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A Speed Limit for Evolution: Postscript

In 1995 I wrote a paper: "A Speed Limit for Evolution" whose main result was that evolution must proceed rather slowly, in accordance with the earlier views and intuitions of many authors. The abstract of the paper said: "The genetic information expressed in some part of the phenotype of a species cannot increase faster than a given rate, determined by the selection pressure on that part. This rate is typically a small fraction of a bit per generation". This result was derived in the presence of sexual reproduction and other effects such as temporarily isolated sub-populations. In 1999 David Mackay published a paper which apparently contradicted this result. In the abstract, he wrote "We find striking differences between populations that have recombination and populations that do not. If variation is produced by mutation alone, then the entire population gains up to roughly 1 bit per generation. If variation is created by recombination, the population can gain of the order of sqrt(G) bits per generation." Mackay proposed that there were outstanding evolutionary benefits to sexual reproduction, and that my result was too low by a very large factor. He later repeated this result in a textbook he wrote in 2003. The purpose of this note is to show that the key assumption of Mackays model, that "fitness is a strictly additive trait" is so unrealistic as to render his results irrelevant to any actual life form. In consequence, the speed limit I derived is still valid, and has important consequences for human cognitive evolution.

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