to Nums and PY

[Griz]

thanks for all the work you have done ...
and continue to do.

I'll get our of your way and let you be ...
go for it ...
do it like you know it.

there's enough stuff here for me to sort out/thru ...
to keep me busy thinking about where I'd like it to go ...
and inspire me to get back into VB so I can do that ...
and who knowz ... even C++.
so thanks for the inspiration.
I'll just twiwaltr ...
and give you guys some feedback if/when I find bugs/errors ...
if I think they will be of use.
otherwise ...
I'll let you get on with your own vision of what it should be.
in any case ...
good luck with it.

[Numsgil]

Is this "so long, farewell" sort of message?  Because I think we've gotten a couple of those from you over the last month or so.

Just can't stay away, can you ;)

[Botsareus]

Me to, I figured , if eveyone here thinks my work is a work of a lunatic, then I wont do anything for you anymore. I had nothing to prove to you exsept first bot. Gess you blew your chance. I stoped using db already.

[shvarz]

As it has been mentioned here before, ALife scene is not really a zero-sum game.  All those "competitors" are not really competing for users, they are generating interest in this topic, bring new people in and that means we all benefit from that.  We want more different programs, doing things different ways.  

So, if you want to make your own project - cool, keep us posted on your progress.  I'm definetely willing to give it a go and provide feedback.

For now I'm sticking with DB because it involves a whole order of magnitude more than any other ALife sim.  But if another cool program pops up, who knows...  :)

[Botsareus]

there is a great deal of misunderstanding about how evolution works in the world

There is no misunderstanding. If someone continues my work, by only making any robo accumilate the same amount of mutations after 8000 cycles. He will get results faster then shvartz.

Although I won't care because I will try to illiminate problems from my simulators internaly. Hopefully, what I learned here will not come usefull.

[Endy]

here in the united snakes ...
we are having debates about evoluvtion and intellegent design being
taught in our schools.
I wonder if we are about to embark upon a new dark ages. 

or maybe a new enlightenment. :)

I personally hope the debate between Evo and ID results in a stronger overall theory. The basic principles of Evo are pretty simple to demonstrate working both in reality and in simulations; but the more complex aspects of how life initially began need to be answered.

An interesting point to note is that DB leaves these questions unanswered itself; we as Inteligent Designers have originated every single bot's dna.

Makes you wonder. ^_^

[shvarz]

the debate between Evo and ID results in a stronger overall theory

Just so that we are clear on that: what theory are you talking about?

[Numsgil]

That is one nice thign about DB.  It really isn't a tirade against either Intelligent Design or natural evolution.  It takes neither side, and simply is what it is, with no alterior (or is it olterior?) motive.

[Testlund]

here in the united snakes ...

Haha!  :lol:  Haven't heard that before! You live there?

[Endy]

That is one nice thign about DB. It really isn't a tirade against either Intelligent Design or natural evolution. It takes neither side, and simply is what it is, with no alterior (or is it olterior?) motive.

Yeah, reminds me of reality itself. With the past shrouded by time and change who can say what exactly started it all :D

Inteligent Design - Someone(God, aliens, other) created life as we know it upon earth, proponents believe roughly that the sheer complexity of life and even simple life could not arise through evolution alone.

Evolution - (Paraphrased possibly not exact)Chance mutations arise that either increase an organisms overall reproductive efficency or have a neutral affect, allowing bennefial or neutral mutations to increase in frequency. Deleterious mutations are weeded out.

A bit of a troubling question is how all the more or less random chemicals/compounds began replicating in the first place.

IMO

My take on it all is that the message(dna/rna/other) being carried through time is simply trying to maximize it's time existing in general.

Simply more identical messages are bennefical to a degree(when loss is possible) until the sheer identicality leads to losses. Then it becomes benneficial to have similar messages that share the same basic traits but perhaps yield slightly different effects. Then of course it becomes useful to more deliberatly share genes amongst a species allowing overall error fixing(yes, I know the dna/rna is capable of impressive feats in this regard but there is a wee bit of a logic problem if the error fixing sites themselves are messed up).

For us higher level lifeforms numbers of sperm released probably respond to dangers facing a population. If danger is high larger numbers are released increasing competition, lower means dangers are less and dna can be more liberal in the possible species traits that can be represented.

Ie. In times of plenty expand dna expression, in times of scaracity deminish it.

We're seeing this currently in our society. It's not really an issue of worse genes being expressed more often its an issue of dna trying to more completly express itself. Basically the dna will select for increasingly more fit dna in dangerous times; while selecting for less/basically fit dna in plentiful times.

