"Isn't that even less likely that the environment and the system would both change, keeping the system changes always beneficial? More variables required to change."
Why am I screaming "YOU F***ING DOLT!" at my computer?
The changes are NOT always beneficial! That's why species go extinct, you idiot!
"I'm actually referring to evidence of things evolving right now, or at least during recorded human history."
OK, I'm going to go on one of my patented rants:
LEARN HOW TO COUNT, YOU IMBECILE! IF YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND THAT HUMAN LIFESPAN IS APPROXIMATELY 75 YEARS, AND EVOLUTION HAPPENS ACROSS MILLIONS OF YEARS, THERE IS NO F***ING POINT IN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION!
"It seems to me that there would be a multitude of wrong turns that would be observable at any moment, if random changes are driving things."
Yes, they're called extinctions.
Actually you sound more like the classic bigot who evaluates anyone else as defective who can't see things your way
The changes are NOT always beneficial!
If you read back in the thread, liberallarry suggested that environment changes to provide an "always beneficial" path of change for what would seem a complex evolutionary path to end up at what some would call an irreducibly complex system
...recorded human history
recorded human history > 75 years
So where are the extinctions? It seems to me that to construct a complex system without guidance there would have to be an immense amount of trial and error, if all these life forms were created in just a few million years. It seems to me that across a few thousand years of recorded human history, or a few hundred years of the scientific age, some of this trial and error would be recorded
Millions, or even billions, of years isn't really that long, especially if the evolutionary rate of change is such that humans haven't recorded it.
Seems to me that every living creature at birth would need to be trying a lot of new appendages, sensors, skeletal coverings, etc if nature was constructing these things by trial and error