[D] Why are Evolutionary Algorithms considered "junk science"?

I would need to read whole book to potentially get answer to my question. Here (what you pasted) they mix universal complexity with search space size. And number of particles in universe is really not relevant for this; explaining reader how big this number is. Sounds like journalism.

This is a seminal reference in the GA space, I am surprised you're not familiar with it. And the size of the search space associated with 41,000,000,000 is a very elementary thing to calculate when it comes to selecting an optimization method that can be used to randomly iterate through that space. Commonly referred to as completely impossible, no known method of optimization theory whether that be SGD or simulated annealing or particle swarm optimization or ant colony optimization, nothing that relies upon random search can deal with even a tiny fraction of the search space associated with the size of human DNA. Period. And you cite to nothing in your conjecture to the opposite.

Can you tell me will I get info in the book about how they qualified and quantified effects of mutation mechanisms and selection criteria based on environment fitness. My current position is that we don't have all factors in, but would gladly be disabused. So, should I read the book? Or you can explain?

I am not going to do your homework for you. Bäck is well respected in GA circles and synthetic Molecular Darwinism; the majority of what you would cite to in support of your position are likely in his PhD thesis and related published work since then. His work on synthetic selective pressure for example.

/r/MachineLearning Thread Parent