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DaFranker comments on Final cause is epistemologically primary, but efficient cause is metaphysically primary - Less Wrong
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Comments (7)
This is a key crucial wording which propagates popular misconceptions about evolution.
Evolution did not design anything. Evolution has no will, no objective, no motives, no utility function, no overarching plot or grand plan for humanity and the world, unlike what an uninformed reader would instantly infer from reading the above quote.
A slightly better formulation would be:
"(...) it wants to live and reproduce because it is a modified copy of other organisms that randomly wanted to live and reproduce, while the organisms that did not want to live and reproduce were eliminated long ago in the history of evolution."
The following sentences that talk about evolution are similarly extremely misleading. I will retract my downvote once these issues are corrected and the signal-noise ratio is improved a bit.
I think you missed the entire point of the post ^_^
Yes. Yes I did (confidence 70%). This is exactly why I use the word "misleading". It was never clear to me that this was an example of intermediary map-level concepts that are useful to think with even if they are not what the territory computes. It still isn't clear, even now, after a third reading.
Also, if my inferences on what you're trying to communicate are correct, the signal-to-noise ratio of this post is very low as most of the content is an applause light show. Attempts at charitable interpretation trigger my "Confused" warnings.
Either I misunderstand your article, or the article is of very low overall value to me and the content is an unclear and inefficient rewording of previous material covered by Eliezer in old sequences.