Yvain comments on Behaviorism: Beware Anthropomorphizing Humans - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Yvain 04 July 2011 08:40PM

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Comment author: Yvain 06 July 2011 09:15:42AM 7 points [-]

This is the hat-tip to that idea. Evolution/organisms are so good at maximizing fitness that it's really tempting to think they're perfect at it, or at least perfectly efficient at it, which is something we have to be reminded again and again isn't true.

If it wasn't so close to being universally true, we wouldn't have to keep reminding people that it's occasionally false.

Comment author: timtyler 06 July 2011 09:24:20AM *  0 points [-]

This is the hat-tip to that idea.

Yay - this comment is better!

Evolution/organisms are so good at maximizing fitness that it's really tempting to think they're perfect at it, or at least perfectly efficient at it, which is something we have to be reminded again and again isn't true.

Hmm. I can't say I have ever encountered that idea. Organisms are imperfect. They are resource limited. They are cobbled together by natural selection and random mutations. I think most people usually "get" all of that - at least by the "Darwin 101" stage.