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An intesesting article in Discover magazine.

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Captain

PostPosted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 6:38 am


Basically it's an answer to the irreducable complexity issue.
It's a long article, and I can't be bothered to summarise it properly, this'll have to do until you read it yourself.
You need to register to read the whole thing, but a preview is here.
Testing Darwin

A computer program called avida which is designed to simulate evolution, or as they put it;
Quote:

Avida is not a simulation of evolution, it is an instance of it.


It's not a direct simulation of biological life, but instead uses digital life, which can evolve very rapidly. Basically like a computer virus which can mutate it's own code.

The reason this is an answer to irredicable complexity? The results of one experiment to get a digital organism which can compare two binary numbers bit-by-bit and output whether they are the same.
The intermediate stages between starting and reaching the goal are useless to the organism, as comparing the two numbers is quite complex.

But over 16,000 generations, the program beat the problem 23 out of 50 times.

Quite cool. No time to post more details tohugh sorry. Check out the magazine.
PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:04 am


Oooh, I've seen some other stuff like this, as well.

On the discovery channel a long time ago, I think it was...
A program was designed for a 'shepherd' robot that had the ability to control the direction of a 'sheep' robot in a few limited ways. But to design the program for the shepherd robot, they made a simulation which mapped out the success of each generation, and from each simulation, a 1 out of a few mutated versions of the previous version (the most successful one) was then used as the basis for new mutated forms in the next generation...
Anyway, after leaving this evolution program on overnight, they ended up with an extremely effective program, with varying responses to the different directions of the 'sheep', starting with one that could barely do the job.

I've also heard of a situation where some people used a similar program to design the body of an entirely new robot. The selective factor was that robots that could move well would 'survive' and go onto the next round...
They ended up with sortof a moving tripod thing.

Anyway, something that I think is very interesting, (and can demonstrate the principle quite well), is biomorphs.
I think that it might be a useful tool for exhibiting the difference between evolution and random mutation, because if you just click on a random "child" each time, then you end up with an organism that changes randomly. One generation it might be long and thin, 20 gnerations it might be short and slanted, 20 generations later it might be large and straight.
However, if you're a little selective in which generation 'survives', you can get some very rapid evolution- but of course the speed of the evolution usually depends on how selective you are; because if you always choose the largest one to 'survive', you will soon end up with a huge organism. If you tend to pick larger ones most of the time, you still end up with evolution in that direction, but at a slower rate.

Mechanism
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The Anti-Creationism Guild

 
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