On the Futility of Blind Search

This paper might have been subtitled An algorithmicist looks at no free lunch We use simple adversary arguments to redevelop and explore some of the no free lunch NFL theorems and perhaps extend them a lit tle A second goal is to clarify the relationship of NFL theorems to algorithm theory In particular we claim that NFL puts much weaker restrictions on the claims that an evolutionary algorithm can make than does acceptance of the conjectures of traditional complexity the ory And third we take a brief look at whether the notion of natural evolution relates to optimization and what if any the implications of evolution are for computing In this part we mostly try to raise questions concerning the validity of applying the genetic model to the problem of optimization This is an informal paper most of the information presented is not formally proven and is either common knowledge or formally proven elsewhere Some of the claims are intuitions based on experience with algorithms and in a more formal setting should be classi ed as conjectures The goal is not so much to develop theory as it is to perhaps persuade the reader to adopt a particular viewpoint