This exact question is discussed in Matt Ridleys The Red Queen. He puts forward that it's better for evolution in more unpredictable environments where variation becomes an advantage and vice versa for stable environments. It's a great book I'd recommend it.
The main thesis of the book is that because every other member of the species is evolving through generations you have to evolve at some rate even to stay still relative to other beings
Some great recommendations, have added a bunch of these thanks! Here are some of my top recommendations
These are probably more subjective than anything else
Got a bit carried away, but fun way to spend a morning, hope that's useful to some of you!
I think part of the reason is it's not really a huge community and there is a lot of discussion and not as much "Doing"