Aren there examples of computer programs that evolve just as genetic programs must have done?
A. No. According to the standard theory, new genes with unprecedented instructional meaning arose gradually, after many iterations of random mutation and recombination. There are no examples of anything analogous to this process in computer software. Just to be sure, we asked the experts. In August, 1996, we polled the newsgroups bionet.biology.computational; bionet.molbio.evolution; comp.ai.alife; comp.ai.genetic; comp.ai.philosophy; and comp.theory.self-org-sys. We asked if anyone had any such examples. Although examples were submitted, none met the stated criteria. Other alleged examples are considered in detail in the following pages of this website. Q.
