Progress is not the same thing as complexity increase. While I agree that there can be upper bounds on complexity increase in evolution, this doesn’t really have that much relevance to the question of whether evolution has any cumulative direction. The latter is something I consider to be an open question.
As any engineer knows, great increases in capability often occur through the removal of complexity, not its addition. This happens more frequently than you’d think. It’s part of why, for instance, computers have gotten better, faster, and cheaper. If you look at a computer today you’ll see that it has less components than a computer did a decade or so ago. Evolution can of course do the same thing. Fitness can increase through loss of complexity. The simplest and most straightforward example would be the knockout of a detrimental gene, while a more complex example would be the construction of a complex genetic framework or “scaffolding” followed by the emergence of a simpler system within that framework followed by the dissolution of the framework’s no-longer-necessary parts.
So while Williams’ work may show the existence of upper bounds on complexity, it does not disprove the idea that there might be some kind of directionality that could be called progress in evolution. If it exists, it seems to be something that we haven’t learned how to quantify or explain quite yet.
Progress is not the same thing as complexity increase. While I agree that there can be upper bounds on complexity increase in evolution, this doesn’t really have that much relevance to the question of whether evolution has any cumulative direction. The latter is something I consider to be an open question.
As any engineer knows, great increases in capability often occur through the removal of complexity, not its addition. This happens more frequently than you’d think. It’s part of why, for instance, computers have gotten better, faster, and cheaper. If you look at a computer today you’ll see that it has less components than a computer did a decade or so ago. Evolution can of course do the same thing. Fitness can increase through loss of complexity. The simplest and most straightforward example would be the knockout of a detrimental gene, while a more complex example would be the construction of a complex genetic framework or “scaffolding” followed by the emergence of a simpler system within that framework followed by the dissolution of the framework’s no-longer-necessary parts.
So while Williams’ work may show the existence of upper bounds on complexity, it does not disprove the idea that there might be some kind of directionality that could be called progress in evolution. If it exists, it seems to be something that we haven’t learned how to quantify or explain quite yet.