Andrew,
If you wish to learn more about GAs, I’ll provide some good references for you. If you wish to misrepresent what they are and how they work, there’s no need to talk at all. The fact you take umbrage of this is your issue, not mine.
Since when have I misrepresented how they work? You have agreed with nearly every aspect that I presented. They terminate. The criteria is human determined. And the modifications of the population are determined by the human in the form of weights to individual parameters. I also have presented the viewpoint of Monash University. So I am not misrepresenting what Genetic algorithms are, since you agree with what I have stated about the selection/termination process.
Anyway your link to the genetic algorithm shows you what I am saying.
For NP-problems is characteristic that some simple algorithm to find a solution is obvious at a first sight - just trying all possible solutions.
See the word solutions in there? They get in that space somehow. Other things are not solutions. They are excluded somehow.