The Combinatorial Explosion

An artist friend of mine recently remarked that she didn't think anything was ever truly created, artist's conceptions always arise from a combination of their past experiences (paraphrasing, and possibly mis-paraphrasing, so don't hold this statement against artists in general) and my first thought was genetic algorithms (don't judge me, nerdophobes). The idea behind g.a.'s is just that when a problem is too hard for us to figure out, we make a program that takes a random set of possible answers and "breeds" the best ones together, occasionally adding further random changes ("mutations") for several generations until the answer, or rather a good answer if the not the absolute best, evolves out of the chaos, survival of the fittest. This is probably my favorite evidence of natural evolution, the principle works well enough to be applied to other things. They've revolutionized computerized problem solving in a number of disciplines. People have gotten a little excited about these g.a.'s and started applying them not to boring engineering applications, but to writing music and making art, based on user input. Crazy, neh? Last summer my roommate made a life simulation along similar lines. His undergrad was in mechanical engineering but he studies genetics now. He combines more and more elements from actual genetics with his programs and we saw some crazy stuff develop, including multi-cellular organisms and a creature with a predaceous larval stage and an autotrophic adult stage. Who knows what could come out of these self-improving machines? I'm convinced mankind has figured out a little more about how God and the Universe works.

This thought has lousy implications of the meaning of the individual, I'm afraid, so it's only half of the answer to life, the universe and everything. The other half might be the joy in all combination, to realize that even though we all should be going in a similar direction, our different paths add meaning to the journey as a whole.

I'm glad I got the philosophical issues out of the way, because I really need to start writing my own g.a. for my optimization class. Anyway, happy interneting, tiny readership, and remember that it's the survival of the funkiest out there! (If you don't get this joke you need to check the links again). :)