> The number of local optima grows exponentially in problem dimension, so increasing the dimension simply provides an even stronger guarantee that your optimize

> The number of local optima grows exponentially in problem dimension, so increasing the dimension simply provides an even stronger guarantee that your optimizer will converge to one. Forgive my potential ignorance, but it seems to me that there's a difference between the dimensionality of a problem and the dimensionality of a neural net working on the problem. Did you mean to imply that adding more dimensions to a neural net increases the number of local maxima for the problem? > Evolution, for its part, is definitely stuck in one, as evidenced by the fact that I cannot fly. Flying requires a large number of biological tweaks that are not necessarily good for every organism. For instance, lower bone density. When humans have this, we call it osteoporosis and it's generally a Bad Thing(tm). Also, I could argue that evolution has done a better job than you give it credit for, considering that I don't know any other animal that can travel over land at sustained high speeds, fly at extreme altitude, swim to extreme depths, and burrow through mountains.