The question of rapid spread for species is probably answered by the flipside of massive deaths. If a new species is not only more efficent but also directly deadly to another, the older species niche will be subsumed and the species consumed vastly accelerating the spread of a new species.

Junk Dna, epigenetics, and Viral Cross-species gene transfer should have their own roles in species evolution expounded upon and be included in an improved overall theory of Evolution.

Alright, keep in mind the above is my own opinion, assembled from all sorts of sources. Flames to a minimum please, as this is mostly largely guesswork on my part anyways.

I'm heading a way for a bit over a week soon, so don't be too worried :lol:

[Numsgil]

My personal take on all of it is that ID is not precluded from the realm of possibility, so we shouldn't dismiss it.  There were many rather stocastic evolutionary developments that can be explained as outside interference.

Cambrian explosion/development of eukaryotes comes to mind.  It also doesn't necessarily need to be explained that way.  But being able to explain something using a different set of events doesn't mean that set of events is wrong.

What bugs me is the fanatics on the side of evolution.  I can understand fanatics on the side of ID, since it has religious undertones, but science is supposed to be less religious and more logic.  Since strong ID theories say evolution is impossible, "science" people feel the need to say ID is impossible, and totally dismiss it.

Which gets annoying really fast for me.  It is not outside the realm of possibility, or even probability, that our planet's development has been influenced at some point by an intelligent outsider.  We've been here for 5 billion years, the universe is huge, life probably developed elsewhere.  Why can't we assume that at some point in 5 billion years, something intelligent somewhere influenced the Earth one way or another.

It's simply unreasonable to assume we've been in our own little bubble for 5 billion years.  Which is an interesting statement because it probably would tick off both evolutionists and creationists at the same time.

[Endy]

Probably. :D

Who knows? My own guess is that there a whole slew of factors known and unknown affecting life. Most of the "positive proofs" I've seen can be taken either way supporting the complex logic and richness of evolution or the insightfulness of a creator.

Do you ever sleep? Man it must be really early where you are. :)

Have a good week.
Make sure DB is simulating reality perfectly by the time I get back :lol:  :D  :lol:

[shvarz]

My personal take on all of it is that ID is not precluded from the realm of possibility, so we shouldn't dismiss it.

The problem with ID is that in essense it is not a scientific theory.  Not because "it is wrong", but simply because it is not a scientific theory.  Take any poem - it is a perfectly nice thing to learn and ponder about, but it is not a scientific theory.  So, it should not be discussed as such.

Any scientific theory should be testable by an experiment.  It is impossible to come up with an experiment that would either prove or disprove ID.  So, I'll repeat, it is not a scientific theory.  It's place is in phylosophy class, not in science.

[Numsgil]

Is forming an artificial organism impossible?  I'd say no, as I bet most people would say.

Can organisms form themselves?  Again, I'd say yes.

So I really don't see what all the fuss is about in the turf of science.  I mean, evolution throws some kinks in many religions, but the reverse simply isn't true.

Testable?  Why, ID is very nearly testable.  Right now we're just copying and pasting genes around, but very soon I'll wager we will be able to create custom genes that do what we want (or not do what we want, but that's really another issue).  Genetic manipulation is truly coming into its own.

Once we're at that point, we've just proved that ID is indeed possible and really not all that difficult with the right tools.

Is it unfeasible that we humans, in the future, would genetically engineer different life forms to exist and colonize different worlds?  Leaving the pure desire for creation aside, a dead planet is much less productive than a somewhat terraformed planet.  Admitedly it would take many, many years to form free oxygen in the atmosphere, but terraforming a dead planet like Mars into something with a thick atmosphere and some form of life is really not all that difficult.  It's almost within the realm of present technology (if not prohibively expensive).

What does it mean if we were engineered, leaving philosphy aside for the moment?  Evolution is really one of the least explored theories.  We just chalk up so many things to evolution without really understanding the intracacies of the process.

Maybe some things really are impossible for evolution to do.  Within a limited time period anyway (say, the 10 billion years our sun is stable).  Can we say one way or another how complex evolution can form things?  Do we have experimental evidence?

Maybe ID and evolution are components in part of a large, intergalactic ecosystem that spans the beginning to the end of time.  Understanding the interaction between the two could be a science in and of itself.

Just thinking outloud really.  My point is that ID is no more or less intrinsically scientific than evolution.  They are just different modus operandi for the same process.

[Griz]

take it to the limit:

in an infinite universe ...
not only is anything possible ...
it already IS.