Also, sometimes there are ‘valleys of failure’ which block off otherwise fruitful directions in evolution. If there’s a later state that would be much better, but to get there would require too many negative mutations before the positive stuff showed up, the species may simply never get lucky enough to make it through the valley of failure.
This means that evolution is heavily limited to things which have mostly clear paths to them. That’s a pretty significant limitation!
Also, sometimes there are ‘valleys of failure’ which block off otherwise fruitful directions in evolution. If there’s a later state that would be much better, but to get there would require too many negative mutations before the positive stuff showed up, the species may simply never get lucky enough to make it through the valley of failure.
This means that evolution is heavily limited to things which have mostly clear paths to them. That’s a pretty significant limitation!