Various interesting things in this paper, to me.
The main themes (“arrival of the fittest” associated with Andreas Wagner and “mutation-biased evolution” associated with Arlin Stoltzfus) aren’t new but are current. The paper starts with a nice (and clear, and accurate) account of Dawkins’ illustration of an “infinite monkey theorem”, this being the Weasel program in The Blind Watchmaker. They then discuss a “third version” of that illustration and use the Biomorph program to explore its implications. I had never thought of the Biomorph program as another “version” of the typing-monkeys trope, but I think I follow the authors’ logic here and I liked reading their description.
One thing that I find striking is the use of The Blind Watchmaker as a major source (of ideas and hypotheses to critique or build on) for a scientific paper. The Blind Watchmaker is not a scientific work in the sense that Dawkins makes it clear that he wants to educate and persuade. The book is not written as a scholarly work with extensive citations etc. The Weasel program is a tiny part of one chapter. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the paper, in fact I think it’s pretty cool that the aging (if brilliant) TBW is inspiring serious science.
One corresponding author is Ard Louis, a colleague of Dawkins’ at Oxford and well known for his evolutionary creation stance (he’s written at BioLogos).