Why Noise and Fluctuations Can Make Life Simpler

Noise and Fluctuations are usually considered obstacles in the operation of electronic and mechanical devices, and most strategies to deal with them aim to maximize the Signal/Noise ratio. This presentation gives a short overview of systems that follow a different scenario: such systems exploit noise and fluctuations in order to improve their efficiency of operation. A key element in these systems is the ability of noise and fluctuation to work as a stochastic search process that is able to explore a solution space and settle on a suitable solution. The attraction of this strategy is that it simplifies the mechanisms required to accomplish a task. This presentation reviews an example in computation and speculates about the likely use of this strategy in biological organisms.