The existence of a fitness function does not explain the increase in complexity. The most successful life forms on this planet are the unicellular ones. Why would the selection process favor anything else?
> The existence of a fitness function does not explain the increase in complexity.
That would be an interesting rebuttal if I calimed that the existence of a fitness function explained the increase in complexity.
Since that's not what I said, it's just a non-sequitur.
What I said was that if you start with a collection of items all uniformly near one boundary and then vary the collection randomly rejecting things that fall outside of the boundary, both the maximum and mean distance from the boundary will increase over time, until and unless that behavior is constrained by a boundary on the other end.
(In the case of life, I'm talking about a strong, "outside of this you don't have anything that counts as life" boundary, not a fitness function in the evolutionary sense, which addresses the relative reproductive success among viable life forms.)
That would be an interesting rebuttal if I calimed that the existence of a fitness function explained the increase in complexity.
Since that's not what I said, it's just a non-sequitur.
What I said was that if you start with a collection of items all uniformly near one boundary and then vary the collection randomly rejecting things that fall outside of the boundary, both the maximum and mean distance from the boundary will increase over time, until and unless that behavior is constrained by a boundary on the other end.
(In the case of life, I'm talking about a strong, "outside of this you don't have anything that counts as life" boundary, not a fitness function in the evolutionary sense, which addresses the relative reproductive success among viable life forms.)