 If there was a deathmatch between all of the bounty hunters in the Star Wars universe, would it be a case of survival of the Fetist? The trope of special people chosen by fate to do great things happens in all sorts of stories throughout human history. Greek heroes were either picked by the gods or fathered by them, and Chinese emperors and European kings alike were supposedly chosen by divine mandate. But let's use an example that we're all familiar with. In Star Wars, to be a Jedi, you have to be born with a special connection to the force. That gives you the ability to do awesome things like mind tricks and telekinesis and so on. You can develop that connection if you're born with it, but if you aren't, you're kind of out of luck. This legend of great people being chosen by fate makes for compelling stories, but a lot of people like to try and take oversimplified fictions and apply them to the complexity of real life, and then we start to get into trouble. Social Darwinism is an example of this. Social Darwinism is an idea that was first hinted at by Reverend Thomas Malthus in 1798. It gained in popularity around the mid to late 1800s as a few people got mega rich off of investing in railroads, and it's been kicking around in some form or another ever since then. In its most common form, Social Darwinism is the idea that society will reward certain people with wealth because they have certain qualities that make them well adapted for success, and that people who lack those qualities will become poor. Basically, survival of the fittest, only with money. For example, according to Social Darwinism, a wealthy person like Mitt Romney has a special adaptation that you and I don't. He's just better at what he does, he's one of the chosen few, and that's why he's mega rich. It's a great story, but there are some differences between Mitt Romney and a Jedi. In the Star Wars universe, the Force isn't just a source of power, it's also got a will of its own, an invisible hand of fate that makes sure that the Jedi fulfill their destiny. Unfortunately, in the real world, the invisible hand is fickle, and it doesn't always reward the people who deserve it. For every story we hear about someone like Bill Gates who hit upon a good idea and managed to sell it well enough to make billions, there are tons of stories about people like Tesla, and Kafka, and Van Gogh, and Schuber, people who we now recognize as visionaries who lived and died totally unrecognized and unappreciated. Not to mention firefly getting canceled. Rich people may have had good ideas, but if you examine the circumstances surrounding their success, you'll find that the most important contribution doesn't come from their education, their intelligence, their upbringing, or their force sensitivity. Most often is that they happen to be in the right place at the right time and happen to have the resources available to take advantage of that opportunity. In short, pure dumb luck. Similarly, a lot of poor people aren't poor because they screwed up, they're poor because something crappy happened to them, like being born into a situation where they lack the resources to take advantage of those opportunities. Whether we like it or not, chance plays a huge role in our success or failure. Now, social Darwinism has some other lustriconian interpretations that actually make some sense, like societies that are more stable and better constructed tend to prosper and inspire other societies like themselves. That's feasible, but only because societies are big, and so the Bill Gates stories cancel out the Tesla stories and leave you with a general idea of what's working overall. Also, it doesn't excuse things like imperialism and colonialism. You don't get to say that your society is better than one that you've conquered because you had more guns and less smallpox. But most importantly, I think it's a mistake to suggest that individuals just end up where they're supposed to be in life, that the upper and lower classes are populated with people who earned their place there. Because in my experience, there is such a thing as luck. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and wait a minute. Woo! I got my first hate mail! Oh man, this is so exciting. My first hate mail was from one Randy Olson, who is an artificial intelligence researcher and wishes that he had more downvotes on Reddit to bury my thunk video number three so that nobody will ever have to see it again. I don't know what to say. He makes valid and interesting points about the nature and existence of cognition and the current state of neuroscience and the difficulties in programming something that you don't understand, and he even made the Wikipedia article about nematodes. I'm so happy I could die. Randy, you could have as many downvotes as you want because you are awesome. As I was saying, don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, and unless you're Randy, I'll see you next week.