While we are, in the end, meat machines, we are adaptive meat machines, and one of the major advantages of intelligence is the ability to adapt to your environment—which is to say, doing more than executing preexisting adaptations but being able to generate new ones on the fly.
So while adaptation-execution is important, the very fact that we are capable of resisting adaptation-execution means that we are more than adaptation-executors. Indeed, most higher animals are capable of learning, and many are capable of at least basic problem solving.
There is pretty significant selective pressure towards being a fitness maximizer and not a mere adaptation-executor, because something which actively maximizes its fitness will by definition have higher fitness than one which does not.
While we are, in the end, meat machines, we are adaptive meat machines, and one of the major advantages of intelligence is the ability to adapt to your environment—which is to say, doing more than executing preexisting adaptations but being able to generate new ones on the fly.
So while adaptation-execution is important, the very fact that we are capable of resisting adaptation-execution means that we are more than adaptation-executors. Indeed, most higher animals are capable of learning, and many are capable of at least basic problem solving.
There is pretty significant selective pressure towards being a fitness maximizer and not a mere adaptation-executor, because something which actively maximizes its fitness will by definition have higher fitness than one which does not.