Got the insult in record time!
What I've been looking for is an explanation like the observers-and-the-train explanation for Einstein's relativity. (Maybe Einstein also started with a stream of insults when someone asked for an explanation of relativity)
So how does a system evolve through a set of intermediate stages that hinder the survival of the life form, until the final beneficial structure is acheived?
If a system is guided by a non-specific force like "survival of the fittest", trial and error, down many paths that end up in complex states, where is the evidence of all the errors? (the eyeball that is almost an eyeball but the lens hasn't quite evolved into place yet)
If the answer that the randomness allows the system to try many states that are detrimental to find a new better state (simulated annealing, avoiding local minima) it seems the evolution rate, or presence of wild mutations of complex but useless structures would be all over the place
"So how does a system evolve through a set of intermediate stages that hinder the survival of the life form, until the final beneficial structure is acheived?"
You are assuming that the enviroment the life form is in remains static. It doesn't. Some "intermediate stages" help in one environment, and hinder in another.
"If a system is guided by a non-specific force like "survival of the fittest", trial and error, down many paths that end up in complex states, where is the evidence of all the errors?"
Since the eye is soft tissue, the short answer is "gone to dust millenia ago."
"If the answer that the randomness allows the system to try many states that are detrimental to find a new better state (simulated annealing, avoiding local minima) it seems the evolution rate, or presence of wild mutations of complex but useless structures would be all over the place"
Such as the veriform appendix.
Maybe such an explanation exists, maybe not. Einstein, after all, was a pretty smart guy. Lacking that see Post #69 and do the hard work.