Bots are basically a result of players. They are a type of strategy that players utilize. A bad strategy for the overall health of the game, but a strategy none-the-less. Player behavior can and does evolve. Basically, the player or people programming the bots will program better bots. We see this all the time.
And while I often enjoy Gadget’s posts Gadget should take a look at how complex adaptive systems work, the notion of coevolution is used extensively and yes with social systems as well as biological systems. The entire notion of evolutionary game theory can be applied not just to biological systems but to social systems. There is a growing literature on this.
Great, so you agree “bots can’t evolve” I don’t know why you felt you needed all those extra words to agree on such a simple point. I have some botting software, and I’ve been watching it, it hasn’t changed on it’s own at all.
Yes, and that’s more like “intelligent design,” there is an intelligent, external cause (the programmer) for every change in the bots or in the game. All changes to bots, bot behaviour, and the game of EvE only come by debilitate choices made by developers.
EvE is not a natural system, it is a designed system. Designed systems don’t evolve. I do however understand your confusion, because it isn’t just your confusion, but it was first Dawkin’s confusion. When he tried to establish that internet memes “evolve” and change on their own, but they are also designed things that cannot change on their own. (This is why scientists should do science and philosophers should do philosophy, because they aren’t good at doing the other’s job.)
Yes, but the question is about those external forces making choices or not. In the case of Darwin’s finches, the wet or dry weather didn’t choose that it liked finches with pointy or rounded beaks. It effected, but it did not choose.
On the other hand, almost every bread of dog we have in the world is not a product of evolution, but comes from directed choices made by man (an external force) to effect a desired change.
Organic systems have been fighting parasite/bacteria/virus invasions for hundreds of millions of years, at the attrition of countless billions of host organisms, via natural selection.
EVE, if left to its own devices without CCP intervention, does not have the means to counter bot proliferation.
We as players, can’t ban other players. Every bot you might kill, is replaced by another and/or moves somewhere else.
We can’t stop this plague as players.
We dont have the means, except to annoy botters mildly.
Only CCP can make the changes to evolve this game, as our host, to increase its defenses against the harmful effects of bots.
As I said.
EVE itself, organically, cannot fight bots to any substantial degree.
We as players, lack the means.
Only CCP can do it by reaching into our aquarium and removing/preventing them.
You don’t understand the word “organic” if you think it can be used to talk about a collection of ones and zeros existing on a server somewhere.
I said EvE doesn’t “evolve” because it is constructed and cannot evolve. You said that it isn’t evolving because bots are hurting it. Clearly we have different positions, we are not in agreement.
People can evolve in terms of their behavior though. The whole idea of complex adaptive systems is built on the notion of people doing something very much like we see in biological systems. Highly simplified version: Look for a strategy, evaluate it’s efficacy, junk it if it isn’t working, try a new one.
As such, no the bots are not going to evolve just on their own. But the people creating them can and do change in response to changes in their environment.
I think you meant deliberate, but sure. However, this is still a process of “trial-and-error” and competition.
Actually EVE has evolved…because of changes the Devs have made, often in response to how the players behave. That is very much like coevolution.
Actually, they are. Strategies can and do evolve, and if you look at botting as a type of strategy then yeah, the concepts of evolution can be applied. Not in the exact same literal sense as in a biological system true, but still the bots can change over time as a result of how the game changes because of the people behind both the game and the bots.
I don’t think anyone has said that bots are good, so okay on the first one.
As for you second point…dude…adaptation is a part of evolutionary processes. You are kinda contradicting yourself here.
Of course they do, but that’s the point evolution [by natural selection] means that it is not selected by an external choice, but it is selected naturally as a response to an external force. The whole point of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that there is not something outside the “thing” making changes trying to make a winner.
What is happening with EvE / with bots is the exact opposite of this: there are things (dev and bot devs) outside of the “things” (the game and bots) that are trying to make a winner.
Yep, even dumb smart people sometimes click to wrong word in the spellcheck.
With organic, I meant the player community trying to fight off bots.
I didnt mean to mean EVE isnt evolving due to bots hurting it.
EVE is evolving as a system, but as one increasingly laden by parasites.
Similar to a mammal laden with intestinal parasites trying to overcome their deliterious effect, by changing its behavior,
If that was your point, then touche.
My point was EVE itself cannot evolve to defeat bots, organically.
It needs CCP intervention to do so.
