yaminokaabii t1_j96bbp2 wrote on February 19, 2023 at 4:16 PM

Reply to comment by wewbull in Why are fevers cyclical? by Key-Marionberry-9854

Be careful saying that beneficial traits will necessarily become more prevalent. It's all probability. If getting the long-term better trait necessitates going through a worse trait in the short-term, it may never happen. As an example with arbitrary numbers, say staying in fever another 1 to 5 hours is actually disadvantageous, even if staying 5-10 hours is advantageous.

wewbull t1_j96d4tw wrote on February 19, 2023 at 4:29 PM

True. Local inflections like that can act as barriers to getting to a much more advantageous trait. I agree.

...but I also think it's wrong to say evolution is random. It's random experiments in a game of procreation. Those experiments which fail are discarded. As such the overall process is guided away from failure and not random.

Maybe I was asserting the positive case (towards success) too much, when the negative case (away from failure) is really the stronger aspect.

yaminokaabii t1_j96lbr8 wrote on February 19, 2023 at 5:25 PM

I had just wanted to add to your last comment, I think we are in violent agreement here! Saying evolution is "random" is simplified to the point of inaccuracy—I would say it is probabilistic.

There is definitely something to be said about going towards success. I'm thinking of the RNA world hypothesis about the origin of life wherein RNA molecules both held replicable genetic information (as DNA does) and catalyzed the chemical reactions to replicate itself. The self-sustaining molecules won out because... they sustained themselves. Life now is pretty damn good at "being successful", except when it's threatened by other life being more successful, which looks like moving away from failure.