Any improvements to a person’s physique, increase in knowledge, or anything else that a person developed which was helpful to them in their lifetime is not passed down to their children by their genes. All that is passed down is a copy of their own genes, their partner’s genes, and some mutations. What does this mean? My first thought is that maybe this is nature betting that basic traits (fundamental intelligence level, strength level, etc.) of an organism are more valuable than whatever information or strength it could have received from its parent for its survival and eventual reproduction. However, the idea of the selfish gene reframes genes such that they have the desire to be passed on, and therefore optimize the organism for which they're the genes of to be best at passing on the genes. Thus, there would be no additional energy or matter spent on transferring information or traits developed during an organism’s lifetime not relevant to survival and reproduction. This brings me to a question. Is the selfish gene still the most optimal way to advance the human race, and has it ever been? A thought I have about this is that, for the majority of the existence of life, the selfish gene probably also happened to be the most optimal way to advance a species. When survival is difficult to come by and energy low in availability, it makes sense for a species to evolve to be optimal for survival and reproduction. Things like information transfer (as a direct result of reproduction, not just through the parent teaching the offspring) from parent to offspring can be wasteful since there is nowhere near a guarantee that the offspring will also be able to pass down its own information to its offspring. Furthermore, this mechanism would, in most cases, ensure that surviving organisms are the most optimal, and not alive simply because of some random piece of information their ancestors learned that the others did not. Solid fundamental traits must be built first. With computers, it is worth waiting until we have the right fundamental architecture to scale before we actually do scale. Like computers, for organisms, it might be worth waiting until the right traits are in place before scaling up the energy and matter required for reproduction in order to speed up advancement. I think that, at the moment, humans have come to the point where it might be worth scaling. Our architecture shows no signs of changing due to natural selection. We have no shortage of resources compared to the days when we were just trying to survive, and we have transformed the world to suit our tastes. If in evolution, the world transforms the organisms to its taste, the opposite is true now for humans. In this strange scenario, the only thing we can improve now is the efficiency of information transfer between generations. What I am saying is that the next big way for the human race to advance might be to think about how to embed information from a parent in their DNA or some similar mechanism so that their child inherits it.