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This is a common misconception thanks to the term "survival of the fittest". Evolution is a blind dumb statistical optimization by virtue and ONLY by virtue of

This is a common misconception thanks to the term "survival of the fittest". Evolution is a blind dumb statistical optimization by virtue and ONLY by virtue of creatures managing to reproduce. Anything that changes relative rates of reproduction changes relative distributions of genes and that's the end of the story. Nature doesn't design, foxes are not "meant" to hunt hares and hares are not "meant" to evade foxes. It happens that the hares that evade foxes and the foxes that eat hares are more likely to survive to pass on genes. Creatures with an aversion to asymetrical (a proxy for unhealthy) mates are more likely in the long run to have healthy offspring...and so on and so forth. The critical mistake is people adding "intentions" and "meaning" to a blind dumb statistical process akin to Russian roulette.

tachyonbeam 8y ago
I think the notion of local minima fits into this. It might be optimal for male birds of some species to have very colorful flair to attract females. Within that species of birds, these males with the more colorful/visible/expensive plumage will be selected for. This will remain true on shorter evolutionary time scales. It will work for a while. However, if the males of the species develop flair that becomes too attractive to predators or makes them incapable of outrunning said predators, and most males get eaten, natural selection will ensure that things balance themselves out. That species of birds could go extinct, or it could be that there are very few colorful males left, and the females who are less selective win out because reproducing with the males that are left is better than not reproducing at all. Evolution is non-stationary. What's making an individual fit depends on its current environment here and now: the food it can find, what predators are out there, things that make it more attractive to mates. However, predators, food, weather and mates change over time. In other words, what's being optimized for is constantly changing, there are local dynamics and some amount of "noise" that occurs, possibly resulting in silly looking animals like peacocks happening once in a while.
- bluGill 8y ago
  But a male who can be visible to predators and yet still survive must have something else (what?) that makes him more valuable.
username3 8y ago
The critical mistake is ignoring irreducible complexity to extrapolate micro evolution to macro evolution.
smallnamespace 8y ago
I think you're overselling your argument a bit—the existence of one mechanistic explanation for a process doesn't 'crowd out' other descriptions. Descriptions can be dual—saying foxes are "meant" to hunt hares, or predators are "meant" to hunt prey, can just be a compact way of describing their long, mutual historical co-evolution. Certainly, if you remove all prey from an environment, the foxes would die. What could be more meaningful (to the fox) than survival? For example: Mental thought is just a dumb statistical phenomenon that is a product of competing neural synapse electrochemical potentials, neurotransmitter levels, and ultimately subject to the dumb, unthinking hand of physical law at the subatomic level. Anything that changes the movement of particles and energy in your brain changes the neural outputs, and that's the end of the story. Brains don't think, minds do not regard themselves, piles of dumb atoms to do not feel pain, love, or happiness. It just so happens that brains that create output patterns that, when input into other brains, cause mutual feedback loops of interaction. Creatures that mutually interact are often more likely in the long run to have healthy offspring, and thus over time we would expect to see more brains like this. The critical mistake is people adding "meaning" and "thoughts" to a blind dumb statistical process akin to Russian roulette.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  > saying foxes are "meant" to hunt hares, or predators are "meant" to hunt prey, can just be a compact way of describing their long, mutual historical co-evolution. Certainly, if you remove all prey from an environment, the foxes would die. What could be more meaningful (to the fox) than survival? This approach uses 'meaning' / 'meant' in two very different ways: 1) the process of co-evolution over time 2) a fox's concern for its own existence Overloading like this doesn't add clarity, in my opinion, especially when the term 'meant' implies to most people some sort of intent-driven process.

tachyonbeam 8y ago

I think the notion of local minima fits into this. It might be optimal for male birds of some species to have very colorful flair to attract females. Within that species of birds, these males with the more colorful/visible/expensive plumage will be selected for. This will remain true on shorter evolutionary time scales. It will work for a while. However, if the males of the species develop flair that becomes too attractive to predators or makes them incapable of outrunning said predators, and most males get eaten, natural selection will ensure that things balance themselves out. That species of birds could go extinct, or it could be that there are very few colorful males left, and the females who are less selective win out because reproducing with the males that are left is better than not reproducing at all. Evolution is non-stationary. What's making an individual fit depends on its current environment here and now: the food it can find, what predators are out there, things that make it more attractive to mates. However, predators, food, weather and mates change over time. In other words, what's being optimized for is constantly changing, there are local dynamics and some amount of "noise" that occurs, possibly resulting in silly looking animals like peacocks happening once in a while.

bluGill 8y ago
But a male who can be visible to predators and yet still survive must have something else (what?) that makes him more valuable.

username3 8y ago

The critical mistake is ignoring irreducible complexity to extrapolate micro evolution to macro evolution.

smallnamespace 8y ago

I think you're overselling your argument a bit—the existence of one mechanistic explanation for a process doesn't 'crowd out' other descriptions. Descriptions can be dual—saying foxes are "meant" to hunt hares, or predators are "meant" to hunt prey, can just be a compact way of describing their long, mutual historical co-evolution. Certainly, if you remove all prey from an environment, the foxes would die. What could be more meaningful (to the fox) than survival? For example: Mental thought is just a dumb statistical phenomenon that is a product of competing neural synapse electrochemical potentials, neurotransmitter levels, and ultimately subject to the dumb, unthinking hand of physical law at the subatomic level. Anything that changes the movement of particles and energy in your brain changes the neural outputs, and that's the end of the story. Brains don't think, minds do not regard themselves, piles of dumb atoms to do not feel pain, love, or happiness. It just so happens that brains that create output patterns that, when input into other brains, cause mutual feedback loops of interaction. Creatures that mutually interact are often more likely in the long run to have healthy offspring, and thus over time we would expect to see more brains like this. The critical mistake is people adding "meaning" and "thoughts" to a blind dumb statistical process akin to Russian roulette.

KineticLensman 8y ago
> saying foxes are "meant" to hunt hares, or predators are "meant" to hunt prey, can just be a compact way of describing their long, mutual historical co-evolution. Certainly, if you remove all prey from an environment, the foxes would die. What could be more meaningful (to the fox) than survival? This approach uses 'meaning' / 'meant' in two very different ways: 1) the process of co-evolution over time 2) a fox's concern for its own existence Overloading like this doesn't add clarity, in my opinion, especially when the term 'meant' implies to most people some sort of intent-driven process.