Are the best tools Swiss army knife-like - flexible, adaptable, multifunctional, and easy to use? Or is a knife-like tool - optimally sharpened, single-purposed for cutting - ideal? When framed as a simplistic dichotomy, it is obvious that tools do not have a universal or intrinsic “bestness,” but are context dependent and best viewed instrumentally… Continue reading The Swiss Army Knife
Tag: Fitness Function
Problem of the Criterion
In the 1930s, the evolutionary biologist, Sewall Wright, developed the concept of the fitness (adaptive) landscape as a visualization of evolution. The fitness landscape, conceived as a topographic map that resembles a mountain range with peaks and valleys, described different phenotypes of an organism that can vary over a continuous range of genotypes. The vertical… Continue reading Problem of the Criterion
S-Fxn 