The Success of the Population

The important point here is that the frame of reference is the population, not the individual agent! Because the life of one single individual ends always up in its death, a population as a whole can survive or not. Thus only the survival of the whole population can be used as some objective measure of having the 'right' structure with the 'right' behavior to enable this survival. The question then is what are the criteria for success of a population? The most often used and most simple criterion is the number of offsprings. Otherwise we know, that too many offsprings can lead to an 'overpopulation' which can be selfdestructive in the long run. This shows that the criteria for success can become more intriguing as more circumstances have to be considered^3.1. Moreover the success as fitness is given as a 'global' feedback to the 'whole' behavior of an agent and not to single actions. As one can see later in this lecture this can be the source of many deep problems if one intends to apply the concept of GA to the behavior of individually learning agents, which need special feedbacks for individual actions.