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A Realistic Computational Simulation of Random Mutation Filtered by Natural Selection in Biology

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All computational evolutionary algorithms artificially isolate the effects of random mutation on the underlying machinery: the CPU instruction set, operating system, and algorithmic processes responsible for the replication process.

If the blind-watchmaker thesis is correct for biological evolution, all of these artificial constraints must be eliminated. Every aspect of the simulation, both hardware and software, must be subject to random errors.

Of course, this would result in immediate disaster and the extinction of the CPU, OS, simulation program, and the programmer, who would never get funding for further realistic simulation experiments.

Comments
I think it is very possible to come up with specified complexity using "natural" or rather simulated natural selection in computers. I know it's a kind of guided evolution, but still possible. However whether or not the intemediate forms are always viable in nature, is questionable. You require a degree of uniformity for gradual. naturally selected change to occur. The existance of seemingly unreachable "critical points" in the evolution of any complex structure would in my mind throw the whole model in doubt. There is also the matter of whether nature is self-regulating - in other works, programed to be resistant to change. For example, DNA can repair itself, thus preventing mutation - why such a feature would originate via mutation itself is a mystery.WinglesS
September 28, 2006
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