Tom_McCabe2 comments on Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound - Less Wrong
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Comments (105)
"Defective sperm - which are more-than-normally likely to be carry screwed-up DNA - is far less likely to reach the egg,"
Then the DNA never gets collected by researchers and included in the 10^-8 mutations/generation/base pair figure. If the actual rate of mutations are higher, but the non-detected mutations are weeded out, you still get the exact same result as if the rate of mutations is lower with no weeding-out.
"Of course it does! Just not to the maximum-bit-rate argument."
True.
"No, they mustn't. They can theoretically be kept in a constant non-equilibrium."
Yes, they can be- it doesn't change the bit rate. Non-equilibria where the population is shrinking must be balanced by non-equilibria where the population is growing, or the population will go to zero or infinity.