Natural evolution and collective optimum-seeking

On the one hand many people admire the often strikingly eecient results of organic evolution, on the other hand, however, they presuppose mutation and selection to be a rather prodigal and uneecient trial-and-error strategy like Monte-Carlo sampling. Taking into account the parallel processing of a heterogeneous population and sexual propagation with recombination as well as the endogenous adaptation of strategy characteristics, simulated evolution reveals a couple of interesting, sometimes surprising, properties of nature's learning-by-doing algorithm. `Survival of the ttest', often taken as Darwin's view, turns out to be a bad advice. Forgetting, i.e. individual death, and even regression show up to be necessary ingredients of the life game. Whether the process should be termed gradualistic or punctualistic, is a matter of the observer's point of view. He even might observèlong waves'.