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From: mjd4c@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Michael J. Daniel)
Subject: Re: Help for new student of ALife, GA, and CA programming
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Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 20:09:11 GMT
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In article <Pine.ULT.3.91.950208121142.729A-100000@rac4.wam.umd.edu>, Keith Wiley <keithw@wam.umd.edu> writes:
> > It is by no means clear that if we placed one monkey for each atom
> > in the universe in front of a typewriter and had them type for
> > 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, that we would create any interesting works
> > of literature.
> > You may say, "You have not waited long enough!"
> > And I would reply, "Your concept of 'long enough' has no meaning
> > in this universe, but you expect the results from it to live in this universe."
> 
> Geez, this is NOT how the monkey/typewriter argument works people.  The
> whole point of the monkey and the typewriter is show that evolution is
> selective, NOT, I repeat, NOT a random process based on inevitabilities
> given enough time.  If you preserve strings type by monkeys which
> ever-so-remotely resemble a disired end more than the previous
> "phenotype" you end up with Shakespeare very quickly.  Someone write a
> computer program that started with random strings of jumble.  It breeded
> the "sentence", as it were and kept the strings that even one letter
> closer to the goal, something about weasels from Hamlet, that's not the
> point.  He arrived at a perfect sentence in a couple of generations.


Well, I apologize if I've missed the premise. But the monkey/typewriter
problem, like the chinese room and non-deterministic polynomial time,
are well defined problems that have nothing to do with genetic algorithms.
I don't think so: at least not explicitly, on the surface.

I would submit that the monkeys are quite incapable of deciding when
a sentence is 'closer to Shakespeare' And that it would require
not only something at least as intelligent as a human, but also 
something raised and educated in our present (+ or - 300 years) western culture.

The monkey seem to only type the initial population.
Unless we train them read the fit strings (where ever they came from)
and do the crossover and mutation.

Whoever has this program you describe would soon be a billionaire$
Because, surely all the great works of literature have not yet been 
written.  They have but to let their program run a little longer and they
would be the undisputed greatest playwright/novelist/author of all times.
(At least until someone else wrote a similar program! :-) )


Michael


