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A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

phys.org

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Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#51

Post by derefr »

kanzure wrote: post #43
TekMol wrote: post #26

I find it fascinating that we have not witnessed self reproduction and evolution in a simulated world as of now. Unless we manually put it in of course. Any guesses when this will happen? Life springing up in a 2D-Automata or something like that? What size will it be? How many cells does the smallest self reproducing 2D-Automata need?

> I find it fascinating that we have not witnessed self reproduction and evolution in a simulated world as of now "The evolution of self-replicating computer organisms" (1996) http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/ai/The%20evolution%20of%20se... 4096x4096 grid. 16 opcodes. Randomly seed the field. Observe string replicators at surprisingly high frequency. Much simpler than y'all think.

You forgot the "evolution" part.

Also, I think most people would expect that "organisms" (as opposed to the more usual A-Life term "agents") are capable of homeostasis—that random bit-flips of their internal structure, or even another replicator attempting to "eat" into them, won't break their replicating ability. That's one of the (more implicit, oft-left-unstated) bars by which we usually measure whether something is alive. (E.g. it's the one that allows us to separate viruses from dormant bacteria.)

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#52

Post by acbabis »

Toine wrote: post #47
actionowl wrote: post #23

> This one neat trick can develop life, the void HATES it!

Oh how I wish we all weren't trying to abuse human psychological weaknesses to get cheap clicks and views. At this point I'm tempted to dump the entire Internet just like I dumped TV... Then I remember you can't live without it nowadays. Then it swallows me back.

You must be really fun at parties

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#53

Post by rwallace »

TekMol wrote: post #50
kanzure wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it fascinating that we have not witnessed self reproduction and evolution in a simulated world as of now "The evolution of self-replicating computer organisms" (1996) http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/ai/The%20evolution%20of%20se... 4096x4096 grid. 16 opcodes. Randomly seed the field. Observe string replicators at surprisingly high frequency. Much simpler than y'all think.

Hmm... They created random computer programs and say that one in 10000 turned out to be self replicating. But that is just because they gave them all the necessaray tools to do so. So the program only has to 1) Set pointer A to its beginning 2) Set pointer B to somewhere 3) Copy from pointer A to pointer B 4) Increase pointer A 5) Increase pointer B. 6) GOTO 1 If you look at the actual instruction set they use, it's…

This is true, but not unusual. Any time you ask for the simplest/earliest/minimal X, you quickly get bogged down in the gray area of what exactly counts as an X.

So the above doesn't count, okay, make it a bit stricter and it takes a few orders of magnitude more computation to generate self replication. A bit stricter again, another few orders of magnitude. Then we run out of computing power, but can conjecture that by the time you get to the physics of our universe, self replication will presumably still appear at least once in, say, every 1e1000 Hubble volumes. Which is still silver plate territory compared to e.g. Conway's game of life, which has no uphill paths. So you get to pick what level you're satisfied with.

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#54

Post by diggy008 »

Toine wrote: post #47
actionowl wrote: post #23

> This one neat trick can develop life, the void HATES it!

Oh how I wish we all weren't trying to abuse human psychological weaknesses to get cheap clicks and views. At this point I'm tempted to dump the entire Internet just like I dumped TV... Then I remember you can't live without it nowadays. Then it swallows me back.

You know what, I'm gonna back you up, you got a point. But it's certain human psychological weaknesses that lead us to abuse human psychological weaknesses to get cheap clicks and views. Just take it as something fun to observe and think about.

No, I don't go to parties either.

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#55

Post by stochastic_monk »

acbabis wrote: post #52
Toine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh how I wish we all weren't trying to abuse human psychological weaknesses to get cheap clicks and views. At this point I'm tempted to dump the entire Internet just like I dumped TV... Then I remember you can't live without it nowadays. Then it swallows me back.

You must be really fun at parties

He makes a great point. How can we get the internet to be more useful and less clickbait?

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#57

Post by EddieSpeaks »

diegoperini wrote: post #5
EddieSpeaks wrote: post #2

I investigated this in a simulation 8 years ago, link here and a paper in the description https://youtu.be/UVyTu3o2A9U

I have no idea what I watched. Can you ELI5?

An emergent lifelike property, the paper describes it. I noticed that it was fairly easy to build up a propulsion system without even explicitly coding it.

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#58

Post by EddieSpeaks »

jacquesm wrote: post #3
EddieSpeaks wrote: post #2

I investigated this in a simulation 8 years ago, link here and a paper in the description https://youtu.be/UVyTu3o2A9U

That's awesome! How valid is a two dimensional simulation like this for a three dimensional phenomenon?

Simple I guess, easy to extrapolate this to 3d but convection currents are 2d in nature so not much has to change

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#59

Post by IanDrake »

kmm wrote: post #9
IanDrake wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not hard to “believe”, but it’s impossible to prove. Theological debates usually end up with the creationist position being that belief without proof equals faith, there for proof is not desired. Science is skepticism, religion is unquestionable; the two are opposites.

Religion isn't unquestionable, doubt is a key to faith. There's an entire academic discipline devoted to critically studying the divine, theology. That is not an excuse for avoiding and denying any insight into creation or trying to fill the gap with gods of course. I strongly disagree with the thread starter's sentiment

I didn’t mean to suggest that one is not allowed to question religion (these days), I meant questioning religion becomes either a useless spiral of circular logic or you finally wind up at the point I made about faith. That’s been my experience at least.

All that said, reading Jordan Peterson’s book has increased my opinion of the Bible and the knowledge about the human condition that it contains, but as an allegory, not a literal history.

Re: A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life

#60

Post by Viliam1234 »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #55
acbabis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be really fun at parties

He makes a great point. How can we get the internet to be more useful and less clickbait?

Ban online advertising?

No, this is not a serious proposal, but I am afraid that nothing less will help. When you have a strong financial incentive to do something, saying "but it's not nice" is not going to convince many people; in best case, those convinced by the argument will change their business, and someone else will take their place.

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