  A paper in the recent Artificial Life journal special issue on open-ended
evolution (OEE) presents a simple evolving computational system that, it is
claimed, satisfies all proposed requirements for OEE (Hintze, 2019). Analysis
and discussion of the system are used to support the further claims that
complexity and diversity are the crucial features of open-endedness, and that
we should concentrate on providing proper definitions for those terms rather
than engaging in "the quest for open-endedness for the sake of open-endedness"
(Hintze, 2019, p. 205). While I wholeheartedly support the pursuit of precise
definitions of complexity and diversity in relation to OEE research, I
emphatically reject the suggestion that OEE is not a worthy research topic in
its own right. In the same issue of the journal, I presented a "high-level
conceptual framework to help orient the discussion and implementation of
open-endedness in evolutionary systems" (Taylor, 2019). In the current brief
contribution I apply my framework to Hinzte's model to understand its
limitations. In so doing, I demonstrate the importance of studying
open-endedness for the sake of open-endedness.
