Since this topic interests me and i’m killing time I decided to comment on a few things in your post.
1. wikipedia has a reasonable article on exaptations as an introduction. i also reccomend looking at the wikip article on sexual selection—in my view these topics overlap. (The wikip article on sexual selection looks less complete—i think ‘fisher’s runaway process’ described in that article is most relevant but some others prefer the ‘handicap principal’.
there are much more recent articles on these topics which tend to rely on physics formalism—though fisher used earlier forms of it as well. (fisher was a famous statistician).
2. regarding ‘differential reproduction’ (your 1st question) , i think the answer is ‘both’. (this overlaps with the fisher runaway process ).
being a blue bear might be like having a nice car or prestigious college degree. it may not mean much at all but once its around you better be a blue bear, have a nice car, or have a good college degree.
3. your last paragraph to me does support the idea that evolution is (almost ) a zero-sum game. Its not exactly zero sum, because then there would be no evolution. It might , for example, prove to be that the best way to improve animal welfare would be for those who care about it give them more room—this is the argument made by some well known philosophers—eg patricia macCormack—and writers who promote human extinction—i personally don’t believe this argument, and also don’t they believe they do either even if they don’t know it.
‘Maximizing fitness’ is an idea thatb only occurs in the most simplistic forms of evolutionary theory—and its also due to R Fisher—‘fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection’. Its well known it only applies to ideal systems. (analagous to Lucretius’ universe from 1000s of years ago—assuming the world is basically a set of billiard balls or atoms bouncing off of each other. its called ‘bean bag genetics’. it can explain why a cup of hot coffee cools off, but it cant explain why organisms evolve, much less why there are rocks, rivers, and computers rather than simply air. you need nonequilibrium statistical physics and quantum theory to explain those. )
Since this topic interests me and i’m killing time I decided to comment on a few things in your post.
1. wikipedia has a reasonable article on exaptations as an introduction. i also reccomend looking at the wikip article on sexual selection—in my view these topics overlap. (The wikip article on sexual selection looks less complete—i think ‘fisher’s runaway process’ described in that article is most relevant but some others prefer the ‘handicap principal’.
there are much more recent articles on these topics which tend to rely on physics formalism—though fisher used earlier forms of it as well. (fisher was a famous statistician).
2. regarding ‘differential reproduction’ (your 1st question) , i think the answer is ‘both’. (this overlaps with the fisher runaway process ).
being a blue bear might be like having a nice car or prestigious college degree. it may not mean much at all but once its around you better be a blue bear, have a nice car, or have a good college degree.
3. your last paragraph to me does support the idea that evolution is (almost ) a zero-sum game. Its not exactly zero sum, because then there would be no evolution. It might , for example, prove to be that the best way to improve animal welfare would be for those who care about it give them more room—this is the argument made by some well known philosophers—eg patricia macCormack—and writers who promote human extinction—i personally don’t believe this argument, and also don’t they believe they do either even if they don’t know it.
‘Maximizing fitness’ is an idea thatb only occurs in the most simplistic forms of evolutionary theory—and its also due to R Fisher—‘fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection’. Its well known it only applies to ideal systems. (analagous to Lucretius’ universe from 1000s of years ago—assuming the world is basically a set of billiard balls or atoms bouncing off of each other. its called ‘bean bag genetics’. it can explain why a cup of hot coffee cools off, but it cant explain why organisms evolve, much less why there are rocks, rivers, and computers rather than simply air. you need nonequilibrium statistical physics and quantum theory to explain those. )