Nuerons and Fitness 

Hi,

I evolved a creature using the standard settings, evolving it for velocity.
I wanted to remove the "Junk" from the genome, so I wrote a python script. I
removed all the parts which I could without lowering the fitness. I used the
cli interface in order to determine the values.

I got something like this.
(, lFX[N][N][N]( lrLLLLX[N]LrLrrLLLrLLrrLLrrLLLLLLLLLLLX[|, 3:10, p:0.489]),
LLcXX[N][G][in:0.741074, -1:-1.737])
This entry gives the same fitness value as my original creature. However, I
see several Nuerons which were not being used. In particular it has three
Neurons in a row [N][N][N] in the beginning. It seems to me tha tI should be
able to remove them. There existence is not used and so it really shouldn't
effect the velocity/fitness of the whole. However, I get a massive drop in
velocity/fitness when I remove any of them.

Am I missing something? What is causing this?

Winston Ewert

Forums: 
Maciej Komosinski's picture

Hi Winston,

> (, lFX[N][N][N]( lrLLLLX[N]LrLrrLLLrLLrrLLrrLLLLLLLLLLLX[|, 3:10, p:0.489]),
> LLcXX[N][G][in:0.741074, -1:-1.737])
> This entry gives the same fitness value as my original creature. However, I
> see several Nuerons which were not being used. In particular it has three
> Neurons in a row [N][N][N] in the beginning. It seems to me tha tI should be
> able to remove them. There existence is not used and so it really shouldn't
> effect the velocity/fitness of the whole. However, I get a massive drop in
> velocity/fitness when I remove any of them.
>
> Am I missing something? What is causing this?

I evaluated your original genotype and the NNN-removed one. Note that
the speed differs from run to run because the creatures behave
differently each time (because neural states are by default randomly
initialized).

So I evaluated both genotypes 50 times, and their average
speed in the default setting is the same, ~0.03.

MacKo