Weasel program

. The weasel program or Dawkins' weasel is a thought experiment and a variety of computer simulations illustrating it. Their aim is to demonstrate that the process that drives evolutionary systems—random variation combined with non-random cumulative selection—is different from pure chance. The thought experiment was formulated by Richard Dawkins, and the first simulation written by him; various other implementations of the program have been written by others.

.]] The weasel program or Dawkins' weasel is a thought experiment and a variety of computer simulations illustrating it. Their aim is to demonstrate that the process that drives evolutionary systems—random variation combined with non-random cumulative selection—is different from pure chance. The thought experiment was formulated by Richard Dawkins, and the first simulation written by him; various other implementations of the program have been written by others. ==Implications for biology== The program aims to demonstrate that the preservation of small changes in an evolving string of characters (or genes) can produce meaningful combinations in a relatively short time as long as there is some mechanism to select cumulative changes, whether it is a person identifying which traits are desirable (in the case of artificial selection) or a criterion of survival ("fitness") imposed by the environment (in the case of natural selection). Reproducing systems tend to preserve traits across generations, because the offspring inherit a copy of the parent's traits. It is the differences between offspring, the variations in copying, which become the basis for selection, allowing phrases closer to the target to survive, and the remaining variants to "die." Dawkins discusses the issue of the mechanism of selection with respect to his "biomorphs" program: Regarding the example's applicability to biological evolution, he is careful to point out that it has its limitations: ==More complex models== In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins goes on to provide a graphical model of gene selection involving entities he calls biomorphs. These are two-dimensional sets of line segments which bear relationships to each other, drawn under the control of "genes" that determine the appearance of the biomorph. By selecting entities from sequential generations of biomorphs, an experimenter can guide the evolution of the figures toward given shapes, such as "airplane" or "octopus" biomorphs. As a simulation, the biomorphs are not much closer to the actual genetic behavior of biological organisms. Like the Weasel program, their development is shaped by an external factor, in this case the decisions of the experimenter who chooses which of many possible shapes will go forward into the following generation. They do however serve to illustrate the concept of "genetic space," where each possible gene is treated as a dimension, and the actual genomes of living organisms make up a tiny fraction of all possible gene combinations, most of which will not produce a viable organism. As Dawkins puts it, "however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead". In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins responded to the limitations of the Weasel program by describing programs, written by other parties, that modeled the evolution of the spider web. He suggested that these programs were more realistic models of the evolutionary process, since they had no predetermined goal other than coming up with a web that caught more flies through a "trial and error" process. Spiderwebs were seen as good topics for evolutionary modeling because they were simple examples of biosystems that were easily visualized; the modeling programs successfully generated a range of spider webs similar to those found in nature.

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