Bots and Simulations > Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims

Interesting sim

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EricL:

--- Quote from: Testlund ---I have my doubts about this idea with not being able to set the costs I want. When I start a zerosim from scratch the bots can't have some costs at all because it whould whipe them out. Then as they evolve I can increase the costs and adapt them to what the bots can handle. this is very sensitive. Just setting the ageing cost to 0.001 instead of 0.0001 can whipe out the whole population.
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Ideally, costs would be commenserate with morphological action, be it physical action or something else such as cognitive action.  Zerobots would only be charged once they evolved to do something.

Just like today, zerobot evo sims need to have some nrg source that supplies bots some nrg passively until they evolve a means to feed themsleves.  I use a veg nrg shot shooter to supply the sim with free nrg shots, but that is simply my being expedient.  If we waited long enough, there are ways that bots would start aquiring nrg passively without it.  For example, some bot would evolve to shoot -2 shots or -1 shots and randomly bump into veggies, creating nrg shots that other bots would evneutally absorb.  Bots would die and decay into nrg shots, etc.

Don't worry.  I'm very sensitive to the needs of zerobot sims and I totally agree we can't screw them.


--- Quote from: Testlund ---I whould like to add why I'm so concerned about realism. It's because I see that DB can be a great model to try and learn how life works. For instance, maybe we can prove some day that life doesn't need a God to exist and that working cells can come alive and evolve all by themselves.
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Your goal is a nobel one but I'm of the opinion that the route to virutal life does not necessitate exact imitation of biological realism and in fact may require intentional and substantal differences due to the different mediums.

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: EricL ---Ideally, costs would be commenserate with morphological action, be it physical action or something else such as cognitive action.  Zerobots would only be charged once they evolved to do something.
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BTW, recently I have come to the same conclusion as you about DNA costs after interacting a bit with Ken from Evolve 4.0.  DNA costs beyond the simple necessary to prevent your computer from slowing to a halt are counter productive.  In the next version I'd probably toy with removing them altogether, except maybe the costs for store commands since they're important for the leagues.


--- Quote ---If we waited long enough, there are ways that bots would start aquiring nrg passively without it.  For example, some bot would evolve to shoot -2 shots or -1 shots and randomly bump into veggies, creating nrg shots that other bots would evneutally absorb.  Bots would die and decay into nrg shots, etc.
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I'm running such a sim at this very moment (though corpses aren't decaying.  Useful for determining how many failed attempts there are).  Basically it's F1 costs and low point mutation rates.  I'm curious to see if any successful bot can bootstrap itself in such a harsh environment.  It's currently at 100 million cycles.  I'm going to aim for maybe 500 million cycles to 1 billion cycles, and see if anything at all happens.  I'm guessing nothing will happen, and I can parade my failed sim as an example of what doesn't work.

Jez:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---BTW, recently I have come to the same conclusion as you about DNA costs after interacting a bit with Ken from Evolve 4.0.  DNA costs beyond the simple necessary to prevent your computer from slowing to a halt are counter productive.  In the next version I'd probably toy with removing them altogether, except maybe the costs for store commands since they're important for the leagues.
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Why are store costs important for the leagues? Beyond adding to the need to write concise code and punishing evolved bots with lengthy dna and useless stores. How about killing a whole species of Dodo with just one sailor and using Muller's ratchet to punish the longer DNA lengths? Would be interesting to see how the leagues coped then...


--- Quote ---I'm guessing nothing will happen, and I can parade my failed sim as an example of what doesn't work.
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In the same way that if I toss a coin ten times and never get heads it proves it's coin that doesn't work? You guys have mathematical powers; what's the probability of such a thing evolving by random and how many cycles does that mean. Anyway, isn't that expecting a bit much from bots, evolution took place in an enviroment of free energy and reproducing things. Don't remember ever reading about one thing that evolved to give another thing energy being the start of evolution. Unless horizontal gene transfer counts.

(The author of this post accepts no resposibility for his opinion unless tied to the nearest lamp post and beaten with long sticks   )

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: Jez ---Why are store costs important for the leagues? Beyond adding to the need to write concise code and punishing evolved bots with lengthy dna and useless stores. How about killing a whole species of Dodo with just one sailor and using Muller's ratchet to punish the longer DNA lengths? Would be interesting to see how the leagues coped then...
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That's actually an interesting idea.  I wonder if muller's ratchet would really provide a useful upper limit on the DNA size of our bots.  I understand that it's thought to do so on the lengths of bacterial DNAs.  If we could show that the same holds for ALife, and that this upper limit is low enough to prevent runaway DNA growth, that would be very interesting.


--- Quote ---In the same way that if I toss a coin ten times and never get heads it proves it's coin that doesn't work? You guys have mathematical powers; what's the probability of such a thing evolving by random and how many cycles does that mean. Anyway, isn't that expecting a bit much from bots, evolution took place in an enviroment of free energy and reproducing things.
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Exactly.  It's meant to be a control experiment.  I'm not expecting anything interesting to happen.  Too much has to happen at once.  I believe Rutherford's gold foil experiment was along the same lines.  Sometimes it's good to experiment to make sure that your expectations are in line with observed data.

Given infinite time eventually a successful bot would appear.  But life on Earth didn't need infinite time.  There are very real time constraints involved in the formation of life.  This is an experiment to show that the settings used aren't appropriate for the formation of life.

I'll follow it up with a simulation with similar mutation rates but with softer costs settings.  Hopefully I can show the two in together and draw some useful if very base conclusions from them about how to set up ex nihilo sims.

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