Variation is a feature of the environment, which itself makes certain demands of creatures that live in it. This is not taken into account by just taking the average of everything. If you have one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other in a pot of ice water is not the equivalent of having both feet in a pleasantly hot bath. Even though the average temperature will be about the same.
True, which is why the EEA is more complicated than just an average. Like it said in the post:
These invariances can be described as sets of conditionals of any degree of complexity, from the very simple (e.g., the temperature was always greater than freezing) to a two-valued statistical construct (e.g., the temperature had a mean of 31.2 C. and standard deviation of 8.1), to any degree of conditional and structural complexity that is reflected in the adaptation (e.g., predation on kangaroo rats by shrikes is 17.6% more likely during a cloudless full moon than during a new moon during the first 60 days after the winter solstice if one exhibits adult male ranging patterns).
Variation is a feature of the environment, which itself makes certain demands of creatures that live in it. This is not taken into account by just taking the average of everything. If you have one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other in a pot of ice water is not the equivalent of having both feet in a pleasantly hot bath. Even though the average temperature will be about the same.
True, which is why the EEA is more complicated than just an average. Like it said in the post: