Talk:Evolutionary algorithm: Difference between revisions

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Apologies if I'm not making myself clear here, I'm just struggling with the concept as a whole: here we are at the end of the process saying what constitutes fitness and then using that as the means for directing a process which is undirected to come up with the fit thing that was unknown (unknowable?) at the outset. Okay, it doesn't stop us writing software which compares implementations across languages. Maybe I should just be satisfied with that. That and hang on to this weird belief that spontaneous generation is demonstrably impossible but had to have happened at least once. [[User:Axtens|Axtens]] 06:29, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

:If you are getting lost, I would focus on these issues:

:# This is a search algorithm

:# The algorithm favors results which maximize (or minimize, depending on how you implement it) its "fitness function"

:# Computer implementations are radically simpler than anything that goes on in real life

:In other words:

:On the one hand, I would not over project the simplicity of a toy program like this onto real life and expect too much out of it.

:On the other hand, I would also not over project the complexities of real life onto a program like when trying to read or write working code. --[[User:Rdm|Rdm]] 12:00, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

==Adherence to similarly named variables/functions?==