Genetic Programming without Fitness

This paper provides a short, informal illustration of a selection scheme based on the key idea of competition, particularly suited for genetic programming, which provides a way to do without the explicit deenition of a tness function. In many tasks, competition between two individuals on one problem instance chosen according to some probability can be a valid alternative to deening an appropriate tness function that includes a priori knowledge of the problem, which requires insights on the problem along with some mathematical skills.