Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
From: Chris@smithg.demon.co.uk (Chris Gordon-Smith)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!smithg.demon.co.uk!Chris
Subject: Re: a theoretical biology for alife...
References: <A.J.Hirst-280395145129@uu-igor-mac.open.ac.uk> <3l9erl$632@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <A.J.Hirst-070495170717@uu-igor-mac.open.ac.uk>
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Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 12:53:36 +0000
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In article <A.J.Hirst-070495170717@uu-igor-mac.open.ac.uk>
           A.J.Hirst@uk.ac.open "Tony Hirst" writes:

> 
> wrt fitness functions, I think there's scope for much confusion between
> fitness as a measure of pop behaviour, fitness as a statistical predictor
> of pop dynamics, fitness as a statistical prescriber of evoly direction and
> fitness as an optimisation (prescribed) goal of evolution 
> 
> monty

I'm relatively new to the field of Evolutionary Computing (EC) and Genetic 
Algorithms (GA), and as a basic education decided to read Richard Dawkins' book 
"The Extended Phenotype". One thing that has puzzled me is that while Dawkins 
seems to feel that fitness is not a useful concept, it is still very much in 
evidence in then world of EC / GA.

As I understand it, Dawkins' point is that the real battle in evolution is 
between genes and their alleles at the same chromosome loci, whereas fitness 
has several different meanings, none of which can be easily applied to this 
view of evolution (eg because they tend to focus on survival of individual 
organisms or of species).

Can anyone throw any light on why fitness is used so extensively in EC / GA 
even though some biologists are questioning its usefulness?

-- 
Chris Gordon-Smith
London
UK
Email: chris@smithg.demon.co.uk
