The correlation breaks at a fairly primitive level of societal evolution, which is why strong people often seem to favor primitivist social orders and get frustrated at how hard it is to actually rewind to such states.
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I’m talking mental strength too, not just physical. It would be nice if the mentally strong also just happened to possess the talents needed to fix some complicated mess, but life isn’t that clean. You might end up needing the special mind of a fragile savant.
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If you want individual strength to be determinative of individual outcomes, you have to work to unwind technological modernity. The more complex a society, the harder it is to predict what traits end up mattering in emergent dynamics.
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Confounding factor: it is easier to present as strong using conventional markers than actually act with strength, so a lot of strength idols have feet of clay and deep weaknesses that manifest invisibly. So they’re actually successful and critical weaklings who market strength
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Felt strength is not the same as strength, otherwise all strength would essential be power-posing. And neither felt nor actual strength actually rules, otherwise “strong should rule the week” would be tautological rather than aspirational.
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This doesn’t mean the weak rule, despite Ayn Rand paranoia about craven parasites. It just means strength (felt or actual) is relatively randomly present in both rulers and ruled. Strength is ironically not the most strongly selected variable in complex societies.
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Physical strength yes. But mental toughness and endurance, not at all.
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Mental too. Some of the most critical stuff gets done by nervous wrecks who eventually break down, leading to crises till they can be replaced.
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Technology amplifies any differential in ability/effectiveness and spreads it faster and wider than ever before, facilitating putting people and processes in places of influence they are possibly to fragile for.
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