Newsgroups: comp.ai.genetic
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.tyrell.net!tcurrie
From: tcurrie@tyrell.net (Thomas J Currie)
Subject: A question..             
Message-ID: <D03p23.LnL@tyrell.net>
Sender: usenet@tyrell.net (*)
Nntp-Posting-Host: tyrell.net
Organization: Tyrell Corporation - 800-TYRELL-1 - POP's in 504/816/913
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 21:58:50 GMT
Lines: 45

s> I guess I'm just wondering why the people on the group who have the
s> ability to implement genetic programming (or some of them) choose
s> to spend their free-time developing "games" and such... I realize
s> that game-theory, etc. is an area of research, just as valid as any
s> other, but the emphasis seems to be (although I could be very wrong)
s> on entertainment.  There are so many cool problems that GP can

How interesting you would pose this question when the subject is in
fact "Gene pool pressures on GA algorithms"

Well, Sam, speaking strictly for myself, I left academia in 1989
because I realized most of my collegues and I had become raging
dilettantes, forever flaming others who hadn't read a particular paper
or some such.  We were not evolving.

I realized that it was time to put my lifestyle where my mouth was.  I
had built many strictly theoretic projects, and squandered my time and
others on topics like parasitic numbers, gene pool mixing schemes,
numberical models of all kinds of stuff.  I see the univeristy (now) as
mad mathemeticians retiring to a quiet place where they can show each
other their patent pending methods for trisecting an angle. (Wanna see
mine?)

Anyway, Sam, in answer to your questions, the real learning is out
here.  Doing this for a living forces my brain, talent, and creativity
to mutate.  I learned more during the first year of competing in the
'free market gene pool' than I could ever have learned toiling away
under a grant.

So "Why Games?"  Because games and the mass destruction of the human
race are the only places where one can make enough money.  Think about
this in terms of  the gene pool pressures on mutations.  I have
optimized my Z-function by writing games.  If I did something else, I
would have to operate in an environment removed from the gene pool
(university or govt).  

University is fine for growing thinkers to a point, but just like a
biological (real world) gene pool [where no matter how much more
effective we might be with multispectral vision we simply cannot cause
ourselves to mutate in that direction] to produce paradigm shifting
ideas one needs to get into the real game.

---
  KWQ/2 1.2f NR  Lotto: A tax on people who are bad at math. 
                                                               
