Lately, I’ve been thinking about money… and fitness and how money can act as a fairly strong proxy for fitness.

First off, let’s get some definitions clear. Fitness, in the context of evolutionary biology, entails a quantitative marker signaling the implications of sexual selection and natural selection forces in a given population. A high relative fitness score indicates a high likelihood that one’s lineage will tend to live long - and effectively, maximize the longevity of their genes and theirs of their progeny in the gene pool of subsequent generations. On a purely sociocultural/socioeconomic level - that being the most profoundly experienced by humans - one could posit the acquisition of money and power as the primary telos of most people of most cultures. As humans, it is fairly hard-wired in our DNA to maximize the length and quality of our lives and those of our family/offspring. This could imply that a “human” quasi-objective function would entail the acquisition of those markers that would maximize our relative fitness score - our chance of passing on our genetic material. In our context, such a marker can be analogous to money and/or power.

Such conclusions as the one I’ve come to can also be broken down into smaller subdomains. We can look at the correlations between other markers of fitness and the one I have just laid out. Health, Strength, Beauty, Intelligence, etc are all base-level markers for fitness. Although, each marker has been more useful at different points in human history.

Health. Up until about a century ago, the life expectancy of even the most wealthy countries was at abysmally low numbers. There was high infant mortality and people would die of diseases as primitive as a common cold. Back then, individuals who had a genetically superior immune response or had more sanitary ways of life tended to live longer than the general population. Their progeny would also share in that advantage. Fast forward to contemporary times and most people in wealthy countries live on average 80 years old, and that number seems to only keep trending upwards. In that sense, we can conclude that immune health, based on genetic makeup, can no longer be considered a sufficient marker for fitness. Yes, there are still people born with genetic diseases who still suffer a myriad of disadvantages, but the set of people who would have died due to genetic predispositions has been drastically reduced. Not necessarily zero but trending towards that direction. Take, for example, individuals that are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease. The recent breakthrough in medically applied AI involving deep mind’s reinforcement learning-based algorithms being able to predict the folding of proteins from their DNA sequence has allowed medical researchers to make use of the software to predict the folding pattern of the harmful variant of the amyloid plaque protein that usually builds up aggressively on the myelin-sheath of Alzheimer’s patients, and was able to synthesize that variant, and administered it to the patients, causing a spur of antibodies attacking that synthesized variant as well as the initial amyloid plaque that had built up, ultimately restoring patients to their former level of cognition. I have gone a bit off-topic. The primary point is that the emergence of advanced technology has seemingly reduced the evolutionary advantage conferred to those with desirable immune genetics.

Now, let’s take strength. This concept of “strength” can actually manifest itself in a few ways. It could be physical strength or mental fortitude. From the conception of human civilization over ten thousand years ago, the concept of the “strong-man” or “alpha” has been commonplace across many different cultures. The strongest in the village ultimately ended up as the leader, that was it, no questions asked lest you risk the chance of a beating - or in drastic cases, death. Let us look, for example at the closest Hominin species to humans - chimpanzees. On a purely societal level, one could discern multiple parallels between the operating mechanisms of pre-historic humans, and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, as cited by Van Leeuwen et al, have a strong tendency to operate in a prosocial manner - meaning that, in an attempt to garner more favorable outcomes for themselves, they would openly cooperate or share with the larger group. This sort of prosocial behavior is a generally human attribute, that ultimately has aided humanity in its quest for progress, whatever axis that progress proceeds under. This display of prosocial behavior is one of the more positive parallels between our two species. Another parallel - one not so positive, entails some general brutish violence as well as some forms of sexual violence. Like humans, chimpanzees exhibit a high proclivity for aggression, especially as it pertains to intrasexual selection forces. The bigger - much stronger chimpanzees were likely to control large harems of female chimpanzees, whether that be by force or not. Any smaller weaker chimpanzees that wanted to try their luck at one of the females would be beaten to a pulp or killed. This violence in the context of competition manifested itself in other ways. In the pursuit of any such resource deemed desirable or valuable, they would devolve into a violent frenzy in scenarios where they are not exhibiting those prosocial attributes. Like humans, as for chimps, being physically strong necessarily guaranteed that your genes would be passed on to the next generation, and your progeny would likely share similar DNA that would code for additive traits given the environment, such as a more frequent rate of myosin build-up in the muscle cells or something of that manner.

pic here In regards to mental fortitude as a dimension that goads towards a higher relative fitness score, individuals that are generally less prone to bouts of negative emotions are generally more adaptable to environmental changes and are more likely to thrive fairly well in any given environment, regardless of the level of hardship imposed upon said individual by the environment. People that lean more towards the upper ends of conscientiousness tend to lean inversely towards neurotic behaviors. That is, conscientiousness is generally inversely/negatively correlated with neurotic tendencies. On a socioeconomic level, one can see how this higher pre-disposition to conscientiousness could also lead to a greater chance of economic stability. Current societal norms and economic practices generally incentivize displays of high conscientiousness which in turn optimizes for individuals exhibiting those traits holding more relevant positions of power and prestige. At least this would be the case if most institutions were entirely merit-based, which is very much not the case, but I digress. Those individuals that are generally more prone to neurotic traits are at a significant disadvantage given the current socioeconomic incentivization structure I just laid out. The “system” actively disincentivizes the onboarding of neurotic type individuals into such institutions at any capacity.

Intelligence - This category generally encompasses the “lowest hanging fruit” in regards to the ways it can manifest itself as a component goading to higher relative fitness. Although this metric has myriad faults which deserve its own debate, it has been found to be at least consistent in terms of its veracity in measuring the expected lifetime income given contemporary society’s capitalist system. Various socio-economic analyses have pointed to fairly strong positive correlations between a high g score and general lifetime income, although differential scores in g only assure differential monetary advantage up till a certain point. I do see how adding this as a primary component goading to relative fitness score given the context could possibly come off as some sort of social Darwinist/ neo-Malthusian treatise, but I assure you, my dear non-existent reader, it is not - at least it is not my intention. A certain level of intellect, which manifests itself as g, can be deemed a prerequisite to acquiring any ounce of wealth, as humans through time, especially in the pursuit of power, which can sometimes manifest itself as the pursuit of wealth, have progressed by exhibiting a certain “fear of our neighbors”. Although this idea might come off as egregious in the eyes of those of us who still follow quasi-puritanical doctrines, it does seem to be consistent with what is displayed in a day to day life. Basically, greater intellects have developed in part as a sort of self-defense mechanism for humans. Whether it manifests itself as ancient humans outsmarting their prey or their predator, or in the conquests of war against other people’s lands, it generally helps to have greater intellect and cunning on your side. Intellect, I would assume, is a necessary pre-requisite to the acquisition of a significant amount of wealth, unless you’re lucky enough to have inherited a substantial amount, which is not the case for most people.

I’ll conclude by saying, money from its conception, has generally been about abstracting sovereignty over many levels. The more sovereign an individual becomes, the less predisposed he/she is to the whims of the collective or those with a monopoly on violence. Surely, I must point out that this too is a fairly flawed model for reaching a truly optimal level of sovereignty. From the writings of those in the Nakomoto Institute, the primary telos of cryptocurrency is to accelerate this journey of optimal sovereignty of individuals, cleaving the ties of “money/wealth” from these antiquated institutions to the hands of the individuals, because it doesn’t matter how much “money” you accrue under this current global monetary system, you are never truly sovereign because fiat is still generally controlled by the same legacy institutions as has been the case since antiquity.