Author Topic: Nice article  (Read 3528 times)

Offline Numsgil

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Nice article
« on: September 18, 2005, 11:25:59 PM »
Another nice article I managed to dig up.

What I've garnered from it:

1.  The path for multicellular evolution:

1.  Cannis, that is, cells that learned how to eat other cells.  predation.  The article makes the case that this was the primary motive force behind the Cambrian explosion.
2.  Sexuality and diploidity.

2.  How to promote diversity:

Quote
holds that the addition of a trophic level to a given food web tends to promote increased diversity at the next lower trophic level. Increase in diversity at an existing level can have the same effect.

Which is easy enough to see.  Evolution halts once all the animals die.  The vegs have no reason to become better.  By having something constantly cropping the vegs, they can evolve.

If you could set up something more complex and stable than the predator-veg sims, I bet you would maybe see some more diversification.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2005, 11:28:10 PM by Numsgil »

Offline Endy

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Nice article
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2005, 02:23:34 AM »
A problem currently is that vegs evolve too well when animals are present. If they get the same eyenum they will kill off the animals. Maybe some sort of evolving veg and a canni together would be the ticket.

When I created niches based on location and feeding method it seemed to help. I just need to figure out a way to make it stop crashing the program. :wacko:

I was thinking enzymes might be the final push DB needs. Once the bots can diversify feeding methods more, they'll have reasons to split into different types. One species could be good at eating animals, another could be good at eating plants and a third good at metabolising waste and solar nrg.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2005, 02:24:20 AM by Endy »

Offline Numsgil

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Nice article
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2005, 09:33:51 AM »
I've thought a bit about enzymes and such, and I think what we need is a tree hierarchy.  For instance, plant cellulose is further from fat than muscle is, but is much closer than, say, elemental sulfur.

edit: which means that as you travel along the tree, you specialize, and find it harder to digest something thats further out along the tree.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2005, 01:29:38 PM by Numsgil »

Offline shvarz

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Nice article
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2005, 04:28:12 PM »
Nums, I think that the abstract enzyme system that I gave a link to some time ago would work best.  It is also the closest to what Carlo thought it should look like.  Want to go back and talk about it?  Or you are still busy with other stuff?
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline Numsgil

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Nice article
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2005, 04:37:42 PM »
I was thinking the same thing. I don't know why I didn't expolore it more a few months ago...

When I finish 2.4, all the minor tweaks and things, I'd like to get started with the mebo stuff again.