On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Steven Desjardins wrote: > I know that CS folks use "evolution" to describe a way to develop > algorithms, as opposed to Darwinian evolution. What I hate about > articles like this is that there's never enough information to make > real judgement.
By evolutionary approach, I think that he meant, lets start with smaller, attainable pieces, then work up. It's also wroth noting the line: Mr Anderson said he started the project as a way to get to know the Hadoop programming tool better and to put Amazon's web services to the test. In other words, it's not really a test of anything except the particular implementation of Hadoop: http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/ In other words, Mr. Anderson was learning a parallel programming language, and came up with a non-trivial, but still relatively doable thought experiment, and someone who doesn't understand programming wrote about it. > > On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote: >> Interesting article. However I think that even the most objective >> proponent of evolution would have to say that this thought experiment >> does nothing to advance the argument. (Perhaps if the code that >> created the algorithms that created the virtual monkeys had been >> produced by monkeys?) >> >> Quote: "Each sequence is nine characters long and each is checked to >> see if that string of characters appears anywhere in the works of >> Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress >> has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard. " >> >> Had these been real monkeys, someone would have needed to be there to >> tear the sheet out of the typewriter each time 9 characters were >> reached (and to do the comparison with the blueprint: the original >> work of Shakespeare) >> >> In the above experiment, someone decided to make the sequence 9 >> characters (instead of 8, or 10, or 64) each of which changes the >> probability of "success" of the individual operation. >> >> Also the result is compared to a known endpoint (goal) of known >> complexity. Apples and oranges, to say the least, in comparing with >> what occurs in nature. >> >> Darren Addy >> Kearney, Nebraska >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. >> > > > > -- > Steve Desjardins > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
