Can someone explain to me in a clear and direct way why isn’t Genetic Algorithms just a difficult and over-elaborate way to perform a Simulated Annealing optimization?...

I might accept that it has some kind of advantage because of the parallel exploration of the possibilities… But not simply because “it’s parallel”, because this means mothing. There would be some form of non-linear interaction between the different possibilities considered at each iteration… But this all can be understood from within the SA thinking, in a strict statistical formalism, without all the biological mumbo-jumbo!!...

I see too many people who like GA because “it’s biological”, “it’s parallel”, “it’s mind-boggling”, “it’s darwinian”. Please, can’t we have just a little bit of mathematical dullness and insipidness?