On: The quest to evolve neural networks through evolutionary algorithms

[halflings]

I think the premise (neural nets get stuck in local optima) is not trivial, and there has been a lot of research about non-convex optimisation showing that this is not much of an issue. I am not a researcher, but this answer [0] points to this research.

I would also say that there are multiple ways to escape local optima (setting a larger learning rate, multiple random initialisations, ensembling).

https://www.quora.com/How-come-neural-networks-dont-get-stuc...

[Turing_Machine → halflings]

You say "not much of an issue" but your link says that it's an "open question that is probably being worked on in the community".

Those aren't the same thing at all.