Nick_Tarleton comments on Natural Selection's Speed Limit and Complexity Bound - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 November 2007 04:54PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (105)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 05 November 2007 07:50:48PM 0 points [-]

From an evolutionary perspective, all genes should favor the highest possible fidelity copies.

Hmm... Suppose there are two separated populations, identical except that one has a gene that makes the mutation rate negligibly low. Naturally the mutating population will acquire greater variation over time. If the environment shifts, the homogeneous population may be wiped out but part of the diverse population may survive. So in this case, lower-fidelity copying is more fit in the long run. This is highly contrived, of course.