Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife,comp.ai.genetic
From: ward@mondas.demon.co.uk (Peter Ward)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!demon!betanews.demon.co.uk!mondas.demon.co.uk!ward
Subject: Re: Genetic Game
References:  <christian.02rw@darkin.demon.co.uk> <Cz7y6p.EoK@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Organization: Mondas
Reply-To: ward@mondas.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27
Lines: 35
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 07:18:06 +0000
Message-ID: <784883886snz@mondas.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:1298 comp.ai.genetic:4281

In article <Cz7y6p.EoK@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
           mjd4c@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU "Michael J. Daniel" writes:

> > Remember `Space Invaders`?  Blocks of dumb, stupid aliens coming down the 
> > screen at you, waiting to get shot out of the sky.  All you needed to do 
> > was blast away at them until they were all gone.  Now imagine if they 
> > weren`t identical.  Imagine that each one was slightly different from its`
> > brothers.  Those aliens that survived for longest would be the best adapted
> > ones.  The slow, the weak, the passive would be the first to be destroyed.
> > Only the fittest, the most intelligent would survive.

 [snip rest of original post]

> Have you actually tested this game?
> I think the second child to play this game will kill the hardest guys
> first, and easily beat the game.
> 
> You see, GAs rely on a predictable fitness function.
> The children will win simply by changing the rules.
> Something the (current) computer is incapable of.

GAs use a predictable fitness function because that's what people
normally write. There's no reason why you should not have a simple
and not very selective fitness function initially and turn up the
heat as evolutionary time progresses.

GP work that evolves competition does this effectively. Interestingly
the winner of a particular competition is determined by a simple
"fitness function", but the selective pressures on a species are
increasingly complex.

-- 

Pete Ward
Mondas IT Ltd
