beoShaffer comments on Design-space traps: mapping the utility-design trajectory space

[beoShaffer]

Minor nitpick

Local optima are points where every nearby reachable positions are worse off, but there are far away positions which are vastly better.

Strictly speaking there only has to be one far away point that is even slightly better for a point to only be a local, rather than global, optimum.

[passive_fist]

There doesn’t have to be any point that is better. A global optimum is also a local optimum.

[joaolkf]

That would be yet even useless, but I will specify better what I meant in the text.

[joaolkf]

Thanks. Corrected. The problem is that ultimately a very rigorous definition is useless. If there’s only one point, very, very far away, which is a little better, this isn’t really relevant and it would be somewhat odd to call your position a local optimum.