Evolution can't copy homework: why species improve slower than iPhones

louisvarge · x · 2026-11-05

louisvarge argues the "iPhones just get better every year" intuition rarely gets applied to evolution, even though today's animals are likely overall better than those of 10 million years ago. A human-eyed dog-nosed species doesn't exist not necessarily due to tradeoffs, but because evolution had to serially discover each mutation chain itself — species can't copy traits from each other, so evolution can't parallelize the work. He says this insight matters for biology research: transhumanist tech seeks strict wins, evolution isn't finished, and humans are a WIP species with countless unfixed bugs.

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