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From: "Albert van Breemen" <s9101799@mail.student.utwente.nl>
Subject: The evolution of communication
Message-ID: <56572.s9101799@mail.student.utwente.nl>
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Organization: University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 18:10:31 GMT
Lines: 55

Some weeks ago I (= student at the Department of Electrical Engineering, 
University of Twente, The Netherlands) heard for the first time about GA 
and I was quit fascinated. When shortly after I saw the MPEG-movie of Karl 
Simm's I was sure about it: I had to come up with a project of my own. 
After some time a came with the following idea:

   'The evolution of communication'.

The idea is to have an environment with 'creatures'. By evolution this 
creature have to develop some kind of communication. It interrest me, if 
the environment is changed, what kind of communication there will be and 
for what purpose the creature will begin to communicate.


I can use two starting point here:

1) Nothing at all! So both the creature and communication have to evolved.
2) I can start with 'creature' which has already been simulated by others.
   (I think here of a simulation I saw of a cockroach)

The best start is 2 because now i don't have to spent time on the 
evolvement of the creature. But there are some proplems I have:


* What is exactly communication between two or more creatures?
  Is reacting on signs of the environment of the creature (whether these
  signs are generated by an other creature or the environment) a kind
  of communication or not? Or is this just reacting?
  
* What kind of fitness function I have to use?
  Karl could define the lenght of the path as fitness, I can not define 
  'a fine chat between creatures' as fitness.

* Does anyone know why, when and how the first creature in nature began to
  communicate?


Maybe someone can help me with these questions or has some ideas about 
this. Please reply.








================================================
A.J.N. van Breemen
lipperkerkstr 128
7511 DD  ENSCHEDE, The Netherlands
tel: 053-317819
email: a.j.n.vanbreemen@student.utwente.nl
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