English

Overcoming Complexity Catastrophe: An Algorithm for Beneficial Far-Reaching Adaptation under High Complexity

Neural and Evolutionary Computing 2021-05-11 v1 Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems

Abstract

In his seminal work with NK algorithms, Kauffman noted that fitness outcomes from algorithms navigating an NK landscape show a sharp decline at high complexity arising from pervasive interdependence among problem dimensions. This phenomenon - where complexity effects dominate (Darwinian) adaptation efforts - is called complexity catastrophe. We present an algorithm - incremental change taking turns (ICTT) - that finds distant configurations having fitness superior to that reported in extant research, under high complexity. Thus, complexity catastrophe is not inevitable: a series of incremental changes can lead to excellent outcomes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.04311,
  title  = {Overcoming Complexity Catastrophe: An Algorithm for Beneficial Far-Reaching Adaptation under High Complexity},
  author = {Sasanka Sekhar Chanda and Sai Yayavaram},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.04311},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 Figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:56:34.066Z