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>The encoder being evolution is an idea that has been developed by Sui Huang and numerous others.

Parallels between evolutionary systems and hill-climbing algorithms have been floating around for a long time at this point.

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Although normally in the other direction -- genetic algorithms and genetic programming directly mimic evolution by natural selection, for example.

It was just the less controversial direction. You would be accused of anthropomorphizing and teleological thinking if you suggested evolution is a search process towards some optimum. Good luck talking to an orthodox biologist about evolutionary processes with constructs like agents and intelligence.

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