Evita

Anybody know the nature of the "reward"
parameter of Evita (oldest still running
computerized evolution simulation at
??? Michigan U., isn't it?)? Am I even
spelling it right?

How were changes in food-energy-availability
and competition for limited food-energy
access written in, I wonder. When I read
about it some months ago in a periodical,
I remember wondering about what the writer
said as to how "reward" was increased when
a new mutation succeeded in accomplishing
some assigned task... such as learning to add.

Especially intriguing was something the writer
said about the program's "organism(s?)" having
evolved ways of adding figures in ways totally
strange and counter-intuitive to any method
known to man. Ain't that cool. A computer
evolution computer can "learn" to add numbers
by some process that defies our tried and true
protocols and operations... and get answers to
questions that -- even when it tells us how it
does it -- we can't even make sense of what it
is telling us... yet it WORKS !

If you have run Evita in your own computer,
I would like to hear your comments.

Meanwhile, I will try to get a copy of my own
to run. If allowed to do so, I might want to
plug in some "reward" innovations of my own.


g


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