GeneticTea is a python script that reproduces the evolutionary model to generate the optimal cup of tea. It's completely based on a python script with the same name developed by ollybritton. This is a link to the original GeneticTea script.
I express my gratitud towards ollybritton for developing such a wonderful script and also making it public here on GitHub for all of us to see, learn from and modifiy.
The original GeneticTea implemented the evolutionary model by perfectly reproducing nearly all its conditions. I found, nevertheless, that one of them was missing: the exchange of genes between an individual (a cup of tea) and another to produce offspring of the next generation. Instead, the original program only mutated by a small factor the better cup of teas and removed the less adapted ones. In other words, chromosomatic exchange and actual reproduction were not occuring. Both this things are now implemented.
Also some attributes of the teas were added while others were removed. Teas no longer have milkiness, are now composed by three ingredients (apart of the obvious sack of tea), and each ingredient is defined with its own ammount. This will produce more complex and flavorful teas!
To run the program, download the repo and cd into it. Then run the command:
python3 natural_selection.py
Each tea contains a chromosome, which is a set of genes. This set of genes define the sweetness, brewing time and ingredients of the tea. A chromosome is defined in the following format:
{
0: first ingredient of the tea,
1: second ingredient of the tea,
2: third ingredient of the tea,
3: amount of the first ingredient,
4: amount of the second ingredient,
5: amouunt of the third ingredient,
6: sweetness of the tea,
7: brew time of the tea
}
where each key is a gen and each value what it defines. All of this values, except the ingredients, are numbers from 0.1 to 1, where 1 is "very" or "a lot of" and 0.1 is "a little bit of" or "just a little of". 0.5 is "a regular ammount". For instance,
4: 0.2
5: 0.9
6: 0.5
defines a tea with a bit of the second ingredient, a lot of the third ingredient and just the regular ammount of sweetness. This relative values were used because to create an absolutely optimal cup of tea -i.e. a cup of tea whose perfection is objective- is impossible, since taste is subjective and different for each individual. Thus, on the sweetness gen, 0.5 is what I consider the fair, well-balanced ammount of sugar, which is two spoonfuls. But for another man 0.5 may be four drops of sweetener, or whatever he considers to be a well-balanced, adjusted level of sweet. Because of this, the attributes of the teas are not objective values, but subjective considerations which should be thought about before attempting to brew our optimal tea. If, for example, ammounts where to be objective, and
0.5 = two spoonfuls, 0.1 = one spoonful and 1 = four spoonfuls
and I received the recipe for a tea which contains the following ammounts:
1, 1, 1,
for ginger, garlic and sugar, I think we all would agree that such a tea would be disgusting! If we, on the contrary, understood these values relatively as "more than what I usually use", or "more than what I consider balanced", I in my case would define them as two little bits of garlic (since one is what I would consider balanced), three little bits of ginger and three spoonfuls of sugar, which is a better-balanced, yet still restrained to the evolutionary model -i.e. defined by the randomness of nature and not by my taste and desire-, cup of tea.
Now, firstly, when we run the program, an initial set of teas (the initial population) is generated, each tea with randomly casted chromosomes and thus different ingredients and qualities. After trying the teas, you are to rank them from 0 to 9, where 0 is disgusting and 9 is perfect. You are to input each value separated by a comma,
n,m,x,y...
where the first value corresponds to the first tea, the second value to the second tea, and so on.
After the initial population was ranked by you, the 5 superior teas will reproduce between themselves, crossing their genes randomly with one another, thus producing an offspring. This offspring passes also through a very minor mutation process which is likely to change some of its values. When this is over, you'll be showned the offspring as a new set of teas. This second generation will pass through the same process: ranking, crossover and mutation, to produce a new generation, until this repeating process boils down to one optimal cup of tea.
As it was proven years ago, genetic mutation -and this, though can be explained through natural selection itself at a minor scale, is a wonder of nature- is very likely to happen on those genes that define aspects of the specimen that are not crucial to life, but very unlikely for those that are decisive to it. For example, we find a wide variety of hair colors and hair colors, but very similar, nearly identical hearts and lungs. This is reproduced in the program. Those crucial factors of our teas, which I consider to be their ingredients, can mutate, though it's very unlikely for that to happen; while the ammount of each ingredient or the sweetness of the tea are much more likely to change.
The process is slow because it requires a human to taste the teas in order to rank them, i.e. it is not capable of recognizing the fitness of an individual of the population by itself. Nevertheless, depending on how many teas per day you drink, you can easily reach the optimal tea in a week or two.
(To my own suprise and everyone else's, I found a use for that year I studied anthropology in college!)