Thomas comments on Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 11 July 2016 07:09AM

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Comment author: Viliam 12 July 2016 07:57:08AM *  0 points [-]

Does the solution space support this? I can imagine a schedule that only violates 1 criterium, but the nearest correct solution is far away from it. (Seems to me the schedules are similar to 3-SAT in this aspect.)

Comment author: Thomas 12 July 2016 07:04:06PM 0 points [-]

Does the solution space support this? I can imagine a schedule that only violates 1 criterium, but the nearest correct solution is far away from it.

This is indeed a big and fundamental problem. If 1 criterium only is violated and this persists for many millions of generations, the control program sees this semi-solution as worse and worse. Much worse than a 2 or 4 criteriums miss. So it's then killed.

It's even more complicated than that. Several such tricks are employed and this problem almost vanishes.