Messages

46

Bugs and fixes / 'Duplicate Species' button

« on: September 24, 2008, 01:14:21 PM »

Dup Species works in 2.44 as far as I can tell.  I plan to resolve this bug as fixed unless someone indicates otherwise.

I can bring back Delete All if people really need it.  As it is, I thought the Rename functionality was a better use of space, particularly with the new speciation capabilities.    One can still delete species one at a time...

47

Bugs and fixes / 2.44 Released

« on: September 23, 2008, 08:55:56 PM »

Bump.

2.44 Download

48

Off Topic / US elections

« on: September 23, 2008, 03:26:41 PM »

Becouse she is a creationist?, why would that be bad in the eyes of the choosers. You just said most of the american voters where mindless christen(you said it).

Unfortunately, it's not bad in the eyes of most of the US public.  That is why McCain could choose her.  But it is very bad in my eyes and sufficient reason for me not to vote for her and her running mate.  Creationists by definition are irrational.   Their beliefs and world view are not the product of evidence and rational thought.  Creationists by definition have already demonstrated that they are willing to believe things and make decisions contrary to overwhelming evidence.  That matters little if your just another person but it's extremely dangerous in someone seeking power, particularly the office of US VP when their running mate is 72 years old and has a history of cancer.  The world does not need another person in power who believes Armageddon is inevitable or desirable or that invading other countries is God's will (as Palin does).

I think most people on the planet fail to realize how truly dangerous the combination of the US political system, the power of special interests (many of whom are or pretend to be religious groups) and the stupidity/apathy of the US public really are and that that system is self perpetuating.   Special interests are able to steamroll an apathetic populace and place irrational, often unintelligent puppets in charge of the largest arsenal on the planet by appealing to an uneducated public whose candidate litmus test is solely whether a candidate believes in the same imaginary friends in the same way that they do.  Be very afraid.

49

Off Topic / US elections

« on: September 22, 2008, 03:06:35 PM »

But believing in God is a big one (note that believing in God and believing in evolution are not mutually exclusive...

True, but one can say the same thing about believing the world is flat or the Earth is the center of the Universe.  I have more respect in some ways for the literalists who however ignorant, at least stand firm on their beliefs however silly and contrary to evidence they may be.   Those who embrace a wishy-washy version of their religion, continually modifying it  over time as science and knowledge advance are half pregnant IMHO.  I say either believe in fairy tales all the way or follow the evidence.      

America was founded by a bunch of religious nuts who got kicked out of Europe for not partying enough.  That's bound to color our politics.

Even were this true (I won't go down that rat hole here) it is no excuse for willful ignorance in this day and age.   History alone is not the cause, otherwise one could claim that Europe, with it's deep-seated religious history, should be more religious than the US but Europe has in fact had a renaissance of sorts in this area.  No, the reason Americans believe what they do today in this age of knowledge is probably (as you elude to below) because powerful interests have taken advantage of an apathetic public that wants nothing more that to sit on the couch and believe what they see on TV.

Ironically, though, you almost never hear politicians actually quote the Bible.

Politicians play the percentages and walk the middle road to garner as many votes as possible.   They say (or don;t say) whatever gets them (re)elected.   There is a small population of atheists in this country as well as Christian moderates and non-Christians.  Why piss them off if you can avoid it?

My guess is that while most of Americans say they're Christian, none of 'em actually pick up a Bible and read it, because they just don't really care.  Might as well be illiterate.  Just believe in Jesus and you're saved, sort of mentality.  No effort required!  Most just latch on to a charismatic preacher and have him tell them what to believe.  Far less effort that way.

You got it.  If Christians actually read their book, they might think twice about purporting to believe it.  Yeah, right.

On to actual politicks, McCain was my choice on the Republican side.  I liked him before, and I like him more during the republican debates.  Everyone else was having a pissing contest to see who wanted to torture the most detainees.  McCain says flatly "no torture", and he has a good perspective on it since he was, you know, tortured.  He's principled, which I like.  And I think he was shrewd to name Palin as his VP.  Old white guy + Old white guy would have been sooooo 20th century.  All that said, I think I'm leaning Obama.  A thin majority of the country also seems to be leaning that way.  Obama's a better speaker, and I think on economic terms Obama will cause less deficit than McCain.  Republicans haven't been the party of fiscal responsibility for decades.  The way Bush is throwing money at the housing market you'd think he was a New Dealer!

McCain was the best of the Republican field I agree and he had to do something innovative in his VP pick.  I would have preferred Carli Fiorina.   Palin was a shallow choice, designed to woo the Hillary crowd.  She has no experience, she lied about opposing the "Bridge to nowhere", she's a creationist and she is irresponsible in her reproduction.  Having 5 children in this day and age is irresponsible.    

