Posted by Phil M on March 04, 2004 at 08:00:52:
In Reply to: Re: 2 questions posted by Al on March 04, 2004 at 06:04:30:
After the other message's diatribe, I'd just like to say that I really don't think we're dealing with monkeys here, and for one intrinsicaly simple reason (that may or may not be relevant to the question about it).
If a monkey writes 75% of Hamlet correctly then goes on to type 25% of rubbish, it's still as likely to type complete and utter rubbish in its next sitting as when it first stated. There's no method for 'building on success' that means that the next draft has a good chance of getting 76%, 77%, 78%, etc.
What we have takes previous 'successes' (as defined by the cumulative opinion of those involved) and we would never truly lose anything that is considered good, at least not until it is outclassed by one or more offspring. Though the criteria are more vague (not "is it an exact copy of a Shakespeare play") there is an evolution that panders to the 'environmental' preferences in a way that the monkeys do not do. Maybe if you give bananas to the monkeys with the best prose, there'd be a competition/selection matrix that would encourage the monkeys to concentrate on producing the arbitrary targets rather than just bashing keys for the hell of it.
I'm not sure if that satisfies your conditions, but the feedback itself appears (to me) to encourage a non-monkey environment.