# Impact in innovation is analogous to fitness in evolution Evolutionary fitness is affected by 1. Other species * These tend to get killed out at the population level 2. The environment * These tend to get killed out at the individual level (unless they were suited to the environment and the environment itself changed which would cause a die out at the population level) 3. Endogenous factors (like if a mutant had a tiny heart that couldn't pump blood to its brain.) * These tend to get killed out at the developmental stage (ie in utero) or very soon after birth. Similarly, technological fitness is affected by 1. Other technologies * If a technology is strictly worse than another technology on all factors, it won’t be used. However, there are often some niches where it can survive. 2. The environment * In the simplest case 3. Endogenous factors This raises a number of questions * Has anyone ever created a precise definition of evolutionary fitness? In the same way that neither a genotype or phenotype will predict whether a species will do well, [[A heuretic’s impact is not endogenous to the technology but depends on the environment]]. [[Self-Organized Criticality: An Explanation of 1 over f Noise]] shows why both evolutionary processes and technological processes exhibit punctuated equilibria. ### Related * [[Technodiversity is important]] * [[In the same way that species don’t suddenly replace each other, technologies and ideas don’t suddenly replace each other]] * [[§Tech Tree Model of Heuretics]] <!-- #evergreen #needs/work --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Impact+in+innovation+is+analogous+to+fitness+in+evolution) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Impact+in+innovation+is+analogous+to+fitness+in+evolution)