50

Off Topic / US elections

« on: September 22, 2008, 02:10:27 PM »

I am not exaggerating.   Not even a little bit.    Richard Dawkins and others have written and spoken extensibly about this and how it is impossible for someone publicly atheist to be elected.  

Only 28% of Americans "believe" humans evolved through natural processes.    42% believe humans have always existed in their current form and another 18% believe in deity-directed evolution.  The balance don't know.

44% of Americans take the bible literally and think the world was created in 6 days.

Americans are the most religious (and IMHO, ignorant, self-centered, sheltered and gullible) people in the first world by any measure.   As you might imagine, I am greatly embarrassed by this.  IMHO, it is one reason (perhaps the primary reason) this country is in steep decline.

Poll Data.

51

Off Topic / US elections

« on: September 21, 2008, 04:40:35 PM »

It's an unfortunate reality in the US that you cannot get elected unless you:

1) Are the nominee of either the democratic or republican party.  The way campaign funding, the press and the special interests work here, any one else has bascially no chance of being heard above the noise.  So voting for anyone else is usually wasted effort.  In the US, we vote for the lessor of two evils.

2) At least profess to be a fairly fundemental Christian which includes catering to the creationist ID crowd.  Sadly, publically embracing evolution would be viewed as a negative thing in the eyes of most of the US voting public .  There has never been a non-christian US president, at least no president has ever professed otherwise.  Similarly no president to my knowledge has ever publically embraced evolution.  They may do so privately and through policy, but there is little to gain by doing so publically so the topic is avoided.  Given the sad and sorry of education, rationality and open mindedness in this nation, a candidate that does not visably attend church on Sundays and conclude every speech with "God Bless the USA" is viewed as suspect and immoral.   Jews, Hindus, and other religions don't have the population base but members of any theist sect are still viewed by the public as better than atheists.  Publically stating that you are atheist is the best way not to get elected in this country, to any office.   Even specific christian sects like the Mormons are generally viewed as unacceptable candidates.

52

Newbie / From what country is everybody

« on: September 21, 2008, 01:36:48 PM »

Seattle's actually it's own country.  We export coffee and hydro power and airplanes.  We used to export (good) software but not anymore.  Our only significant import is tanning booths.   Alaska used to be a province of Seattle, but it was taken over by moose-hunting, over-populating, beauty queen creationists from Idaho and we were forced to sell it to the Republicans.

53

Bugs and fixes / Auto-Species forking algorithm issue with big berthas

« on: September 21, 2008, 01:25:04 PM »

The problem is not in recognizing when a species has become sufficiently diverse to justify splitting into multiple species.  The current generational and genetic distance options provide sufficient basis for that I beleive.  Rather, the problem is how to effeciently group the extant members of the old species into two (or more) new ones once you know the old species is sufficiently diverse to justify it.

Unfortunatly, the algorithm to determine the optimal grouping based on generational or genetic distance is NP Complete and cannot be executed in polynomial time (meaning it's really really really computationally intensive).  As a viable alternative, I instead just pick a bot at random to form the basis of the new species and then try to add all the bots closely related to it into the new species.  This should work pretty well in the vast majority of cases.  The problem is with determining what is "closely related".

Imagine the extant members of a species as leaves on a binary tree (yes bots can have more then two offspring, but those births are separated in time and potentially genetic space so the brach points represent births).    If there is any significant generational or genetic distance within a population (say either is > 100) they will be grouped is space based on one or the other (or both).  They must be.   A binary tree with 50 levels (50 generations) starting with just one bot has over a thousand trillion leaves, that is if the tree is balanced.  Our trees won't be due to cancerous bots, asymetrical reproduction, and big berthas, but you get the idea.  Any two extant bots (leaves) on this 50 generation tree have a generational distance below 100.  So you see that if the generational distnace for a species grows large, there must be grouping even if all that means is that a single bot has lived through 99 generations of it's cousins.  

By picking a bot at random, I'm essentially grabbing a leave on the treee, holding it up and letting the others dangle.  The trick is to group all the "nearby" leaves together into the new species and leave the ones "far away" in the old species.  It really shouldn't matter which bot I start with.   If the bots are grouped, then all the other bots in the old species should be either nearby (in genetic and generational space) or far away but not in the middle (unless the species has really split into three new species sub groups in which case, the next forking will handle that).    

I think I actually came up with a solution last night while sleeping (see how I never stop working on DB for you all?).   I already have the code for determining genetic/generational distance.   I'm going to use a value of generational and genetic distance of perhaps 1/3 of that specified in the speciation dialog (I'll play with this) to determine nearbyness relative to the randomly chosen member I.e. what other bots to throw into the new species.   This should handle the long lived big bertha case (big berthas will get isolated out into their own species if they are the one chosen or remain as the sole member of the old species if not) as well as insure that new species have sufficent members and not just a single or small number of individuals.

