Evolutionary Simulators: How accurate are they?

What a neat and simple illustration of evolution! Thanks!Can you justify this statement with regard to that evolution simulator: --Percy

What the designers want is a simulation of the evolutionary process. A simulation of evolution is not evidence of evolution, but an illustration of it. You get to see the process of adaptation taking place before your very eyes.In the case of the simulation you provided, since the "biomass" of the environment is kept constant, the organisms most likely to produce offspring will be those with swimming patterns most likely to encounter food. At heart this is a competition for food, since those with the inferior swimming patterns will be beaten to the food by those with better swimming patterns, and without food to replenish its energy an organism will die, thereby failing to reproduce. Over time the simulation will become dominated by organisms with the most advantageous swimming patterns. Accurate simplifications are extremely useful, but in this case what has been simplified isn't what's important. The simulation is an illustration of the principles of mutation and natural selection. It's not intended to be a simulation of real organisms in a real-world environment. As an accurate simulation of evolutionary principles it can be taken very seriously.--Percy

I doubt many laypeople have even heard of evolution simulations. Given that most people aren't familiar with software and don't know what software simulation entails, and aren't familiar with the principles of evolution and what they entail, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if most laypeople encountering the term would misunderstand it some very fundamental ways.Second, the way NJ phrased the thread's title with its question, "How accurate are they," reveals that he doesn't understand the purpose of these programs. These programs are not written to simulate the evolution of actual organisms, certainly not anything like the way weather simulations attempt to simulate actual weather. Evolution simulation programs are written to simulate the principles of evolution, and in this they are highly accurate in adhering to these principles.Also, while perhaps in some circles these programs are called evolution simulators, the term I usually see is artificial life.--Percy

I think the important point that hasn't yet gotten across is that the type of evolution simulations being talked about in this thread, ones like the example you provided, model the principles of evolution, namely mutation and natural selection. They aren't intended to model the evolution of living organisms. You provided an example of a simulation that illustrates evolutionary principles, not real-life evolution. You in essence introduced an apple into the discussion and then criticized it for not being an orange.If you'd like to shift discussion to simulations of the evolution of real-life organisms then we could do that if the participants here are agreeable, but it would be nice to first have an example of such a simulation so that the discussion can be focused. Probably such simulations have to be of very primitive organisms in a simple environment, such as bacteria in a petri dish on a well-defined medium. My guess is that simulations of more complex organisms with populations of meaningful size in a realistic simulated environment wouldn't be practical because of computational constraints, and certainly the programming task would be immense.--Percy

If by "necessary information" you mean the design that the genetic algorithm generates, then no, this information is not "extant". If it was then the programmers of the genetic algorithm would not have to actually run the program in order to create the design. In fact, if they really already had the design, why would they ever bother writing the program?Or if by "necessary information" you are referring to, for example, the way transistors and resistors and capacitors behave when you need to design an electrical circuit, then this is the same "necessary information" that any designer of electrical circuits employs. The genetic algorithm has no more of this "necessary information" than a human designer.What evolution simulators and genetic algorithms illustrate is that information (novel designs) can be created by applying the evolutionary principles of mutation and natural selection, neatly disproving the ID claim that only humans can create information, though this is obvious anyway to anyone who understands information theory. The ID terms "irreducible complexity" and "specified complexity" do not have any quantitative or even clear definition, and so these imprecise ideas cannot be be rationally addressed, but the solutions and designs of these programs can become arbitrarily complex, limited only by computational resources and the ingenuity of the programmers.--Percy

What does, "Software programs have nothing to offer biological systems," mean? Was this an attempt to repeat your prior claims about simulations of evolutionary principles, or is this a different claim? I'm not sure what "typify your argument" means, but all Taz was saying was that Monte Carlo trials are a key aspect of evolutionary simulations. You can think of them as analogous to Malthus, where many offspring are produced but only a few selected.It might help move the discussion forward if we made a better effort to explain how evolution simulations work. Would you be interested in that?--Percy