Can you define it in terms of “sensory”, “motor”, and “processing”? That is, in order to be an optimizer, you must have some awareness of the state of some system; at least two options for behavior that affect that system in some way; and a connection from awareness to action that tends to increase some objective function.
Works for bottle cap: no sensory, only one motor option.
Works for liver: senses blood, does not sense bank account. Former is a proxy for latter but a very poor one.
For bubbles? This definition would call bubbles optimizers of finding lower pressure areas of liquid, iff you say that they have the “option” of moving in some other direction. I’m OK with having a fuzzy definition in this case; in some circumstances, you might *want* to consider bubbles as optimizers, while in others, it might work better to take them as mechanical rule-followers.
Can you define it in terms of “sensory”, “motor”, and “processing”? That is, in order to be an optimizer, you must have some awareness of the state of some system; at least two options for behavior that affect that system in some way; and a connection from awareness to action that tends to increase some objective function.
Works for bottle cap: no sensory, only one motor option.
Works for liver: senses blood, does not sense bank account. Former is a proxy for latter but a very poor one.
For bubbles? This definition would call bubbles optimizers of finding lower pressure areas of liquid, iff you say that they have the “option” of moving in some other direction. I’m OK with having a fuzzy definition in this case; in some circumstances, you might *want* to consider bubbles as optimizers, while in others, it might work better to take them as mechanical rule-followers.