CONCEPT
Diverse Adjacency
The structural property of genotype networks by which different positions are adjacent to different alternative phenotypes — the mechanism that converts dispersal through possibility space into expanding access to innovation.
Diverse adjacency is the third of the three mathematical properties that make Wagner's genotype network architecture generative. At each node on the network, the set of accessible alternative phenotypes is different from the set accessible at any other node. Two organisms occupying different positions on the network — even positions that are close in sequence distance — may be adjacent to completely different sets of possible innovations. This diversity of what lies 'one step away' is what makes dispersal productive: as a population spreads across the network, it encounters an increasingly diverse menu of possible innovations, and the probability that at least one population member is adjacent to any given innovation approaches certainty.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The significance of diverse adjacency becomes clear through contrast with its absence. If every position on a network were adjacent to the same set of alternative phenotypes, then dispersal would produce no advantage: one organism in one place would have access to the same