I never learned much about evolution, so please do explain it like I’m 5
In: Biology
Imagine you are playing a very long and very complex roguelike game.
The game has millions of levels, and each time you survive a level you get to choose a tiny upgrade to your character. Actually, no, you don’t get to *choose.* You see a few options but the game randomly chooses for you, and you just have to do your best with what you’re given.
The upgrades aren’t new, flashy things. In fact, they almost always build on something you already have. And the upgrades are TINY. So tiny that you usually can’t immediately tell what’s the point of even having them. Your thumbs are 1% longer. Your hair grows 1% faster. You can walk in the cold for 1 minute longer before being bothered by it. But who cares? So long as the upgrades aren’t causing you any actual *trouble*, you’ll be fine playing as you’ve been. Sometimes the upgrades even make your life slightly easier or help you survive a close-call.
Until, that is, the level design suddenly changes. You’ve been playing forest levels for the past 100 000 levels, and now suddenly every other level is a frozen wasteland. Whatever strategies you’ve developed are about to get seriously tested, and you hope you can adapt to this new ice meta before you game over. And you see people getting a game over around you all the time, this sudden change isn’t just tripping you up, it’s a challenge for everyone.
Suddenly, being able to survive that 1 extra minute in the cold is a huge advantage. Your friend who was thriving in the forest levels with his tree-climbing skills? Dead. Couldn’t handle the cold. Your other friend who got all the upgrades for finding fruit? Gone. No fruit in ice levels.
Meanwhile, you got lucky. You had that cold survival upgrade that saved you from instantly getting deleted in the ice levels. And now, you’re lucky because you keep rolling more cold upgrades. It makes sense. The game builds on skills you already have, and you already had that one cold upgrade. Now you have three. Five. Ten. Ten thousand. The more cold upgrades you have, the easier it is to get more of them. This ice meta is great! You feel right at home.
Until, of course, the meta changes again. And suddenly, you and your cold resistance build get plunged into a desert. You can survive one level like that. Can you survive a hundred thousand? Your skills are useless. Many are actually a detriment. You start feeling like your fruit-eating friend who couldn’t handle the ice meta. You start worrying you can’t handle the desert meta. And you’re right. You can’t. Game over.
If you were to play again, what are the chances you would end up with the same exact build? Essentially zero. The skill upgrades are mostly random, so you might never get a chance to get the same upgrades at all. The levels, as far as you can see, are also random. There might be some logic to them, but you can’t figure it out. In any case, that progression you’ve seen, forest to ice to desert, probably won’t repeat for you the same way.
Or, in evolution words:
Evolution does not consciously work towards a goal. Environmental conditions select for which random mutations are more likely to survive. You will never get the same exact environmental conditions or the same exact mutations to repeat, so you won’t get the same exact thing evolving twice. You might get pretty darn close though, if the conditions are similar enough and you get a little lucky (convergent evolution).
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