In the early pages of Neal Stephenson&#x27;s Cryptonomicon, Lawrence tries to understand Alan Turing (who is a character in the novel):<p>&quot;From an evolution standpoint, what was the point of having people around who were not inclined to have offspring? There must be some good, and fairly subtle, reason for it.<p>The only thing he could work out was that it was groups of people--societies--rather than individual creatures, who were now trying to out-reproduce and&#x2F;or kill each other, and that, in a society, there was plenty of room for someone who didn&#x27;t have kids as long as he was up to something useful.&quot;