> >Inbreeding may be a tool in the hands of people, but nature doesn't use tools. In evolution, things usually happen as a net result, not by the use of tools or strategies, etc.

> You are more than welcome to argue semantics if you like...but I'm hardly the first to illustrate natural process by animating them.  The well used term "Mother Nature" is probably the most common example, but there are countless others (from the Vatican calling evolution "God's tool for creation"

First off, these notes are dashed off over coffee and doing the dishes in the morning, they are not treatises. Kindly refrain from quoting me back to me. I disavow everything I said over a month ago, in any case. 

Quoting the Vatican on evolution is a hoot! But the point here, and it is not a semantic one, is that a tool or strategy is the product of intelligence in response to a problem. Evolution is not intelligent and arrives at solution via variation and natural selection basically, trial and error). To suggest that sex is a strategy or a tool is useful metaphorically but scientifically untenable. 

However, there is a new school of thought promoted by Eva Jablonka, et al, the suggests that evolution is in fact driven by other factors besides random mutation, such as niche creation and cultural inheritance, which is definitely the product of intelligence. In other words, the process of natural selection is commandeered to produce beneficial results by a variety of organisms.

The whole thing is complicated and new insights are popping up all the time. What is new now, will be dogma in a few years, and poppycock in a few more years after that. I try to keep up, and it certainly doesn't matter to me what I said before, especially if it was wrong. 

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