Evolution primarily serves the population, not the individual. Mother cats reject their runts, for instance. That's bad for the kitten - kills it but benefits the rest of them.
We tend to care about the individual more than the population, so we treat sick children instead of letting them die. Since nature isn't always helping, maybe natural food isn't always the best option.
Agree is not teleological, it was not my intention to imply it is.
There is some polemic about the gene idea (1), but it seems to me that the discussion is more about semantics, and, that from an information point of view, it's the gene the minimum unit that is "learning" about the environment.
The shape and behaviour of a molecule is depending of the constituent atoms. I suppose, you could express it the other way, but at the end of the day, is the most fundamental units what give us the most useful explanations.
Definitely strikes me as semantics but if you view "the population" as a bunch of very mature Chromosome pairs (human beings), then what's the difference?
Natural selection can send a specific gene mutation into an immediate dead end, but presumably across all mutations, it's a net positive for the entire population as they become generally better adapted.
This originated from Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) but, IIRC, is more of "evolution can be understood in terms of the gene". And there are criticisms of that, like that it doesn't take in to account phenotypes.
We tend to care about the individual more than the population, so we treat sick children instead of letting them die. Since nature isn't always helping, maybe natural food isn't always the best option.