Probing the axioms of evolutionary algorithm design: Commentary on “On the mapping of genotype to phenotype in evolutionary algorithms” by Peter A. Whigham, Grant Dick, and James Maclaurin

Properties such as continuity, locality, and modularity may seem necessary when designing representations and variation operators for evolutionary algorithms, but a closer look at what happens when evolutionary algorithms perform well reveals counterexamples to such schemes. Moreover, these variational properties can themselves evolve in sufficiently complex open-ended systems. These properties of evolutionary algorithms remain very much open questions.

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