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…an organism’s sole purpose was to cover its expenses | blogjou

Daniel S. Milo

Good Enough - The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society

p. 70
17 Oct 2023

...an organism's sole purpose was to cover its expenses


Optimization is the heart of breeding. Before breeders bent nature to human whim, an organism’s sole purpose was to cover its expenses. In the context of breeding, the organism’s purpose is to provide humans as much as it can, at least the expense. Even the earliest breeders of the Fertile Crescent couldn’t settle for whatever supplied their own subsistence, since the had to feed growing numbers of nonproductive people such as chiefs, soldiers, and priests. Margins were bordn. Nowadays, with a vastly larger human population, optimization is imperative. Thanks to the domestication analogy, humanity is convinced that this sort of optimization is necessary in nature too.