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Perplexed comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong
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You mean r selection vs K selection?
That wasn't what I had in mind, but you are right: natural selection does tend to play off one against the other. And a member of H.sap. does sometime find verself in one situation or the other, so it is natural that our psyche's would be comfortable with either approach, depending on circumstances.
The r/K thing is a teensy bit different. That is more to do with offspring quality - with many vs few offspring.
The idea (from dietary energy restriction) is that organisms face resource-investment tradeoffs between self-maintenance and reproduction - and that circumstances and diet can affect where that tradeoff is made. If there isn't enough dietary energy to support reproduction, what resources are available are devoted to maintenance - so the organism can live to reproduce another day.
It is a bit like K-selection taken to an extreme where no babies are produced at all - and all resources get invested in personal survival.
I have a page all about this general topic: http://cr.timtyler.org/why/