[rrgok]

Dumb question: I'm always amused by this phrase "...as if nature is intelligent and driven by some purpose..". Are you not, as human being, part of nature? How is possible from an unintelligent being emerge something intelligent? Either the seed was already there or otherwise I don't know how it would be possible. Would you consider human beings not intelligent and not driven by purpose?

[sph]

I rephrase: evolution of life as we know it (that's what I meant by nature) is not intelligent nor driven by any purpose, not even survival. It's randomly throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Maybe the resulting organism lives longer, maybe not.

We only see the result of it. The observation that evolution helps find a better local maximum is literally survivorship bias.

[robocat]

Evolution is a severely misunderstood and misused word. We say a business evolved, to mean changed. We say we evolve an idea, with the implication of intelligent action. We say someone can win the Darwin Award even if they are older and already reproduced: to properly win the Darwin Award, one would need to die before reproducing, or kill their genetic offspring as well as themselves (to properly win the Darwin Award, one would need to kill all the genetic branch of their family tree).

Biological evolution is due to reproductive selection. Evolution is primarily related to reproduction: survival only matters if it affects reproduction (after all, nothing survives in the long term).

Evolution is not really defined as random change: evolution occurs due to selection pressures that amplify the genetic population of the most successful reproducers.

Genetic mutation and recombination is somewhat random, but not purely random (certain mutations are more or less likely, and the pool of successful recombinations is very biased).

It is a frustrating topic, because in biology evolution has a very particular meaning, yet biological evolution is usually misunderstood. The misunderstanding is due to the popular incorrect metaphors and alternative meanings for the word.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Disclaimer: I am not a biologist. I’m trying to be as clear as I can, while making sweeping simplifications (e.g. ignoring kin selection etcetera!) I welcome any mistakes being corrected by lurking biologists.

[deafpolygon]

Evolution of life is different from mutation. We can have mutation anytime, but evolution of life is more or less the basis of 'natural selection' in which mutations that favor survival is selected.