Substrat: treasures buried on path to nowhere in particular
"Je ne cherche pas, je trouve." - Pablo Picasso
humans mix novelty with personal life history (divergent actors);
stepping stones respect how world works;
consensus in exploration results in generic washout;
competition should play a secondary role to creativity
successful inventor asks where we can get from here (inventions are path-dependent)
we should judge our projects for their potential to spawn more projects;
performance-squeezing algorithms aren’t good stepping stones
objective mindset: if gradient goes up, progress; causes convergence;
works for modest pursuits (but ambitious objectives are complex & fuzzy);
judgmentalism is habitat of objective-seeker (worried about everyone else's objectives)
paradox: greatest achievements less likely when made objectives
problems: 1) stepping stones to ambitious objectives often strange (objective can't
guide itself, e.g. evolutionary intelligence); 2) deception (score increase leads
to dead-end, e.g. pull in Chinese finger trap; stepping stone doesn't
increase score, e.g. push in trap; "life is very deceptive")
deception example: British tried to exterminate snakes in India by paying citizens
for dead snakes; people started breeding snakes
objective example: breed intelligence in 4 bn years; bad: objective function is
intelligence test (breed organisms with highest intelligence score); instead,
need stepping stones that don't directly increase intelligence
non-objective search (e.g. evolution, innovation): search space unknown; causes divergence;
no objectives but constraints (survival, reproduction, ...); discovery as stepping stone to discoveries;
examples: vacuum tube for 1st computer ENIAC; radar for microwave oven;
Nintendo founded in 1889, didn't develop games for ~100 ys
novelty search: don't strive for particular thing; trust gut; follow passion;
aim for serendipity; not everything requires justification; shortcut for interestingness;
don't judge progress to goal, but liberation from outdated; finds more novelty
(stepping stone finder); orders from simple to complex (not bad-good because unknown;
simple stepping stones must come before complex); world provides constraints (knowledge accumulator)
example: biped robot looking for novelty learned to walk faster than with objective
minimal criteria novelty search: search for novel ways to do the same thing
novelty search with local competition: balance novelty with competition,
while remaining non-objective accumulating diversity
education idea: give up standardised tests; instead, have peer reviewed exam portfolios
evolution doesn't head anywhere but everywhere that passes minimal criteria of survival &
reproduction (which was satisfied from first reproducing cell)
drift: slightly-broken copying machine leads to appearance of intelligent design
exaptation: evolved feature useful in different context (e.g.
feathers 1st in dinosaurs to regulate temperature; bone precursor stored minerals)
abstraction: capture essential features of underlying process,
discard unimportant details (e.g. checkerboard is 8x8 grid of alternating two-colored squares)
possible criteria beyond performance & guarantees: inspiration, elegance,
potential to provoke further creativity, thought-provoking construction, challenge to
the status quo, novelty, analogy to nature, beauty, simplicity, and imagination