[FRIAM] FW: Heritability and generative entrenchment

[Carlos Gershenson]

Nick,

I don't know if somebody has mentioned already neutrality (search  
Google Scholar for Kimura): neutral mutations that have no effect in  
the phenotype allow the exploration of the parameter space without  
losing fitness, so it is a way out of local optima/entrenchment...
And actually there's lots of neutrality in genomes, not only to  
explore the genome space, but also as a robustness measure against  
random mutations... If every mutation you could do would change your  
phenotype/fitness, it would be very difficult to evolve anything...

Best regards,

     Carlos Gershenson...
     Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
     Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
     http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/

   “Tendencies tend to change...”