Author Topic: Battle of viruses  (Read 7814 times)

Offline shvarz

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #15 on: January 22, 2008, 12:26:42 PM »
Coming back to the original point.  This "defective" virus works great as a protection against viral infections. I see infections sparking up now and then, but they all get quenched very quickly and when I look at the bots all I see is infections with this "protective" virus.

Again, this is a great model for real life, as many antiviral systems are actually composed of former viral proteins, which are expressed in host cells to interfere with viral infections.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline shvarz

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2008, 08:05:27 PM »
Another development. I see a virus that picked up conditions from one of the genes in my veggies. As a result the virus is only active when adult bots (over 1000 age) are attacked and loose their poison.  Good strategy that some viruses also use - they sit quietly when things are fine, but activate when their host is stressed. Amazing!  

I think viruses show real advantages of DB for simulating evolution. We are yet to see truly interesting behaviors appearing in bots, but viruses evolve much faster and thus are better at developing new strategies for survival.

Here is the code:

Quote
cond
 *.robage 1000 >
 *.poison 200 <
 start
 *.pleas 0 >
 *.myeye 0 =
 and
 50 .repro store
 314 .aimleft store
 clearbool
 *.out3 *.myeye !=
 *.robage 1 >
 and
 *.myeye 0 =
 or
 *.thisgene 1 add .delgene store
 *.thisgene 1 sub 340 1 rnd mult store
 clearbool
 *.out3 *.myeye =
 *.out3 0 !=
 and
 *.thisgene 0 >
 and
 *.thisgene .delgene store
 clearbool
 *.vtimer 0 =
 *.thisgene .mkvirus store
 100 .vshoot store
 stop
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline Peter

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2008, 02:29:29 PM »
This virus seems human-made.

I has too much 'logic' inside itself to be a complete evolved virus.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2008, 02:30:41 PM by Peter »
Oh my god, who the hell cares.

Offline shvarz

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2008, 03:09:11 PM »
It is a human-made virus, but the conditions are evolved. Not from scratch, but rather the virus took them from a gene in my veggies - it was a poison-making gene, and it was designed to be active when veggies grew a bit first and when poison levels fell below 200.  The virus probably inserted after the gene, then the actual gene got deleted while its conditions got attached to the virus.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline Endy

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2008, 06:03:17 AM »
I personally like the idea of leaving delgene as it is. I've managed to use it's ability to self reset, to do some interesting things.

.delgene dec
*.delgene .aimdx store

in this bit of code the bot spins constantly faster then resets to a slower spin rate again.

You can also do a *.delgene inc to set all the values up to (.delgene - 1) to 1.

Managed to make one of the smallest viruses with this that doesn't delete it's own dna

Offline EricL

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #20 on: February 01, 2008, 11:15:29 AM »
Regarding .delgene, would there be an objection to never resetting it be it's value positive or neg?  Or perhaps only resetting it if a gene is actually deleted?   Asymetry bothers me, keeps me awake at night...

Regarding the virus, why is it do you think that viruses evolve faster than bots?  Is it because they have more instances (multiple per bot) and/or reproduce faster with shorter generations and/or need not balance costs to stay alive the way organisms with morphs must or have a lower mutation rate (due to their mutation-less reproduction method) or something else or perhaps all of the above?

If you think about it, viruses are in many ways close to the pure virtual organism I've been seeking - one without a true phenotype or requiring (directly) a simulated physics where every possible interaction must be anticipated and coded apriori in the simulator.  I ask the question:  are viruses a way to avoid the Dennet collision detection limitation?  The DB environment and host phenotypes in particular represent a digital world in which purely digital viral morph inhabits.  Yes, our simulated physics are still there and (indirectly) enrich and restrict the environment in which viruses inhabit and the set of interactions possible therein, but do the way viruses interact and evolve lend itself to a richer set of unintended or unanticipated interactions than simualted phsycial morphs given their interaction is primarily at the DNA level?

I find the pursuit of these fundemental questions (why a purely digital organism residing in a world more disconnected from simualted physical world physics might evolve faster) intriniscly fasinating and perhaps of critical importance for the future of alife.....
Many beers....

Offline shvarz

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Battle of viruses
« Reply #21 on: February 01, 2008, 01:09:56 PM »
I don't know why they evolve faster, but I can always speculate

I think the points that you mentioned are correct. Viruses have shorter generation time and their population sizes are much higher. This should help evolution a lot.

It probably also helps that viruses inhabit a much richer world than bots. Their environment consists of hosts that behave in many different ways. Their resources are diverse in time and space. But in the general sense they also "inhabit" the space of memory locations within bots and the space of all the DNA that these bots have.  All together this creates a rich complex system, which allows adaptation and diversification.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam