On Sunday 30 September 2007 09:24:24 pm, Matt Mahoney wrote: > > --- "J Storrs Hall, PhD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > And detrimental mutations greatly outnumber beneficial ones. > > It depends. Eukaryotes mutate more intelligently than prokaryotes. Their > mutations (by mixing large snips of DNA from 2 parents) are more likely to be > beneficial than random base pair mutations.
True enough -- but you wrote > > > ... It would be a simple change for > > > a hacker to have the program break into systems and copy itself with > > > small changes. Note that to get from prokaryotes to eukaryotes took evolution a full billion years, the Archean eon, roughly 3.5-2.5 Ga. To get to the point where something like crossover happens (or any other way of searching the program space efficiently) you need a considerably more complex variational mechanism -- which may be thought of as an answer to your original question. Josh ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=48408717-3fb145
