if
| it stopped working, often winning even when outnumbered. German
| WWII tanks were a joke, incapable of working in any real
| situation.
|
| And the economical one, on Chinese solar panels, I recommend
| you reevaluate their quality and manufacturing conditions.
| sallveburrpi wrote:
| fwiw Panzer III and IV were pretty good but they made a bunch
| of tactical mistakes and the later models were overengineered
| vlovich123 wrote:
| In human economics scale and quality are most certainly in
| tension. Rolls Royce hand assembles their cars because it's
| easier to guarantee quality when you have masters doing the
| work. Toyota on the other hand gets the cost down because
| it's mostly automated with very mostly unskilled labor doing
| some work.
|
| At some point you can refine scale where you also automate
| the quality issues away, but there's always still that
| tension.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| This reminded of a CK Lewis bit about how modern humans deploy a
| lot of resources trying to save "weak" babies, and thus undoing
| evolution's natural selection process.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| So...Eugenics, then?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Already happening at the in vitro level, might be possible in
| vivo as well. Neither require the more abusive approaches
| from the first eugenics era.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| In todays world, yes, that is back on the table.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Yep. It's inevitable and societies will have to grapple with
| it far sooner than most thing.
| like_any_other wrote:
| As long as some people and societies have more children than
| others, evolution continues.
| nephihaha wrote:
| You're talking about physical weakness which can be caused by
| non-genetic factors. Such a person may turn out to have a great
| intellect or other personal quality.
|
| However, the big story in the west is that most sexual congress
| does not produce babies anymore.
| like_any_other wrote:
| The paper is interesting, but "meek" is the wrongest word they
| could have chosen - they viciously attack intruders, and
| literally wage war between colonies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_ants
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