Kondrashov & Kondrashov show that sex can be slower than asex on ordered landscapes because recombination disrupts partially completed assemblies. We argue that this tempo comparison is incomplete when ecological or demographic hazards discount delayed payoffs. To make that missing assumption explicit, we define the Effective Selection Horizon (ESH): a hazard-discounted timing currency that converts delayed benefits into realized selection over a finite usable future. A lag-matched block hazard then summarizes the relevant exposure at the trait's completion scale, and a minimax/KL-dual formulation gives a robust risk-sensitive-control version of the comparison under hazard uncertainty. The result is a conservative sex–asex boundary: sex can win despite slower allele replacement when mode-conditioned buffering shifts enough benefit back inside the usable horizon. A multi-trait extension yields a diversification effect that enlarges the sex-favored region, while variance, skew, and synchrony move the boundary through the lag-scale hazard. In the benign limit the framework reduces to the original K&K tempo logic. More broadly, ESH is offered not as a general theory of sex, but as a timing-and-hazard accounting layer that places ordered adaptation, bet-hedging, rescue, and related classics on a common lag-matched scale.
Lorand Bruhacs (Mon,) studied this question.