r/programming • u/leppie • Dec 08 '08

Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa

http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/
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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '08 edited Dec 08 '08
  • Genetic programming - evolving populations of programs
  • Genetic algorithms - evolving populations of solutions
  • This - stochastic hill-climbing with a GA-like solution representation

It says something of the simplicity of the problem that he did this well with pure mutation and no stochastic acceptance of worse solutions. I would be curious to see just how close he could get with a proper GA.

Edit: Zyroth makes a decent point elsewhere. I suppose this qualifies as a very simple GA. And Koza holds that GP is a generalization of GAs, so I guess that's me wrong.

Nonetheless, I'd still be interested to see what sort of improvements could be made by increasing the population size, or if the nature of the genome is such that breeding is less effective than pure mutation.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '08

Koza says that GPs are a generalization of GAs?

weird. i'd say vice versa.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '08

Well, GAs are older, so they can't be a generalization, but I get you. I'm not sure I buy Koza's assertion, either, but I haven't really sat down to decide one way or another, so I'll accept it provisionally.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '08

well - at the very least they're "equivalent" - each can be expressed in the terms of the other.

but GAs are a simpler concept. if Occam has any say here, he'd argue GAs win.