HNTE - CH. 3

[mudphone]

Introduction to Evolutionary Computation

[mudphone]

I think he summarized the chapter well with this section:

there are advanced versions of GA, GP, ES, EP, and MA. The lines between these flavors of evolutionary computation are blurred to the point where it’s difficult to pinpoint where one system ends and another begins. Indeed, they are all technically the same. After all, GP is just GA that operates on a tree algorithm. And if we add the ability to also mutate evolutionary strategy parameters, then we’ve just went from GA to ES. EP is just GA specialized for finite state machines, and Memetic Computing (MC) is simply a variation on the standard evolu- tionary computing, which splits the local and global search into separate phases.

Where:

• GA: Genetic algorithms, "The algorithm primarily relies on crossover."
• GP: Genetic programming, "a specialized type of GA that deals with not string encoded genotypes or chromosomes, but tree based programs."
• ES: Evolutionary Strategies, "another var- iation on the simple GA approach, which evolves not only the genotype, but also these evolutionary parameters, the evolutionary strategy itself."
• EP: Evolutionary Programming, "a search algorithm closely related to ES, but developed earlier, independently, and specialized to the evolution of state transi- tion tables for finite state machines"
• MA: Memetic Algorithms (a.k.a. Hybrid Algorithms (HA)), "evolutionary algorithms that separate the evolutionary process into two phases, global search and local search."

[mudphone]

This article in Nature has a lot of food for thought:

In 1944, Turing confessed his dream of building a brain, and many people continue in that endeavour to this day. Yet any neuro -biologist will view such attempts as naive. How can you represent a neuronal synapse — a complex structure containing hundreds of different proteins, each a chemical prodigy in its own right and arranged in a mare’s nest of interactions — with a single line of code? We still do not know the detailed circuitry of any region of the brain well enough to reproduce its structure.

[mudphone]

Also, a talk by Alan Kay, "The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet, OOPSLA '97," relating computation to molecular biology. See the portion starting at about ~29:18. (With a shout out to Ops 5, a pattern matcher.) A complete blur of activity that we can't simulate with a computer... You're welcome. :)

Computers are slow and stupid :) Ma - the interstitial (Japanese)