Evolution doesn’t determine what’s right, it only shows you what’s left! After selection, that is. Indeed, there are conceivable environments where the chlorophyll gene would be rapidly outcompeted by something that is better at exploiting free energy gradients, e.g. environments where chlorophyll is for some reason less useful than it is today. Its ubiquity today is basically contextual and so doesn’t represent any kind of terminus. If we model evolution as an agent with values, then it seems to me that it has one coherent terminal goal, which, if we go by observation, is to accelerate the production of entropy, for which the selection of entities that are successively better at exploiting available energy gradients for their temporary survival and reproduction is instrumental. Strange conclusion, or strange premise?
Evolution doesn’t determine what’s right, it only shows you what’s left! After selection, that is. Indeed, there are conceivable environments where the chlorophyll gene would be rapidly outcompeted by something that is better at exploiting free energy gradients, e.g. environments where chlorophyll is for some reason less useful than it is today. Its ubiquity today is basically contextual and so doesn’t represent any kind of terminus. If we model evolution as an agent with values, then it seems to me that it has one coherent terminal goal, which, if we go by observation, is to accelerate the production of entropy, for which the selection of entities that are successively better at exploiting available energy gradients for their temporary survival and reproduction is instrumental. Strange conclusion, or strange premise?