Hacker News Reader

Comment by Frogolocalypse | Hacker News Reader

You know the counter intuitive thing for myself that i found? Sexual reproduction sucks. It doesn't nearly have the performance gains I'd expect. In order to really own the gamut of a solution space, only asexual reproduction really has good consistent results. I've learned a lot more about why that is probably the case now, but i spent a long time getting to the bottom of it.

View on HN

I think the depends on your genotype-phenotype map. It’s hypothesized that sexual reproduction helps drive modularity because evolution needs to solve the problem of how to bring together two genetically different individuals and still come out with a viable offspring. This is why robustness is so entwined with evolvability. If your genotype-phenotype map is simple then robustness doesn’t need to evolve but this may limit evolvability. The thing I always found with with evolution is that there is no free lunch.

Cliff-hanger! Can you elaborate on why asexual reproduction might perform better?

My theory is that sexual reproduction focuses genes on performance in a stable environment, and asexual reproduction grows to encompass the entire gamut of every survivable environment.

When you don't know the traits that are beneficial in an environment, a significant change adversely affects all sexually reproduced algorithms to a significant degree, whereas it affects all asexually produced algorithms at varying degrees.

>Sexual reproduction sucks.

There is a joke to be made here.

Plants just wanna have fun?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com