Note that as much as I would like to provide a threshold on minimal number of members in the new species, determining that ahead of time requires doing all the work to fork the new species anyway.  What's more, using it as a basis for grouping makes the problem potentially NP complete again...

What I can do is predicate the forking decision on a minimal number of members in the old species.  I actually have this implimented already in the 2.43.1M code but not exposed as a user option.   Right now, it's hardcoded as 10.  That is, a species must have at least 10 members to be forked.

54

Bugs and fixes / Auto-Species forking algorithm issue with big berthas

« on: September 20, 2008, 09:18:36 PM »

The algorithm used for forking a species once the forking conditions have been met has a problem in 2.43.1M which can result in species proliferation in certain cases.   Currently, when the forking conditions are met, the code chooses a bot at random on which to base the new species and adds to the new species all of that bot's descendants and any closely related extant ancestors.  This can miss the case where the sole reason a species meets the forking criteria in the first place is due to a single, long lived "big bertha" bot whose accumulated mutations and generational distance are the sole reason for the forking in the first place.

It's probably too computationally intensive to perform a genomic or generational grouping analysis of a species in order to determine clumping of extant members, but the current algorithm has the problem of leaving the long-lived, genetically and generationally distant bot grouped in with it's distant cohorts, making it likely the species will be forked again and again.      

Not precisely sure what I'm going to do about this in 2.43.2 - I need to play around a little - but I will likely include all extant ancestors regardless of generational distance in the new species as well as potentially choosing the oldest bot in the species to form the basis of the new species.

55

Bugs and fixes / Generation count not working OPEN

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:54:10 PM »

The robot properties dialog is erroneously displaying gene number instead of generation in versions 2.43.1M and prior.  It's only a display issue, the underlying generation count is correct.  Fixed in 2.43.2 (the next version after 2.43.1M- I'm tired of letters).

56

Bugs and fixes / Internet Pop Graph Display issue when large # of species

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:47:40 PM »

The Internet Populations graph can give bogus info when the number of species in IM exceeds the max number of things graphs can display (66 I think).   I am aware of this issue and working on a fix for the next version.

57

Bugs and fixes / Generation count not working OPEN

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:45:20 PM »

I'll take a look at the generation count thing.  Could just be a display thing.

Not being able to active that graph...  that's bad.  I'll be looking at that shortly.

Note that it will take a while for the generational and genetic info to fill in for existing sims.  It won't be right until you have run the sim under 2.43.1M for awhile...

58

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Internet mode inherently encourages multibotness

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:38:08 PM »

Actually, hiding the IM teleporter is deliberate on my part so as to avoid this very tactic or at leat make it difficult.  I do plan in the future to enhance shapes, which can be visible, so that they can do a variety of things from provide nrg to perhaps teleport intra-sim or even between private sims, allowing those teleporters to essentially be visible, but I think the IM teleporter should be invisible at least for now to make this kind of swarming attack harder (but not impossible).

There is nothing to prevent very smart bots from using clever ways to figure out where the IM teleporter is.  IM teleportation is not random.  The IM teleporter drifts from one place to another, potentially leaving a path of disappearing bots.  One can imagine a bot probing for the existence of the IM teleporter by watching other bots disappear or even actively launching low-nrg offspring and watching to see if they disappear for some unexplained reason....

I should also point out that multi-bots get teleported all together, so one might imagine a bot that forms multi-bot clusters in it's home sim or one that it has conquered but separates once teleported to a new sim (determined by the ratio or *.totalmyspecies to *.totalbots) so as to arrive in numbers....

59

Newbie / From what country is everybody

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:15:31 PM »

You forgot the most important country of all

You mean the most self-important.

60

Off Topic / Current state of the DBII community?

« on: September 20, 2008, 08:13:56 PM »

First, welcome to the forum De-Maskus.

Second, my apologies for the IM bug.  As I describe in the bug you posted, my testing of the new species forking feature exposed this bug in older versions that could not handle large numbers of species.  This should be fixed in 2.43.1m which is out now.  Give it a try and I'll see you in internet mode.

Third, you may see the sim count in IM be larger than the number of sims currently running.  When someone shuts down their IM sim (or gets disconnected due to the connection bug) I don't if they have gone away for 10 minutes or 10 days so inactive sims are kept in the population count for a period of time in case they come back. It takes somewhere between 24 and 48 hours for inactive sims to be removed from the population and sim count.  You can tell which sims are actively running by watching the Internet Sim Populations graph.  Inactive sims will show a flat line over time.  The population should fluctuate for active, running sims.