Here’s an example from nature on snake venom that ‘won’ an evolutionary arms race.
From the abstract: “Examination of the prothrombin target revealed endogenous blood proteins are under extreme negative selection pressure for diversification, this in turn puts a strong negative selection pressure upon the toxins as sequence diversification could result in a drift away from the target. Thus this study reveals that adaptive evolution is not a consistent feature in toxin evolution in cases where the target is under negative selection pressure for diversification.”
There are implications here for arms races generally. When you target something ‘core’ to the target that cannot be easily randomized to develop a diverse and therefore adaptive strategy, it is possible to ‘win’ an evolutionary arms race in the long term.
Essentially Eliezer’s blind idiot god writes itself into a corner when it can no longer randomize a section under attack, and just sort of fails.
Basically, if even if there are adaptations that could happen to make an animal more resistant to venom, the incremental changes in their circulatory system required to do this are so maladaptive/harmful that they can’t happen.
This is a pretty core part of competitive strategy: matching enduring strengths against the enduring weaknesses of competitors.
That said, races can shift dimensions too. Even though snake venom won the race against blood, gradual changes in the lethality of venom might still cause gradual adaptive changes in the behavior of some animals. A good criticism of competitive strategies between states, businesses, etc. is that the repeated shifts in competitive dimensions can still result in Molochian conditions/trading away utility for victory, which may have been preventable via regulation or agreement.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1532045617301369?via%3Dihub
Here’s an example from nature on snake venom that ‘won’ an evolutionary arms race.
From the abstract: “Examination of the prothrombin target revealed endogenous blood proteins are under extreme negative selection pressure for diversification, this in turn puts a strong negative selection pressure upon the toxins as sequence diversification could result in a drift away from the target. Thus this study reveals that adaptive evolution is not a consistent feature in toxin evolution in cases where the target is under negative selection pressure for diversification.”
There are implications here for arms races generally. When you target something ‘core’ to the target that cannot be easily randomized to develop a diverse and therefore adaptive strategy, it is possible to ‘win’ an evolutionary arms race in the long term.
Essentially Eliezer’s blind idiot god writes itself into a corner when it can no longer randomize a section under attack, and just sort of fails.
Basically, if even if there are adaptations that could happen to make an animal more resistant to venom, the incremental changes in their circulatory system required to do this are so maladaptive/harmful that they can’t happen.
This is a pretty core part of competitive strategy: matching enduring strengths against the enduring weaknesses of competitors.
That said, races can shift dimensions too. Even though snake venom won the race against blood, gradual changes in the lethality of venom might still cause gradual adaptive changes in the behavior of some animals. A good criticism of competitive strategies between states, businesses, etc. is that the repeated shifts in competitive dimensions can still result in Molochian conditions/trading away utility for victory, which may have been preventable via regulation or agreement.