Evolution and Randomness

[ydoaPs]

I ran across this from a guy on facebook and he gave me permission to use it freely. I thought you guys might like it.

 

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I propose a simple poker game where all the players receive 5 cards from a randomly shufffled deck. Then each player shows his cards and the highest ranking had wins. After 1000 games, who ends up with the most wins? The answer is on the average noone, because the cards were random.

 

Now lets play another 1000 games, but after each card is dealt, lets let one player discard up to five cards each of which are replaced by cards from the top of the randomly shuffled deck. He can discard and draw the five cards one at a time, and each time he can choose which card, if any, he wants to discard.

 

That particular player has the discard privelege throughout all the 1000 games. Who do you think will win the most game.

 

This last example demonstrates the power of a process of selection following random events.

 

Now, lets let all the players have the discard privilege and suppose they do it in turns, one card at a time. But now lets let one player have the special privilege of keeping his hand between games, while the rest of the players have to start each game with a new hand. After 1000 games who do you think will win the most? In fact, how many games will it take for the privileged guy to build a Royal Flush and keep it for the rest of the games?

 

This demonstrates the power of randomness, followed by a selection process, followed by inheritence. The selection process makes the best it can out of the random process, and the inheritence allows the improvements to accumulate from game to game.