General > Biology

natural diversity VS simulated

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Carlo:

--- Quote from: viplex ---But in the sim, why do all species but one extinct? Time doesnt help. On the contrary..
--- End quote ---

It's an old problem. My opinion is that the enviornment DB offers is way too small and homogeneous to allow the existence of more than one species at a time. Simply, there isn't any reason for different species to share the same environment in a simulation; a few thousand cycles are always enough for evolution to tell the best one and make the others go extinct.
Real world is different because of specialization to different environments or different niches in the same environment. The complexity of real chemistry and physics allows numberless different niches to coexist in the same physical space. Spatial segregation, due to distances or natural barriers, is another source of diversity.

We discussed for a long time the opportunity to add complexity to the environment by superimposing to the field a so-called "environment grid". But there were different opinions about which properties of the field had had to be specified by the grid and nothing was done in the end.

Numsgil:
I find that features like the env grid are hard to program because you never feel that the discussion is "done".  You keep reinventing it, and eventually it just gets put on the backburner.  Probably a downside of design by comittee

rsucoop:
The biggest contributor to the precission lost in the simulation is the fact that sexual reproduction is impossible. It appears that the best way to create a stronger dna strand is not to copy the same one over and over with mistakes and hope it works, but to splice the genes and mix up the commands/values resulting in a mutant of the two parents. This splicing is not 50% exactly even in reality, and is 100% random everytime. So things like more complex multi-organisms from two seperate organisms would be possibly in nature, but not necessairly in the simulation. Until sexual reproduction is properly used, the simulation will never truely match the evolutionary process of the Earth.

Peter:
On earth species have evolved long enough without any sexual reproduction. Is not necesarily needed for evolution.
It would be nice to have sexual reproduction but it isn't there.

And what do you mean?


--- Quote ---This splicing is not 50% exactly even in reality, and is 100% random everytime.
--- End quote ---
The splicing is 100% exact in reality, or do you mean things like crossover that change every side somewhat.

rsucoop:
I refer to the selection of genes. Everytime this happens in life, it is 100% random and independent of the result of the previous gene that was copied. When I say 50% exact, I mean a perfect cross between parents resulting in a perfect 50% child. That's not always thre case, a black family with the correct recesive genes could potentially produce a red headed light skin child; not necessairly a mutation, but a very new type of person from the parents dominant/recesive genes.

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