4 ms·

Engineering beats evolution, every time.

• photophotoplasm 16y ago
  Horses for courses, and all that.
  • thehotdon 16y ago
    Well, it's not just a difference in optimization goals; it's a difference in methodology. Evolution optimizes by using heuristics and stochastic search--piling crap on top of crap, and obfuscating into oblivion. Engineering optimizes by finding elegant mathematical solutions. Sorry, getting off-topic. I guess I'm just bitter about not being a robot.
    • wladimir 16y ago
      Evolution "optimizes" for a lot more constraints. It needs to be self-healing, and work for a long time without any outside maintenance and monitoring. It collects its own energy, and competes with (unpredictable) other organisms for nutrients and sunlight. Good luck engineering a system like that. Elegant mathematical solutions are great, but only exist for limited, well-defined problems.
• dools 16y ago
  Except for baby formula vs. breast feeding!