I guess there’s no reason for survival of the fittest to equal more intelligence.
Easy to forget that “fittest” is only relevant to the environment/context you are living in - if intelligence does not make you “fitter” for that then it will probably disappear.
Intelligence requires bigger brains, which comes at a cost - huge energy requirement (20% of total for humans), weight (for birds), head size (issue for human birth), etc.
Many animals have no need for intelligence/generality since they have a very limited behavioral niche (e.g. herbivores, crocodiles, sharks), so it wouldn't have evolved in the first place, but even for those that do the benefit has to outweigh the cost.
If every animal was a generalist they they'd all be in competition with each other, so I'd expect if you ran simulations you'd find that an ecosystem full of species that don't compete head-on is more stable, and therefore likely to result.
Inteligence is the endgame answer, brute forcing it gets you 85% of the way, but only inteligence will get you to 99.9%. Sometimes the local maximum is enough.
It's not circular, it's just true in the purest sense. As all mathematical theorems are either tautologies or consequences of assumptions, therefore pure assumptions.
For me survival of the fittest just means that with high probability those genes will survive who have a high probability to survive in an evolutionary setting. Is this trivial? In this wording it is trivial. But it can be useful. (And also it is not that trivial in a different wording. Just like other theorems, e.g. the theorem about the
perpendicular bisectors of a triangle's sides. If a point O is equal distance from A and B and B and C then it is equal distance from A and C. Tautology, circular, assumption, name it what you want, it's math.)
I think it is 'fittest with respect with the current / incoming environment', in contrast with 'strongest' / 'fastest' / some other absolute measurement, at the expense of the rest.
Fittest means best fitted to the prevailing environment, but of course the fitness being tested is ability to survive and reproduce (i.e. keep on playing the game of evolution).
It's almost a circular/tautological description ("survival of the survivors"), but "fittest" does at least allude to why some survive better than others (better adapted to prevailing environment), as well as the fact ("fitt-EST" vs "fit") that it's a competition for limited resources. Fitness is a matter of degree.
Survival of the fittest to reproduce. Not just to survive, but to spread. The key profundity is that it's so banal, there's no need for a God directing it.
Coffee and tea are very interesting. I can drink caffeinated tea without any issues. But for some reason caffeinated coffee will trigger an acne break out several days later. It took a long time for me to connect this link.
It was a good story. But I’m not convinced it really works.
An experienced washing machine fitter who does this as their job would have the right drill and circular bit in his van and would have a selection of hoses ready to go.
How are you going to find an experienced washing machine fitter? How long do you have to wait to book them?
I ordered my washing machine from a local shop with highest reputation in terms of customer support.
They provide installation and delivery (for significant extra cost). I initially purchased both. Then talked to customer support just to be certain. I sent them pictures of my setup. They said that they can't provide installation there, it's not clear where the water extract should be, etc.
We decided to drop installation. Then I asked multiple times whether it was fine to deliver it for them to 2nd floor. They said yeah.
When the delivery day came, the guy bringing the washing machine came alone, and so wasn't prepared to deliver the 70kg washing machine to the 2nd floor, and said they only bring it to the first room. Luckily he was kind enough to together with me bring it up to 2nd floor, but he definitely wasn't prepared.
Then I asked tips about installation, but he didn't say too much.
After which I did back and forth e-mail with another specialist sending pictures back and forth and I managed to solve it DYI, but I also had to do several roundtrips, talking to customer support at large shops, who couldn't find the items I was looking for, and guess they weren't there.
It took much more than 4 hours for me in total.
> For them it would have been a ten minute job…
Don't forget to include time spent on finding the right person, communication, then travelling for that person, etc. Also all the experts that I have hired water pipes related always came to look at the situation first, then decided what they needed, then went to the shops to get those things.
> They said that they can't provide installation there, it's not clear where the water extract should be, etc.
Maybe only doing cookie cutter installations is how they got their reputation to be that high (or review farming). Same as in software - don't do anything too custom and you'll be fine :)
They are quite corporate and probably very cautious for that reason, but they do invest a lot in customer service. Their products usually cost more than elsewhere though, but I'm pretty sure it's because of extra investments in the service. I would've thought they had some contractors that they could suggest or use along with their service though at least.
I’ve also found this to be the case. Starting a new chat or in Cursor composer session puts things back on the right track. Also, prompting is really important. A lot of people just seem to think they have some kind of oracle - “fix the bug” - how is anything supposed to work from that?
Without any information on your stack it’s very hard for anyone to give advice.
One thing that might be worth looking at is moving your backend into a lamda. There are various shims that make this very easy for node based backends.
For low traffic websites (even for quite high traffic sites) this can be almost free.
Your main costs will then be whatever database you are using.
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