Posted by Tom Wilson on July 27, 2003 at 20:39:33:
In Reply to: Ways to include SPECIATION :) posted by MikeL on July 27, 2003 at 02:06:15:
I started out thinking that speciation would be a really good idea, but I'm no longer so sure. I think it might lead to stagnation within each species group. Already we're seeing very similar poems, or at least poem "genes," show up repeatedly. If the population were divided into smaller groups that couldn't interbreed, wouldn't that problem intensify?
I think we might need more "abiogenesis" too. Perhaps each generation could get some completely new poems to provide a little genetic diversity. That's just me talking off the top of my head, though.
Also, dividing people based on a few questions of the type you proposed would be rather artificial, and essentially random. Sure, a person's favorite color and shape might tell you something about him, but not much, and probably nothing that has anything to do with poetry. You could give people a full fledged psychological test, but I think you'd see the number of participants fall rather drastically.
I guess you could have people vote on their favorite poems; have them select between a Shakespeare sonnet, some Blake, some T.S. Eliot or something. But again, it would drive people away and probably not reveal much useful information. If we must have speciation, better just to make it completely random.
Well, those are my thoughts, anyway.