People think of "evolution" as something that automatically gets invoked where "reproduction" exists, but these other conditions may not be fulfilled - which is why corporations haven't evolved, and nanodevices probably won't.
I'm curious where the impression that evolution requires only replication, as opposed to heritable replication, comes from.
If we take to Dennett's perspective of memes as the next 'crane' of evolution, does this in any way inform us as to how social constructs like corporations are changing over time?
2a. As a corollary: if that perspective is a viable interpretation, does it then open up opportunities to use that model's predictive power to sculpt the development of corporations over time? (Could it really be as simple as, say, establishing a consistent ethic of boycotting socially irresponsible corporations in order to achieve a goal of making corporations that are 'more-friendly'?)
Today's post, No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices was originally published on 17 November 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Price's Equation describes quantitatively how the change in a average trait, in each generation, is equal to the covariance between that trait and fitness. Such covariance requires substantial variation in traits, substantial variation in fitness, and substantial correlation between the two - and then, to get large cumulative selection pressures, the correlation must have persisted over many generations with high-fidelity inheritance, continuing sources of new variation, and frequent birth of a significant fraction of the population. People think of "evolution" as something that automatically gets invoked where "reproduction" exists, but these other conditions may not be fulfilled - which is why corporations haven't evolved, and nanodevices probably won't.
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