N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ June 18 2015,06:46) | Wikipedia is going to have to be changed too:
| Quote | In artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. An EA uses mechanisms inspired by biological evolution, such as reproduction, mutation, recombination, and selection. Candidate solutions to the optimization problem play the role of individuals in a population, and the fitness function determines the quality of the solutions (see also loss function). Evolution of the population then takes place after the repeated application of the above operators. Artificial evolution (AE) describes a process involving individual evolutionary algorithms; EAs are individual components that participate in an AE[citation needed].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.......gorithm
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Wow what a mess! |
That's fine. The reference to a population clearly refers to individual attempts at solutions within the EA, not biological populations. It's your argument that's a mess.
Computer science is not the same as biology. Each field is allowed its own jargon. Political scientists are allowed to talk about the gravity of a deteriorating political situation without getting physicists riled up, Tyra Banks is allowed to be a model without upsetting computer scientists*, and evolutionary biologists, after all, borrowed and modified "evolution". However, when one field borrows an allied field's jargon and modifies it, misunderstandings can occur when people who don't know enough in either field think the terms are still interchangeable, so it would be nicer if borrowers understood the original term properly, stuck close to the original meaning, and avoided creating unnecessary ambiguities. Incidentally, this sort of nicety is probably why Darwin initially and largely avoided the term "evolution", which he would have encountered both in his readings of Lyell and in his own education in embryology, as he wanted to describe ongoing reactive contingent change rather than an unrolling of something already written down or a preordained progression.
*Distracting .NE upsetting
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