Reaching Summits Is Not Wandering or Getting Insight into Problem Landscapes to Go Higher, Faster

Basically, this paper says that if you want to reach the top of a mountain, you should keep it in focus, which is obvious. It also says that the topology of mountains is not the same at their top than in the valleys, which is something also obvious. It says that going from the valley up to a certain altitude is rather easy and within the ability of most people, but going higher is more diicult and a matter of practice, again something known by everyone. So, this paper says a few obvious things and applies these trivialties to combinatorial optimization by way of GAs. In the case of combinatorial optimization, these evidences seem to be less evident, or, at least, are sometimes forgotten. It also shows that considering these facts and keeping them in mind while designing a search algorithm, one can go pretty high with rather little eeort.