Comment by snrji

When I was in college I was mystified by genetic algorithms, without knowing much about them. After taking 2 subjects on the matter and reading some books, I came to the conclusion that apart from being inherently inefficient (that's what you apply them when you have no alternative), they are actually outperformed by hill climbing (which can be seen as a particular case of the former if population = 1). Also, the crossover operator seems to make more harm than good, and it's not fully understood it's usefulness in nature, although there are some theories (this last point is taken from Pedro Domingos book).