

Robots evolve altruism - ww520
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/even-robots-can-be-heroes.html

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aterimperator
"From Charles Darwin on, evolutionary biologists have struggled to explain
self-sacrificing behavior."

I had trouble reading beyond that line, since it's simply false. A quick
reading of "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins would correct that impression.

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nollidge
It's not false at all. _Origin of Species_ was published in 1859. _The Selfish
Gene_ was published in 1976. So even if everyone immediately accepted Dawkins'
synthesis upon reading it (which they didn't), that sentence is still an
accurate history of biologists' opinions over the years.

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chc
It if were past tense ("From Charles Darwin on, evolutionary biologists
struggled"), that would be fair, but the sentence reads as present tense
("From Charles Darwin on, evolutionary biologists _have_ struggled"). As
worded, the sentence implies that biologists as a whole are _still_ struggling
to explain it, that it's some mystery the field has yet to grasp.

Imagine if a sentence in a news story read, "For centuries, doctors have
struggled to determine whether diseases are caused by an imbalance of the
body's humours or by germs and genetics."

Would you defend that by saying, "It's not false at all. Germ theory didn't
gain much currency until the mid-1800s, and we didn't understand genetics
until a century later. So even if everyone immediately accepted germ theory
upon reading it (which they didn't), that sentence is still an accurate
history of doctors' opinions over the years"?

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ckuehne
Slight nitpick: The sentence is in present perfect not in present tense.

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chc
I actually did know that, but it wouldn't mean anything to most people, and
the actual time frame attached to the present perfect tense depends a lot on
context. If you say, "I have done things I'm not proud of," that implies a
vastly different time period than "I have hated him since he walked out on
me." So I thought it was simplest just to point out that it was _not_ the past
tense and that it reads most naturally as something that has been true up to
the present.

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mmcconnell1618
I think I would rewrite the headline as "Scientist recreate altruism when
looking for it."

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hugh3
This is a bizarre sort of study. What can you do with robots that you can't do
much more cheaply inside a simulation, apart from eat up a whole bunch of
research funding with an excuse to build tiny little robots?

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klochner
They did use a simulation. They only built the robots to use as a guide in
creating the simulation:

    
    
       The researchers then created virtual representations of
       these robots on a computer so that they could observe the 
       robots' evolution over time.

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J3L2404
Feeling a synthetic kind of love,

Dreaming a sympathetic wish,

As the lights blink faster and brighter...

