Information is Additive but Evolutionary Wait Time is Not

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@nwrickert

@gpuccio appears to be looking at FI as something to be built up sequentially – one bit at a time.

Actually the opposite. he thinks it must happen all at once. He needs that, because it MUST happen at all at once for his wait time = 2^FI claim to be correct.

@nwrickert

When you describe the system as decomposable, you are thinking of something more like parallel processing – several bit at the same time.

Decomposable and parallel are distinct concepts. A decomposable, but non-parallel, problem would change this:

@swamidass

• In fully decomposible system (100 safes) the wait time is about log 100 . Note that you can try all the safes at once. So 100 theifs on 100 1-bit safes.

To this:

• In fully decomposible system (100 safes) the wait time is about 100 * 2 . Here one thief is working, solving each safe one at a time.

@nwrickert

What’s important here, is that evolution is massively parallel.

Exactly, so this last case is just not relevant. There is at least two other simplifications in this case study, which if we fixed, it would even further decrease wait time to be sublinear.