Artificial evolution and Digital Organisms

Here's a link for those who want to do some home coding:

http://nemus.dllab.caltech.edu/avida

Really fun for those of us running OSX systems

A simulation can approximate everything. But it is an illusion of "Rorschach."
Many colored bricks can be piled to be able to give you an illusion of a tree if seen at a distance.

You know a computer works on 0-1 "bricks."

I frequently enjoy "piano" sounds through MP3 files made from the purchased CD's on my Mac. You know this: those files drastically chop off the information originally contained but those still sound good. Actual sound waves are totally different from those of an acoustic piano and those played through MP3's.
For human ears they sound similar (I won't say "same").

Following...

For example this is the first 100 bytes (800 bits) of an MP3 file of "barbados" (the track 19) of the CD, "Charlie Parker: the Savoy Recordings -Master Takes-."
(A binary is transformed to a decimal as an expression.)


It's too simple for the ingenious performance of Bird but has a sound on a computer.

bookmark

this 'Digital organisms' topic is over my head. I only showed up because I misread it as 'Digital orgasms'.


I know something about that.

Satt, I don't see your *Point*. Can you focus it a little better?

Thanks,

rosborne..
Writing a good algorithm is one of major works of programmers, aside from networking. Those with background in math are also absorbed in devising algorithms.
Programmers write algorithms, for example, for computers to play a two person game without draw, about which it is known that there is the best strategy for the game theoretically. But the algorithms written is far cry from the theoretically best strategy, but only a trial and error method.

No programmers are satisfied with the seeming approximation of nature or that of the theoretically best course of matters.

(I am not degrading the efforts of programmers by saying this, but I am pointing out the nature and limit of a computer.)

Satt,

The evolutionary algorithms (biological) can probably be simulated to a great degree. And they *are* being simulated (the question is, how accurately).

Not only that, the simulation process is producing real-world results in the form of solutions which have evolved from chance adaptations to artificial environments.

Satt: "No programmers are satisfied with the seeming approximation of nature or that of the theoretically best course of matters."

Maybe I misunderstand your point (something which has happened before), but I am a programmer, and a network designer, and I can assure you, those in my profession *are* interested in the approximation of nature; *very* interested

Best regards,

For example, the best strategy of a two-person game without draw, which is known to exist for either of the players if the game terminates after a (not necessarily specified) finite number of moves, can be simulated, but the simulation is far from the theoretical best strategy.

Interested in someting is not the same thing as being satisfied with it.
BTW, I have a bulk of books on algorithms.

rosborne's recommended articles remind me of one I read in Scientific American late last year in which the author described an algorithmic evolutionary process used to design electronic components, such as a crossover device to be used in High-Fi speakers (among others). This involved a selection pressure designed to favor a product with a specific output given a specific input. The raw materials (parts or circuits) available would initially be chosen at random, assembled then tested. Selection was based on output value and efficient use of the least amount of raw material. In addition the value placed upon either of these criteria could also be shifted so that if one desired a unit with, say the best sought output, the process would tend to produce just that. The longer the process ran the more likely it was to produce excellent results...No fine-tuning needed. Some of the results produced units superior to those of present day manufacture.

Important, implicit, and somewhat hidden to some one uninformed about evolutionary processes is the storage of desired characteristics acquired by the R&D afforded each product from each "generation". Thus the term "Genetic Algorithm". This allows the use of simplistic designs to be eventually compiled into more complex designs.

According to the first article:



This is something most of us have suspected and tried to convince others in different threads. With the use of computers this concept jumps out at us.

In the second article we find the claim:



I must disagree. If given enough time and each generation was subject to the proper selection, the process could possibly find an even better solution to the problem. I suggest the needed "fine tuning" is an effort to cut costs. However, given the criteria aforementioned, the process evolved may surpass all expectations.

Perhaps that is what happened with the creation of man. God set in motion an evolutionary process. He then went to check on his dinner was overly occupied with that and when he returned there we were!

JM

Re: Artificial evolution and Digital Organisms


First, programming must be able to find best (winning) strategy for the simplest two person game of 0-1 sequences as a strategy without draw which terminates in finite moves (e.g., a modified chess).
Without such a fundamental achievement, whatever a computer does is a Rorschach illusion.

Satt;
the point is natural systems (both the generating device, and the "receiver") have no specifications, they vary to a certain degree with some beings having a greater, or lesser ability to perceive, in this case, sounds; also the sources produce sounds far beyond the frequencies available to the human ear, to no pupose; they just do.
Thus in designing the programmes used to reproduce sound for "human" consumption, the poducers of media limit the spectrum to be produced to approximate the sensitivities of the "listener", in order to save costs, as including the entire range actually produced by an instrument, which would be simply wastefull.
The point could be made that digitally reproduced sound is possibly somewhat clearer, as it eliminates any mental "reaching' for sounds that are at the edge of our sensory limits.

rosborne..;
the real challenge here, it seems to me is to eliminate the "no design/trial and error" system that has plagued evolution in the past; good ideas have to happen by chance, and be supported by the simple criteria of survival, thus few bizarrities have been able to survive, in spite of the fact that they would have undoubtedly enriched our biosphere, and even, perhaps surpassed some of those that now hold positions as "special".

We should be carefully designing our future, not watching it happen, as has been the "spectator sport" of the past!!

Although I enjoy digitally processed sounds, I always think the sounds are nothing but a illusioned effects resembling the acoustic sounds. Think of the sound of the organ which can be heard with the total body and that of the digitally recorded one through headphones.

If an evolution were simulated on a computer currently used, it is an illusion "for humans" which appears to be similar to the far more complex process of evolving existence.