Bots and Simulations > Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims

Battle of viruses

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EricL:
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.....

shvarz:
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.

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