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When multiple disparate states evolve towards the same end, you're probably looking at what's known as an attractor - a state in state-space that is a stable lo
by beaconstudios 5y ago
When multiple disparate states evolve towards the same end, you're probably looking at what's known as an attractor - a state in state-space that is a stable local maxima. If evolution is an algorithm that optimises environmental fitness then some combinations of traits will just be really good at survival and reproduction and species with nearby traits will often evolve towards that specific set of traits.
- agumonkey 5y agoIs theory of evolution describing attractors in its own way ? I could never find a clear answer.
- beaconstudios 5y agoEvolution is a state space search and some states in that space are more optimal than others, so yeah it can be looked at from a systems perspective as having attractor states.
- agumonkey 5y agowhat was important to me is that a state space search can generate similar walks even though the species might have no genetic legacy link [0], which makes evolution trees just too shallow an abstraction (but again, I never read real books about the matter, maybe the trees we see regularly are only one part of the theory) [0] two organism can evolve light sensing because of appropriate context and some luck for instance, but you can't search for a common ancestor based on this