Accidents and evolution (Part one)
Some time ago, when I was young, I was accosted by somebody on the streets of Guildford. He was trying to challenge my view of the world and get me to sign up to their cult or something. He followed me down the street and asked me if I really believed the world, everything we see, was created by accident. Without hesitation I replied, YES!
When I was young I had asked myself the same question. So I went to the library and started to read up on the theory of evolution to try and understand if there was some simple scientific logic at how you could arrive at something so complex from something so simple. I found my answers and wrote some simple code to see them in action. The code basically started with something white and introduced some Darwinian variables such as mutation and predation and I studied how it turned from white to black over several generations. I change the environment to test how that affected the evolution.
To this day I use these principles when working through a system, process or problem. Evolution does, eventually, provide a solution even if you don’t have a clue when you start out. Have a look at what you are doing and see if these principles can apply to what you are trying to achieve. People often talk about neural nets in trying to find an edge in the markets, but I have found a bit of Darwin a much more viable and logical solution.
Category: General, Trading strategies
