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That is the difference between global and local optima. We're not at a local optimum though, our bodies can probably evolve to produce half the urine or somethi
by dtech 29d ago
That is the difference between global and local optima.
We're not at a local optimum though, our bodies can probably evolve to produce half the urine or something without changing the route, but there is no evolutionary pressure to do so.
- teekert 29d agoYes, but we cannot evolve to have our urinary tracts take a more efficient route (or at least the probability is exceedingly low), even though there would be pressure to do so. (Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point)
- mindslight 28d agoYou're implying that "half the urine" describes something that could be a local optimum, but a local optimum would be something more in terms like urine output versus energy expenditure required to achieve that. But that doesn't even capture it, because you can directly control how much urine you produce - water in, water out. So what's really being optimized for is the pressure/stress/disutility function of the kidneys in the context of how much water you are intaking. Which is presumably moderated by your access to water, and higher level conscious optimization like how much water you're wanting to intake and how much urine you're wanting to produce. And that's not even capturing all the constraints in play! But it hopefully illustrates how the scope of what is being optimized for is quite large - it's not each metric in isolation, but rather some (probabilistic) utility function over the whole.