The power of accumulation in evolution is common sense!

TazYour OP got me thinking about another aspect of gradual accumulation you mentioned. This, of course, refers to the popular "irreducible complexity" argument of which we're all so fond. Anyway, this example has perhaps been used before, but your examples of John Doe got me thinking of our current society as an example of something that has gradually accumulated, yet exhibits some aspects of being irreducibly complex.Por ejemplo, just 20 years ago, it was difficult to find anyone that had their own email address. Yet now, if you could some how shut down the entire internet without affecting other aspects of society, things would get chaotic pretty damn quickly. The internet has become something that is necessary for the stability of our economy (not that it's very stable right now) and our society in general. But, just because it is necessary now, doesn't mean it was always so.The power of gradual accumulation is not just that massive changes can occur over a series of many small steps (grand canyon, walking across the country) but that as changes accumulate it can change the very nature of the system so that removing an accumulated trait does not simply revert it to what it was before.

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

No, I'm pretty sure I understand what it is. A common IC argument is that a complex thing, such as the eye, could not have formed step by step because it can't function as an eye with anything less that what it has already. Now, what you're saying is there are alternative things the pre-eye could have been doing as it was evolving which is why it would be selected. And I agree with you. My argument is that there are some parts of the eye that are now necessary for any function at all, but they weren't always there. Since they've been incorporated into the structure, they've become necessary, but it wasn't always the case. Our arguments are not mutually exclusive, just looking at two different aspects. My internet society metaphor was not a perfect one, but I think it illustrated the idea that gradual accumulation can produce something that becomes necessary even though it wasn't originally, giving the illusion of so-called irreducible complexity

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely