Upon close examination, it can be easily seen that the concept of cumulative selection does not do what Richard Dawkins claims it can do – which is to produce new information to drive upward evolution. The reasons include:
Evolution is a blind and unintelligent process that has no particular goals in mind. In contrast, during the cumulative selection process the existing state is repeatedly compared against a target, which in real evolution is unknown.
The selective advantage of a small change is doubtful, just like there is no benefit to a word that has only one or two correct letters. It is still not a real word serving the purpose of a word. The evolutionary analogy is “what good is a half-scale, half-wing”, as the creature is now not suited for either its old environment or its new environment. In fact, a partial transition feature like this will be a hindrance that will be selected against. Natural selection actually works to eliminate oddities from the norm.
In nature, mutation is just as likely to strike and change ‘letters’ already in the right position.
Finally and most importantly, as mentioned earlier, information is not the same as its physical container. Information is always the result of mental activity. Information is not such unless it has a purpose. For life, a DNA sequence is useless without all of the additional complex machinery to read the information and use it to build life and perform the bodily functions.