My take is that it boils down to increasing the probability of fertilization, primarily in our early eukaryotic ancestors, in which sexual reproduction first evolved.
On the level of gametes (the reproductive cells), it's about the difference between isogamy (gametes being the same) and anisogamy (involving a larger and a smaller gamete, which are then by definition are the female egg cell and male sperm cell). The egg cells provide almost everything the eventual zygote needs to develop, while the main role of the sperm cell is to transport a set of genes to an egg cell. As it turns out, the sperm cell can do this with much less volume, and therefore,... (read more)
I think the illusion of validity fits this description.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I've come across your work, but have to admit that I've only read parts of it so far. I'm still in the process of catching up to the state of the art.
Probably too late, but I wanted to submit this:
https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/8JQQLkqjTPka9mJ4K/belief-alignment
The following are some non-technical ideas about AI alignment based on human beliefs, rather than our true reward function. My impression is that the role of beliefs is often implied in passing, but I haven‘t found any elaborations on the topic. I‘d be grateful for relevant references, if someone knows any.
I believe we should not aim to make AIs imitate our behaviour or even just our preferences in every regard. An AI with the same reward function as an average human would want what we want, e.g. to be in control of their own lives, to make lots of money, to eat icecream, etc. At... (read 1748 more words →)
Yes, but the distinction between gametes had to evolve first from asexual, i.e., undifferentiated reproduction, while hermaphroditism requires some added complexities, as it has to combine both sexes in a way that works. And as long as divided sexes work well enough, there isn't much selection pressure to go that route.
As for why this is more common in plants, I'm intuitively guessing that there are a bunch of issues involved that I'm not familiar with either. But a major driver is probably that (land) plants are sessile and tend to require some space for themselves. The problem for plants with differentiated sexes is then that if their nearest neighbours happen to be of the same sex, the chance of their spores reaching those of the opposite sex is drastically lower than for hermaphodites, as the latter have potential partners in every neighbour.
This wouldn't generally be an issue in mobile animals, who have to find and approach their mates anyway.