quote: Original post by Kars
Well, if you are trying for a ''natural environment'', why have an "IQ function" at all. Their fitness chould be when two critters cross each others path, do they procreate or not?
If they do, you get one or more critters.
If not they both go on their merry way.
If a critter dies before it procreates, its not longer in the gean (sp?) pool.
This way there would be no fixed population size and you have have the possability of extention if no one procreates.
I was thinking about doing something like this just to see if it was possable but I''m still reading up on Genetic programming myself.
It certainly is possible... simulated environments like this have been used for many years to study the evolution of various population traits. Several people in my department use a simulated environment to study evolvable ethics. For example, they found that they could evolve suicide/euthenasia as a reasonable population strategy for greater survivability. (Note: I''m not suggesting nor advocating such a policy for human populations, merely reporting experimental results in an artificial population.)
I have been particularly interested in such environments for looking at evolvable communication and how it can lead to cooperative behaviours among agents. I just haven''t gotten around to finishing my world yet. Some of the things that I described in my earlier post are in my current world, although I have wolves instead of brutes! It''s one of those pet projects that''s sitting on my desk at home... you know the ones... you pick them up every few months and spend a day reminding yourself what you were doing, only to run out of time and have to put it down again!
Cheers,
Timkin