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I think you'll find that this is not a useful way of thinking. There is always something else you could try and account for. To save your thinking until you can account for everything simply results in no thinking. It's far better to fully understand the simplest model possible and add complication as nessisary, than to start with the hardest system. That is how science moves forward.


Sure. But the simplest model for creatures evolving must include statistical behavior. Every decision is not driving evolution - its a series over (life)time, with lots of noise in the result. E.g. If sometimes behaving selfishly works well and sometimes it doesn't, likewise altruism, the statistics will drive evolution, not the logic of the situation.

In the end the Markov chain of of event-decision-state change will favor those decisions (genes) that avoid the early-death state and favor the lots-of-reproduction states.




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