Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nvidia GPUs only.
A simple artifical life / cellular automaton framework would be a great demo for portable compute shaders. I'm looking at this as a potential starting point in my compute-shader-101 project. If someone is interested in coding something up, please get in touch.
ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
201–210 of 217 posts
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#202Could someone explain the obsessive devotion to doing all Artificial "Life" research in terms of Cellular Automata? If you could supply the mathematical reasoning for this, I would be very interested in hearing the answer. And preferably an answer that goes beyond just saying that Von Neumann used Cellular Automata in his ALife research. Also, if anyone knows of alternative methods to CA in studying the properties of…
Although they could call this an automata, I think it's incorrect to call it a CA as it's not cell-neighbourhood based: "A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off " From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton?wprov=sfla1
It's not grid based. But that seems like a rather pedantic differentiation to make. It does quite literally utilize the concept of "cells". [0]
I find it interesting that the project seems to have hard-coded emergence with the concept of "tokens".
So, I am much less intrigued by the simulation examples when most of what we are seeing is just a procedurally-generated video game with pre-defined game rules. Much of it is not truly emergent.
Again, it's a "oh, that's cool" kind of factor, but a far cry from contributing to anything in the way of "artificial life" research.
[0] https://alien-project.org/documentation/Basicnotion.html
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any evidence suggesting we're not in a simulation?
Yes, any evidence of complexity (assuming that simpler universes are more likely) is evidence against the simulation hypothesis: The Simplicity Assumption and Some Implications of the Simulation Argument for our Civilization https://osf.io/ca8se (I'm the author :) )
complexity and simplicity seems pretty biased to human understanding?
Just as a thought experiment, I'd propose that our universe and the human experience is incredibly simple. Humans were only given a limited number of senses so that the simulation can be run in this "low fidelity". Compared to the thousands of senses a level or two up. We also are simulated in a simple linear time model, only able to experience a single time at once, greatly reducing the complexity and fidelity needed. Same for the number of dimensions we are able to sense.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#204Are there any similar projects that would help newbies like me to learn a bit about any real area of life sciences, e.g., biochemistry, cell biology, neuroscience in a fun and engaging way? This project looks like tons of fun, but I am too ignorant to judge whether it would teach me anything applicable beyond the scope of this particular bit of software.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
My goal with this project was to be able to seed the world with a single proto-organism and have two distinct species - one predator and one prey - evolve to create a stable ecosystem. I eventually localized food sources and added a bunch of additional rules, but was never able to realize this goal. I think for predator-prey relationships to evolve in my system it would have required sensory organs and methods to rea…
In the real world what prevents this outcome? Humans aside. Because it's uncommon. Ecosystem diversity? Pathogens?
I think this probably happens sometimes in the real world. However, there usually aren't ecosystems with only two species. Most predators eat multiple prey species, so a predator may hunt the "easy" species to extinction leaving only the harder-to-hunt species remain, which causes the predator population to fall as only a subset of the predators are able to succeed in these harder conditions.
Cicadas could be another example of a strategy to deal with prey-decimation - by only emerging every N years, food sources have time time to regenerate between cycles. Similarly, many large predators are nomadic - so as they reduce prey availability in one area, they choose to look elsewhere, giving the prey in that area time to recover.
I think geography and terrain also helps a lot in the real world: prey is usually smaller than predators and thus has more hiding spots. Maybe I should have implemented a 'turtling' mode, where organisms could spend part of their time immobile and invulnerable, but also not gaining energy, as a way to prevent predation. I think sensory organs would still probably be necessary to make that strategy work.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
My goal with this project was to be able to seed the world with a single proto-organism and have two distinct species - one predator and one prey - evolve to create a stable ecosystem. I eventually localized food sources and added a bunch of additional rules, but was never able to realize this goal. I think for predator-prey relationships to evolve in my system it would have required sensory organs and methods to rea…
If you managed to evolve huge organisms eating lots of small ones while both species survive than that was a predator and prey stability.
Yeah, I was able to achieve short temporary equilibria, but in every case the predators would slowly die out (and re-evolve later, and die out again), or they'd be too successful and kill everything.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#207When I was learning to program, I tried to make a toy artificial life evolution simulation. Particle organisms on a 2D plane had 'dna' which was a list of heritable traits, like size, speed, number of offspring. Bigger organisms could eat smaller organisms, but they burn energy faster. 0 energy = death. When two organisms of opposite gender collided and had sufficient energy, they'd give some of their energy split am…
This is way cooler than what I am doing now to learn a language.
My dad, who was teaching me, wrote the canvas+js 2D visualization for me, while I built the engine that managed the state of the world. When you're learning asking for help from those who are more experienced than you is huge. Also, don't be shy about taking someone else's thing and modifying it until it does what you want it to do: these are educational projects, you don't really need to worry about licensing or those kinds of things. I learned a lot from 'hacking' in-browser web games before trying to write my own: cheat at the game, then add a button that improves Qol, then try to add a feature.
Try to simulate something that you're interested in! Everyone has their own interests, but I find these kinds of problems a lot of fun to work on.
When you're learning, it forces you to make reductive approximations and simplifications - you just can't do it the "right" way, so try to find a way to get something similar with something close to it. Trying to model a bunch of simplistic rules that replicate a phenomenon. Flocking/crowd/traffic behavior, spread of memes or viruses, growing plants, etc. - the sorts of problems were you have a bunch of tiny particle/cells that each have simple behavior but they can interact with each other are very rewarding to get working because simple rules can produce complex system behavior.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. Appears to be broken for Nvidia 10 series. I'm on Intel with a 1070ti + another user reports issues on the 1080ti (see similar post in this thread; reported to author here: https://github.com/chrxh/alien/issues/21 ).
Thank you for letting me know! Later I'm going to test it on another computer with a RTX 2060 super, but slower CPU and slower interconnections (PCIe). Thanks for the link too. :)
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Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#209When I was learning to program, I tried to make a toy artificial life evolution simulation. Particle organisms on a 2D plane had 'dna' which was a list of heritable traits, like size, speed, number of offspring. Bigger organisms could eat smaller organisms, but they burn energy faster. 0 energy = death. When two organisms of opposite gender collided and had sufficient energy, they'd give some of their energy split am…
Decades ago I read about a simulation aiming to evolve creatures that could walk, or one day run. The fitness function that determined how many offspring you get was “maximum speed ever attained in your life”. They let it run for a while and came back to find all the creatures had evolved into extremely tall, thin stalks that would tip over and never move again. The top would be moving very fast before it hit the gro…
Our own human intelligence could also seen this kind of side effect. The purpose of it being for us to be better at hunting other animals and gathering extra food. Instead, in just several hundred thousand years we’ve built a bunch of ‘buildings’ and we managed to throw the entire ecosystem out of balance.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#210Didn't work on my AMD 3700x + 64GB + GTX 1070. Windows 10 is updated and nvidia drivers too. Got only a black screen after clicking "play" :( Tested both 2.52 and 2.47 versions.
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