Chris Davis writes:
The Survival of the Idlest
Like the Darwinian theory, the Idle Theory of Evolution is built upon the Malthusian theory. But it is arguably truer to Malthus than Darwin’s system. In Idle Theory, rising populations and falling food resources mean that the creatures simply have to work harder to survive, rather than become embroiled in a Darwinian tooth-and-claw fight for survival, and that their populations oscillate rather than remain at some stable environmental ‘carrying capacity’.
Almost entirely absent from both Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism is any description of the physics of life. Idle Theory employs a physical model of life, centred on the energy used by the creatures to live, grow, and reproduce. Idle Theory is built around physical concepts of energy, work, and power, rather than economic ideas of competition and war, or the genetics of reproduction.
In the Idle Life model, the creatures are assumed to expend energy continuously in maintaining and repairing themselves, but to work intermittently to acquire and store the energy needed to power this maintenance work. They are seen as alternating between a busy state, where they work to acquire energy, and an idle state, where they perform no energy-acquiring work. The “idleness” of the creatures is the fraction of their time during which they are inactive or idle. This idleness can range from zero – continuously working to acquire energy – to near-complete inactivity – doing next to no energy-acquiring work at all.
Given a benign condition – with plentiful sources of energy in their environment, the creatures need only do a little work to acquire the energy they need to maintain themselves, and are consequently very idle. In a harsh environment, the same creatures must work much longer to acquire the energy they need, and will consequently be very busy. The limit of ‘busyness’ is reached when they are working continuously. If, working continuously, they are unable to acquire sufficient energy to power self-maintenance, they run out of energy, cease to maintain themselves, and die.
Zero idleness, or complete ‘busyness’, is the threshold of death. The nearer any creature approaches this threshold, the more endangered its life becomes. In a time of difficulty, when all creatures must work harder, some varieties or types may be reduced to zero idleness, and driven to extinction. It is the busiest, most hard-working creatures which face extinction, and the idlest which survive. In Idle Theory, natural selection means the regular extinction of the least idle creatures, and the survival of the idlest…
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