Sublime

In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995), I argued that natural selection is an algorithmic process, a collection of sorting algorithms that are themselves composed of generate-and-test algorithms that exploit randomness (pseudo-randomness, chaos) in the generation phase, and some sort of mindless quality-control testing phase, with the winners advancing

It’s strange but true that to a very large degree Charles Darwin insisted the variation that fed natural selection be completely random not because of any actual scientific evidence it could suffice, but because of the theological argument from evil.

This would not be the first time that an ideological system in conflict with the facts has found it prudent to defer to itself. And with predictably incoherent results.

publicly visible.

Darwin resolved a problem that was not a problem at all in nineteenth-century biology, because his contemporaries were convinced that they already knew the answer.