Eliezer, MacKay’s math isn’t very difficult. I think it will take you at most a couple of hours to go through how he derived his equations, understand what they mean, and verify that they are correct. (If I knew you were going to put this off for a year, I’d mentioned that during the original discussion.) After doing that, the idea that sexual reproduction speeds up evolution by gathering multiple bad mutations together to be disposed of at once will become pretty obvious in retrospect.
Jeff, I agree with what you are saying, but you’re using the phrase “sexual selection” incorrectly, which might cause confusion to others. I think what you mean is “natural selection in a species with sexual reproduction”. “Sexual selection” actually means “struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex”.
Eliezer, MacKay’s math isn’t very difficult. I think it will take you at most a couple of hours to go through how he derived his equations, understand what they mean, and verify that they are correct. (If I knew you were going to put this off for a year, I’d mentioned that during the original discussion.) After doing that, the idea that sexual reproduction speeds up evolution by gathering multiple bad mutations together to be disposed of at once will become pretty obvious in retrospect.
Jeff, I agree with what you are saying, but you’re using the phrase “sexual selection” incorrectly, which might cause confusion to others. I think what you mean is “natural selection in a species with sexual reproduction”. “Sexual selection” actually means “struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex”.