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by jvanderbot
569 days ago
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It might make sense to just drop the term optimization when discussing natural selection. It's not like "Natural Selection" was given an ecological niche and optimized from scratch the being for that niche. That mental model implies there's not much to be done and any changes would produce a less useful product. A more apt term would be "Refactored" or even "Patched". It's more like a giant ugly legacy software system was added to, and the result was just enough to keep going in the new system. I like that analogy better because it implies: 1. There is room for optimization, and 2. Any minor change is likely to break things far away due to the continuous re-patching and legacy cruft. Both of which seem correct. |
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I think you are conflating natural selection the process with organisms that are a result of natural selection.
Natural selection isn’t a process that is intentionally made by anyone, but a way we describe a simplified model slew of complex processes.
Also conflated is what you are optimizing for. The only thing natural selection optimizes for is survival. That’s it. Nothing else matters expect which individuals survive long enough to pass their genes to the next generation. As a result niches develop and as each generation survives compared to their peers their survival strategies are optimized.
Optimization perfectly describes what is happening to the survivability and reproduction of certain genes.
You appear to be working backwards. That there was a niche and evolution somehow crafted an organism to fit that niche. That is misleading. Genes replicate, and in a certain context some genes survived and replicated better than in some other context. So genes evolved in that new context creating a niche.