Digital Darwin

An anonymous reader writes "Using genetic algorithms to breed strings of computer code graphically, this week's Nature magazine describes results from Caltech and Michigan State. Their program is Avida. While they mainly mimic mutation, not genetic cross-over [or inheritance (thus wiping away much memory of initial conditions)], their simulations show how a short-term backward step in survival strategies can generate innovative advances. It is not unlike running a maze which necessarily involves testing alot of dead-ends, and thus shares the graphical look of Conway's classic Game of Life." Here's a National Geographic story about this as well, or see their press release.

Comments

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

...their simulations show how a short-term backward step in survival strategies can generate innovative advances.

Sounds similar to what brought the great amount of development power to the Free Software movement. When people are stuck with something as uninnovative as Windows for so long, nature will eventually devise a workaround to the previous lack of competition to stimulate the industry.

Re:I've used genetic algorithms

[b-baggins]

All this program does is take an existing gene pool, introduce random mutation, and stress it.

This has only been going on for, let me see, since mankind first bred cows to increase their milk production?

Here's what this and all genetic algrorithms do NOT address:

Getting the genetic code initially from a bunch of extremely unstable chemicals that do NOT want to combine naturally.

Louis Pasteur demonstrated a couple of centuries ago that spontaneous generation was junk science. Maybe someday evolutionists will finally take a look at his work.

Re: I've used genetic algorithms

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, here's the current evolutionary biology problem set:

• If the theory of evolutionary biology is true, then we should see less genetic diversity the farther back in time we go. We should be able to find an ancestor common to all species. We haven't yet.
• There are gaps in the fossil record. Species seem to go from one form to another with no evolutionary steps in between. Evolutionary biologists explain this with the theory of "punctuated equilibrium" - an intellectual kludge at best.
• Fossil dates are notoriously inaccurate. Geologists uses fossils to date strata, and Paleontolists use strata to date fossils. The dating of strata is based on two methods: carbon dating, and the decay of heavy isotopes, both of which make certain assumptions which are not necessarily true. (Carbon dating assumes that the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere has remained constant over the past 10,000 years, however recent studies have shown this to be false.)

So call me a skeptic. Faith is something that should exist in religion, not science, and in light of these problems, I'm not convinced that evolution was responsible for the beginning of life. Ask yourself this: if evolution as we understand it can really bring about living beings, why is it that scientists to date have not been able to produce a living organism from dead material? No other legitimate science would accept something as truth if the results could not be reproduced, and until such happens, evolution is still just a theory.