The Darwinism/Lamarckism thing is wrapped up in politics. Darwinism is used as a justification of the social order. Might is right. The strong survive. Lamarckism has a more touchy feely feel to it. Not that Darwinism is fundamentally wrong! Its just that the nuances are ignored because of the politics.

I thinks that's a misinterpretation of Darwinism. The strong don't survive. The surviving ones survive. That's the whole point. Darwinism isn't an optimisation algorithm. A set of circumstances that were favourable for survival with a particular trait may not necessarily be favourable in the future. At any given point, though, the ones that survived are the ones that you can see, so it appears as though they were "selected". This theory is nicer than Lamarckism because it literally needs no mechanism. In order to accept Lamarckism you need to show that species change due to environmental pressures. That's more difficult.

> Darwinism isn't an optimisation algorithm. A set of circumstances that were favourable for survival with a particular trait may not necessarily be favourable in the future.

While agreeing with the thrust of your post, personally I think that Darwinism is a form of optimization, but the mild confusion around Darwinism that you're describing is a confusion about what that system optimizes for.

Darwinism optimizes for survival in the specific environment and circumstance, and plays out over time. Darwinism does not optimize for "best" or "strongest" or the "mightiest".

To be fair, I think that's memebox3v's exact point. They say: 'Darwinism is used as a justification of the social order... the nuances are ignored because of the politics.' One such nuance is the point that you make.