Garden of forking paths fallacy

Biological Parallel

An organism faces countless micro-decisions: which direction to forage, when to rest, how to allocate energy. Each choice creates a branching path. Retrospectively, the successful organism's path looks optimal—but this ignores the garden of forking paths where identical strategies led to death. Survival bias makes every winner look like a genius. Evolution doesn't produce optimal strategies; it produces strategies that didn't die yet.