This argument fails because it forgets a simple point about fitness: according to standard accounts of evolution, although fitness payoffs depend on the true state of the world, they also depend on the organism, its state, its action, and its competition. Feces, for instance, offer big payoffs for hungry flies, but not for hungry humans. A hydrothermal vent, belching hydrogen sulfide at 80ºC into water a few kilometers deep, offers big payoffs for the Pompeii worm Alvinella pompejana, but hideous death to all but a handful of extremophiles. The distinction between a state of the world (say, a
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