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From: pmd@cbnews.ATT.COM (Paul Dubuc)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.bio,bionet.molbio.evolution
Subject: Re: How to debate the creationists.
Message-ID: <2572@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 88 17:58:15 GMT
References: <4806@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <4029b61d.ffb5@bumper.engin.umich.edu>
Reply-To: pmd@cbnews.ATT.COM (Paul Dubuc)
Followup-To: talk.origions
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 36

In article <4029b61d.ffb5@bumper.engin.umich.edu> (daniel m offutt) writes:
}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?

I have no reply, but I've crossposted this to talk.origins on the
assumption that your question is not merely rhetorical.  (Follow-ups
to talk.origins.)
-- 
Paul Dubuc   |   "I can never be sure of writing a line that will
cbdkc1!pmd   |   not some day be published by friend or foe."
	     |   				John Quincy Adams
	     |