Posted by David on November 08, 2003 at 16:40:33:
In Reply to: Re: The veterans - Gens 0 and 1 posted by ANna on November 07, 2003 at 20:56:07:
Anna,
First of all, no matter how sophisticated the model it can never _prove_ evolution; at most it could be a convincing demonstration of the power of evolving systems. You do raise an interesting point, though, which is "how basic must the primitives be for it to emulate biological evolution?" My feeling is that if we started from letters, or even random marks that could theoretically evolve into letters, we would still eventually get to the same place. It would just take a lot, lot longer. So in devising evolutionary simulations you have to balance this desire to start from as basic as primitives as possible with practicality about processing power. Or, in the case of this experiment, human attention span.
--David