alt Hacker NewsAnd how exactly do you foresee probabilistic systems working out in real life? Nobody wants software that seldom does what they expect, and which tends to trend toward desirable behavior over time (where "desirable" behavior is determined by the sum of global feedback and revenue/profit of the company producing it).
Today you send some money to your spouse but it's received by another person with the same name. Tomorrow you order food but your order gets mixed up with someone else's.
Tough luck, the system is probabilistic and you can only hope that the evolutionary pressures influence the behavior to change in desirable ways. This fantasy is a delusion.
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I think you misunderstand. Once established a function found through random walk is no different than a function found in any other way. If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't.
You're thinking of probabilistic systems at run time. People are talking about probabilistic systems at compile time.
Whatever gets generated, if it passes tests and is observably in compliance with the spec, is accepted and made permanent. It's the clay we're talking about Jackson Pollocking, not the sculpture.