Representative Trantis  wrote:

> Why is it so frowned upon to propose the idea that an animal can get worse,
> before it gets better. It is not inconcieveable that an animal could get
> worse at doing a job, but because there are no predators, etc, it doesn't
> die out.
> 
> Or is it the case that in the wild a creature will only get enough food to
> be able to survive, so must be the best it can be at it's job?
> 
> [moderator's note: I have thought about this myself: the adaptationist
> ideal is that mere adequacy must be optimized -- that is, one must be
> optimal just to persist. Is this true? - JAH]

Wallace and Weismann thought it was. But the debates over optimality are
a little circular, given that whether or not something is optimal it is
surviving if we are talking about it. Darwin's observation of bad
designs suggests *he* didn't think selection optimised.

Sober, I think, used Herbert Simon's term "satisficer" - natural
selection doesn't optimise, it satsfices. Somebody called this "survival
of the merely adequate".

Trantis, I think the term you are looking for in the lit is "relaxation
of selective coefficients".
-- 
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly, 
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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