Over the course of the day I've obviously had way too much time on my hands and came up with this after reading a news article for yet another Darwin Award candidate.
My son says we should submit it to the Urban Dictionary. It seems a bit wordy for that, to me....
Darwin's Lure (noun) : A conceptual aspect of natural selection in which a situational element or combination of elements attracts and eliminates those unfit for contributing to the long-term survival of the species.
Description:
A Darwin's Lure consists of one or more environmental or situational elements, objects or conditions that comprise the evolutionary equivalent of an "attractive nuisance", the risk or danger of which the Lure's potential victims are unable to fully comprehend or appreciate.
Darwin's Lure is conceptually distinct from Self-Selection, in which the unfit specimen eliminates itself from the gene pool through actions entirely of its own design (see: Darwin Awards).
Example:
A young man is out hanging out near a cliff consuming alcohol with friends. A female friend drops their cell phone over the cliff. The phone lands on a ledge just out of reach. The young man decides to retrieve the phone. In his attempt, he plummets 75 feet to his untimely - if ultimately deserved - demise.
Analysis:
This classic Darwin's Lure consists of two factors: Environmental and Situational.
The Environmental factor in our example is "hanging out" anywhere in the vicinity of a cliff. More accurately, it is the cliff itself as an obviously dangerous aspect of the environment. This aspect of a Darwin's Lure inherits its power from the victim's inability to recognize natural environmental hazards (e.g., heights, rocky terrain, large bodies of water, large bodies of water covered in ice, etc.) and hazardous man-made artifacts (water towers, power lines, abandoned mines, active industrial machinery, etc.). Such potential hazards are easily mitigated by more fit specimens via the simple expedient of being somewhere else.
The cell phone being just out of reach below the cliff's edge represents the Situational aspect of this Darwin's Lure. Victims of a Darwin's Lure are not skilled in the accurate evaluation of risk and reward and are thus likely to believe that for any given behavior the inherent risk is far less and reward far greater than is actually the case. A more fit specimen would avoid this trap by accurately assessing that retrieving the cell phone would not likely increase their chance of "getting some".
It might be argued that alcohol use is also a component of this Darwin's Lure configuration. However, the choice of whether to consume alcohol or not is in most cases personal rather than environmental or situational. While alcohol consumption does diminish one's ability to rationally evaluate their situation, environment and risk/reward factors, a true Darwin's Lure is attractive enough to draw in its potential victims regardless of the artificial and temporary reduction in baseline fitness represented by incidental blood alcohol level.
Evaluation:
Any potential Darwin's Lure can be identified by evaluation and identification of its Environmental and/or Situational components. Checks may then be performed by removing those components and analyzing the potential outcomes.
For the given example:
The Cliff: Had the gathering of friends taken place in a safer environment such as a park, the absence of the cliff would likely have prevented the fatal fall. Choosing to gather somewhere else would have easily mitigated this significant environmental danger and virtually guaranteed the survival of all involved. Provided, of course, that somewhere was not an abandoned mine.
The Phone: Let us say the event still occurs at cliff's edge. Our naturally-selected friend might still have survived had one of the friends not decided that tossing their cell phone about near the edge of the cliff was a good idea. In the absence of this factor he would not have had to exercise his pitifully underdeveloped risk/reward evaluation skills only to be found wanting, and his odds of survival would have increased by a conservatively estimated 50%.
The Alcohol: The petitioner submits that a statistically significant number of Darwin Award winners were stone cold sober while earning their plaudits, and leaves the rest as an exercise to the reader.
My son says we should submit it to the Urban Dictionary. It seems a bit wordy for that, to me....
Darwin's Lure (noun) : A conceptual aspect of natural selection in which a situational element or combination of elements attracts and eliminates those unfit for contributing to the long-term survival of the species.
Description:
A Darwin's Lure consists of one or more environmental or situational elements, objects or conditions that comprise the evolutionary equivalent of an "attractive nuisance", the risk or danger of which the Lure's potential victims are unable to fully comprehend or appreciate.
Darwin's Lure is conceptually distinct from Self-Selection, in which the unfit specimen eliminates itself from the gene pool through actions entirely of its own design (see: Darwin Awards).
Example:
A young man is out hanging out near a cliff consuming alcohol with friends. A female friend drops their cell phone over the cliff. The phone lands on a ledge just out of reach. The young man decides to retrieve the phone. In his attempt, he plummets 75 feet to his untimely - if ultimately deserved - demise.
Analysis:
This classic Darwin's Lure consists of two factors: Environmental and Situational.
The Environmental factor in our example is "hanging out" anywhere in the vicinity of a cliff. More accurately, it is the cliff itself as an obviously dangerous aspect of the environment. This aspect of a Darwin's Lure inherits its power from the victim's inability to recognize natural environmental hazards (e.g., heights, rocky terrain, large bodies of water, large bodies of water covered in ice, etc.) and hazardous man-made artifacts (water towers, power lines, abandoned mines, active industrial machinery, etc.). Such potential hazards are easily mitigated by more fit specimens via the simple expedient of being somewhere else.
The cell phone being just out of reach below the cliff's edge represents the Situational aspect of this Darwin's Lure. Victims of a Darwin's Lure are not skilled in the accurate evaluation of risk and reward and are thus likely to believe that for any given behavior the inherent risk is far less and reward far greater than is actually the case. A more fit specimen would avoid this trap by accurately assessing that retrieving the cell phone would not likely increase their chance of "getting some".
It might be argued that alcohol use is also a component of this Darwin's Lure configuration. However, the choice of whether to consume alcohol or not is in most cases personal rather than environmental or situational. While alcohol consumption does diminish one's ability to rationally evaluate their situation, environment and risk/reward factors, a true Darwin's Lure is attractive enough to draw in its potential victims regardless of the artificial and temporary reduction in baseline fitness represented by incidental blood alcohol level.
Evaluation:
Any potential Darwin's Lure can be identified by evaluation and identification of its Environmental and/or Situational components. Checks may then be performed by removing those components and analyzing the potential outcomes.
For the given example:
The Cliff: Had the gathering of friends taken place in a safer environment such as a park, the absence of the cliff would likely have prevented the fatal fall. Choosing to gather somewhere else would have easily mitigated this significant environmental danger and virtually guaranteed the survival of all involved. Provided, of course, that somewhere was not an abandoned mine.
The Phone: Let us say the event still occurs at cliff's edge. Our naturally-selected friend might still have survived had one of the friends not decided that tossing their cell phone about near the edge of the cliff was a good idea. In the absence of this factor he would not have had to exercise his pitifully underdeveloped risk/reward evaluation skills only to be found wanting, and his odds of survival would have increased by a conservatively estimated 50%.
The Alcohol: The petitioner submits that a statistically significant number of Darwin Award winners were stone cold sober while earning their plaudits, and leaves the rest as an exercise to the reader.
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