kind of weird, probably normal

[bennyska]

my girlfriend moved several files around, and the next time i opened island.bat, i started over. i was originally at over 3000 generations, somewhere around there, after maybe a week or so. however, i've already reached that in the past few hours, with a generation every 3 to 6 seconds. also, the characters that represent the circuit (which i'm assuming is genotype) seems to have gotten simpler instead of more complex. is this normal? i was thinking that starting over may have done something simple, like starting lifeforms to evolve in the desert instead of the forest. oh well... should i try to find the previous files, which were much more complex, or just let this thing go?

[prokaryote]

Hi bennyska,

I believe that we're working on another circuit this time around.

prok

[bennyska]

that would make sense. but it's weird, should the genotype be getting simpler? even now, i'm on generation 8366, and i was on zero around ten or so in the morning, but it's continued to get simpler.

[prokaryote]

Hi bennyska,

I think that the algorithm is allowed to both add and prune circuit elements, as one of the goals "parsimony" is a drive to reduce the number of elements that make up a circuit, I can easily see how an evolved circuit can be reduced in complexity (we actually want that to reduce the amount of silicon real-estate needed to construct a cell).

prok