A lot of the examples I pointed out can end up tending towards increasing entropy, but I think there are a lot of things that would be considered optimizer that don’t increase entropy.
For example, consider a leaf out in the sun, drying out and going from a greenish color to a yellow one. Pretty much all configurations of the leaf would result in the leaf getting more yellow over time. Is the leaf optimizing for yellow-ness?
What about a knife that is being used and never sharpened? From a wide range of configurations the knife would tend towards getting duller. Is it optimizing dullness?
What about a spaceship leaving Earth? Is it optimizing for the distance from Earth?
I suppose we could consider these things optimizers if you really want to. But I’m concerned that a definition that include leaves, knives, billiard balls, and rocket ships is overly broad.
More generally, it seems like this definition classifies a lot of things that change in some way over time as an optimizer. In general, if something tends to be different in some ways when it’s young than old, then I think you can say the system is an optimizer optimizing for whatever characteristics correlate with oldness.
Thanks for the response.
A lot of the examples I pointed out can end up tending towards increasing entropy, but I think there are a lot of things that would be considered optimizer that don’t increase entropy.
For example, consider a leaf out in the sun, drying out and going from a greenish color to a yellow one. Pretty much all configurations of the leaf would result in the leaf getting more yellow over time. Is the leaf optimizing for yellow-ness?
What about a knife that is being used and never sharpened? From a wide range of configurations the knife would tend towards getting duller. Is it optimizing dullness?
What about a spaceship leaving Earth? Is it optimizing for the distance from Earth?
I suppose we could consider these things optimizers if you really want to. But I’m concerned that a definition that include leaves, knives, billiard balls, and rocket ships is overly broad.
More generally, it seems like this definition classifies a lot of things that change in some way over time as an optimizer. In general, if something tends to be different in some ways when it’s young than old, then I think you can say the system is an optimizer optimizing for whatever characteristics correlate with oldness.