Selection may attempt to pull the evolving population toward properties which are rare in the ensemble, but as it does so, the “back pressure” of mutations toward the statistically typical properties of the ensemble will increase. Thus if selection is a sufficiently weak force with respect to the mutational processes, the evolutionary process will come to rest at an equilibrium modestly displaced from the average properties of the underlying ensemble… If selection can only slightly displace evolutionary systems from the generic properties of the underlying ensembles, those properties will be widespread in organisms not because of selection, but
despite it.
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