- Can a system be both robust and adaptive?
- What is robustness? The maintainance of certain variables dispite perturbation?
- What is adaptivity? The ability to change state in accordance with perturbation?
- Is adaptivity just a way to acheive robustness? (For example sweating is adaptive but its purpose is to maintain body temperature so the adaptive process of sweating maybe seen as increasing robustness to temperature).
- Is adaptivity mutually exclusive to robustness? Is it possible for a system to be robust and adaptive at the same time?
Why do I care about these question? Well, I think that there is a possibility that systems become critical when they are trying to solve problems that require them to be both robust (the ability to maintain there state/identity despite perturbation) and adaptive (the ability to change their state/identity in accordance with perturbation). In my mind such a system is in a dichotomous situation, it can’t be both of these at the same time. Evolution may drive development towards criticality as it tries to create a system that is robust some of the time and adaptive at others.
