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From: offutt@caen.engin.umich.edu (daniel m offutt)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.bio,bionet.molbio.evolution
Subject: Re: How to debate the creationists.
Summary: A new argument against creationism
Message-ID: <4029b61d.ffb5@bumper.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 88 02:33:00 GMT
References: <4806@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: offutt@caen.engin.umich.edu (daniel m offutt)
Organization: The University of Michigan
Lines: 28

There is an argument that you can use against creationists which
has not been used before, to the best of my knowledge.

There are maybe a couple of hundred people in the computer sciences and
engineering today who are using a certain simulation of biological
evolution as a computational function maximization method. 
The simulation algorithm is called a "Genetic Algorithm".  
There is now substantial evidence from thousands of experiments that
genetic algorithms can be highly-efficient optimizers of otherwise
very hard to optimize  functions.  One researcher saved his company
$140,000 (with an expected continuing savings amounting to $1,000,000
per year) using this algorithm to evolve ever-better communication
network designs.  This algorithm is generating increasing interest
among people with practical optimization problems to solve.

A genetic algorithm simulates a population of linear chromosomes,
crossover, and fitness-based differential reproduction over a period
of hundreds or thousands of generations of simulated evolution.
The algorithm was originally intended as a model of evolution;
it is quite interesting that it just happens to also be a very
efficient function optimization method.

So to come to the point:  If creationists are right and evolution is
nonsense, then how can it be that when one implements a computer
simulation of evolution (of the right type) the simulation turns
out to be an algorithm that has tremendous practical value?

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Daniel Offutt                             offutt@caen.engin.umich.edu