Could genetic programming, supercomputers & biology be used to R.E. the human body

Factual Questions
1

R.E. = reverse engineer

There is something called ‘genetic programming’ where you use computers to try to recreate evolution but for technological reasons instead of for biological reasons. You may give the computer some component parts and then tell it to constantly mutate and mate its creations until you end up with a creation that suits your technological purposes. In this article they talk a bit about using it to create better jet parts.

http://www.genetic-programming.com/published/usnwr072798.html

Question is, instead of using it to invent new technology can we use this kind of program to understand pre-existing technology and biology? I know computers aren’t nearly fast enough as of 2006 but would it be possible to put in as much data as we know about the human body (which is alot), and about human evolution and ask the machine to fill in the gaps, to evolve a human from a human ancestor, and to only keep the humans that possess the same biology that we do in the hopes that the computer would also be able to fill in the other gaps about our biology? Could we evolve in the virtual world a primate into a human who has all the human capacities, and when that happens examine the virtual human to gain a better understanding of our own biology (since his biology would have to be identical to ours as we understand it) or would his biology be divergent in all the aspects that we don’t currently understand?

2

No. We’ve had a few other threads that touch on this subject - basically if you randomly generate information (GP would be pseudo-random, we could spec a mutation rate, but not the mutations themselves) and throw away what you don’t agree with a priori, the end result is exactly the same as what could have been specified in the beginning. As you put it “his biology would be divergent in all the aspects we don’t currently understand.”

GP had led to some fascinating understanding of the basic mechanisms of evolution though…

3

Check out the work of Karl Simms.

4

Yeah, if we could, you wouldn’t be attracted to the resulting creature.

(Hal Briston might)

5

Even with a perfect model of biological evolution and of the environment in which our ancestors found themselves (which is itself impossible), the best you could do with such a simulation would be to see what sort of things the pre-humans might have evolved into. There would still be only a miniscule chance that what the computer simulated them evolving into would be humans (just how miniscule that chance would be would depend on how far in the past you started it).