[tsimionescu]

I think this is a fair criticism, and excellent explanation of evolution.

I should have expressed myself more carefully. What I am thinking of is that each individual is essentially one training step, where the current model is confronted with the training data (in this case, the entire environment, including other members of the population). Or even multiple moments over the life of the individual might be considered distinct training steps, where the model is adjusted in minute ways (epigenetics) based on certain events.

Of course, this makes less sense for species that are highly communal, such as bees, ants, or termites, where the fitness of an entire population is highly interconnected, and even severe maladaptations in an individual can nevertheless be an improvement to the fitness of the overall population (e.g. sterility in the vast majority of individual bees and ants is not a detriment, when it is a fatal flaw in almost all other animals).