What Mr Downing is showing are examples of the classic Monte Carlo Methods used by engineers to optimise a design. Boeing use these for aerofoil design etc. And yes they are examples of the evolutionary "algorithm" ie CHANGE -> SELECT -> COPY -> REPEAT. However the assumption inherent that they demonstrate how natural selection could work in biological evolution is seriously flawed. 1- The probability of a beneficial change is both unrealistically high and fixed 2 - Given a beneficial change the probability of selection is very high approaching 1 3 - The whole experiment is INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED to for a specific PURPOSE. Nature has by definition no purpose which actually precludes the creation of information in the DNA which always has a purpose 4 - Drawing a comparison between these simplified models and biological evolution ignores the second law of thermodynamics which demands any state of order may only be achieved at the cost of greater disorder in the surroundings. In all such simulations the cost in the surroundings is proportional to the number of cycles of the experiment. But the number of cycles required is NOT proportional to the size of the problem. It is an EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION of the size of the problem which becomes very very large for evolution by natural selection where there is very very low probability of beneficial change and low probability of selection. 5 - Artificial selection in these models closely or directly uses the parameter that is being changed as the element upon which survival is based. However in biological evolution selection is at the phenotype performance level while the elements being changed are the DNA which will only in relatively few cases have any significant effect on phenotype performance. This is why probability of selection in nature is very low. 6 - As may be demonstrated by the failure of the travelling salesman example artificial selection models suffer from logical traps when the complexity of the model increases. Demonstrating in the real world that assumed natural selection will encounter the same thing. For example the butterfly. A creature with two body plans of which only the second can lay eggs. There is no known way this could evolve from a creature with only one body plan since there is no advantage (selection value) in an incomplete second body plan. The problem here is evolution education does not encourage critical thinking. You are being told what to believe not how to think. I'll leave it there for now..
