Allan_Crossman comments on Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 November 2007 06:39AM

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Comment author: Allan_Crossman 07 July 2008 02:32:56PM 4 points [-]

Re: "Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers".

It's a bit like saying deep blue is an instruction executor, not an expected chess position utility maximizer.

Not really. Deep Blue's programming is so directly tied to winning chess, maximizing the value of its position is definitely what it "intends". It actually "thinks about" how well it's doing in this regard.

Living things, on the other hand, are far from explicit fitness maximizers. Evolution has given them behaviours that, in most natural circumstances, are fairly good at helping their genes. But in unusual circumstances they may well do things that are totally useless.

Humans today, for example, totally fail to maximize their fitness, e.g. by choosing to have just a small family and using contraception. We're in an unusual situation - evolution knew nothing about condoms.