Re: Minimization principal for evolution

In one of my favorite hobbies, backpack camping, the "minimist" is a
person who takes into the wild the very least amount of gear he needs
to survive. The way one learns what is the minimum amount is when one
keeps cutting back on total amount of gear taken until one fails to
survive a trip, and then counts backward to the last prior time before
that one.

That reminds me of the joke about the first time you take the bus or
train to get anywhere. The only person willing to help you find your
stop is the fellow who is getting off one stop after yours. You know
the rest of the joke, right?

It also reminds me of the "Peter Principle".

It is like finding out how fast one can negotiate a given curve in
one's motor vehicle. The fastest is the last attempt before the crash.

Or how close you can get to a crocodile without being eaten.

Ah, that's why we **need** human cloning. It makes such algorithms practical!

And of course it's also the basic plot of the TV series "Seven Days",
where you wait until some disaster has happened, then you quickly go
back seven days in time to change something to avoid the disaster.

Hey, anybody want to go wild-mushroom hunting with me?
I'll let you have first taste of any mushroom we find, OK?

Well that's enough off-topic commentary for now. Back on topic:
Given any two different genomes, the actual undirected-path connecting
them over evolutionary time (back-in-time from one, to LCA, then
forward to other) approximately minimizes the total number of mutations.
The total of all branch/link lengths (measured in number of mutations)
within an undirected tree connecting known genomes is very closely the
minimum of all possible such connecting trees.
..

.

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