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0 pointsfluidcruft24d ago0 comments

The flip side is everything is being degraded by random mutation.

It's like holding a large ball in place on a hill that sees frequent tremors. If the ball is still halfway up the hill it's being held in place, if it's being held in place it's still halfway up the hill. It might be considered a tautology if you're only working with symbols and ignore all the mechanistics.

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astrobe_24d ago

> The flip side is everything is being degraded by random mutation

"degraded"? Aren't random mutations precisely one of the core mechanism of adaptation?

MarkusQ24d ago

But most of them are still deleterious.

Remember, all improvements are changes, but most changes aren't improvements. The trick that makes evolution works is this: out of lots of random changes, most of which are harmful, the harmful ones tend to be weeded out and the useful ones tend to spread.

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