"A broad survey of existence" may be the wrong way to look at it. Think about a group of people searching for the bathroom in a completely darkened apartment, o

"A broad survey of existence" may be the wrong way to look at it. Think about a group of people searching for the bathroom in a completely darkened apartment, or breadth-first vs. depth-first search. The group of people scatter out from their starting point but have to remain close enough to communicate their results (or lack of) to each other. The alternative is a depth-first search that immediately heads for a likely location, but that is hard to parallelize.