Messages

1

Off Topic / Genesis, 2001, and Darwin

« on: June 30, 2005, 03:03:31 PM »

Just adding my two cents, as I find such philosophical thoughts interesting, and have some of my own, I doubt that they are truly original, most likely picked up from books and conversations and so on, but I play about with them in my own mind often enough that I tend to think of them as mine. I'll say now I can't find reason to have faith in any devine being (except perhaps fear that should such a being exist it will not forgive me for not believing).

God, Omnipotent and Omniscient...hang on if a being is omnipotent, that surely means can do anything, anything includes knowing everything (ie is already omniscient), already seems to have redudancy still moving on... Oh one moment, Omniscient, knows everything...that would include past present and future, darn there goes the freewill I like to believe I have (can't say for sure that I do have it, so I say I like to believe I do). Where was I in this ramble, ah yes Omnipotent, Omniscient, well then knowing exactly what will happen through out the existance of time and a universe to experiance the time, why bother...
Which leads me to suspect that should a creator exist it isn't omnipotent or omniscient, so what other properties could be ascribed to such a being...  

Obviously the ability to create a universe, to act and exist outside time and space as they are both parts of the universe that this being supposedly created. this is where my imagination hits a limit I cannot really concieve of something outside of time and space, but as it can have no volume, mass, or indeed any physical property as currently understood, and needs to act without time, and time seems essential in all actions and reactions as currently understood (ie Cause _Then_ Effect, then inherently says after or at a later time (I understand that quantum mechanics may have some evidence for things that happen simultaniously bypassing cause and effect however the events still take time to happen)), so such a being could not be comparable to ourselves in any shape or form. Our process of thinking also takes time, so even in thought this supposed being would have to be completly different.*(see footnote)
So I say this being would be far beyond my comprehension and my ability to test.

Moving onwards, attempting to stretch my imagination I concieve of the afformentioned being, the creator, the natural question arrises how did this being come to be, at this point though we're outside of time, so no time or events or space or matter exist between between the begining of this being (whatever begining might mean in such a context) and his act of creation.

I find that believing in this being requires many more leaps of faith and imagination than believing that the universe spontainously created itself in this realm without space time etc (if the word "in" can be used about something completely dimensionless).

All this before I get to religion, which I'm not going to get to in this forum, as I don't know enough about all the religions of the world to write on them all and it would seem most unfair to pick on those that I do know about, but I will however add one last point, ment to some extent in humour...

Most religions it seems to me have a forgiving devine being (helps recruiting else all those prior years of not worshiping, or of worshiping another deity would stop people  getting to heaven and if that already determined, why worship...) so being as most religions agree on this there is a good chance that should a devinity exist then this feature of it is true, hopefuly then this devinity will forgive me for not believing if it happens to exist.


Thanks for reading, apologies if anything I have said here causes offence, I do not attest to the truth of these things merely my own belief in them. Oh and I apologise for the use of nested parenthacies, messy I know, but I like them.

Math

* No doubt it will be noted that I leave out energy, light being a wave partical duality I'm not sure if in theory it could exist beyond space and time, as a wave alone, so for simplisty of thought I leave it out of the list of things that could not exist out side of space and time, in my opinion however it the wave partical duality would break down and light would no longer be recognisable in this context, the wave having no dimension to travel through... but thinking of such realms of non-existence is mind bending, enough for me to express doubt.


PS
Good short story PY, kinda invites thoughts about infitely recursive universes.

2

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Darwinbots enzyme system

« on: June 30, 2005, 12:34:34 PM »

Wow, interesting, and I'll have to admit I not sure I understand it all (in fact I'm pretty sure I don't). This suggestion seems to be progressing towards the idea of modeling the chemistry and reactions down to an atomic level, I might be wrong but doesn't that then introduce a whole set of rules to be added to cover what reactions are possible what atoms will form stable molecules, and if you start modeling that then would you need to introduce to the model the atomic structure of atoms, because the structure changes the properties ? For example Carbon; Diamond, Coal, Buckminster Fullerenes (carbon 60  - The surface is made from hexagons and pentagons and is an example of a semiregular solid called a truncated icosahedron) anything trying to use carbon will have to check it's current form and see if it has the energy to break that form, a headache waiting to happen I'm sure.

I'm sure the chemists amongst us could say far better than I if the rules governing such behaviour are simple enough to reproduce for modeling, however the question remains, is this level of detail required for what is being modeled ?

Thanks for reading,
Math.

3

Off Topic / AI

« on: June 30, 2005, 11:33:38 AM »

Howdie folks, seems to me you forgot the additional rule Asimov addes later, the Zeroth Law of robotics, Now I can't look up the wording I just packed all my books away (moving house) but if I remeber correctly the zeroth law states :

A robot cannot harm humanity or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

While you can argue this is just a logical extension of the first law, Asmiov added it not me and you shouldn't be arguing with dead writters...  :P

Math

4

Newbie / Howdie

« on: June 30, 2005, 10:21:36 AM »

I think I found the right thread, at least I hope I did as I have posted my ideas to it;

The thread I posted to

If its the wrong place I'll have to figure out how to move it...

Thanks for reading,
Math

5

Suggestions / Digging into the egrid

« on: June 30, 2005, 10:13:55 AM »

I think I have found the right place for my suggestions, at least I hope so, please bear with me if the idea isn't very clear, I'll be happy to try and clarify any points.

As I understand things the envgrid breaks the area down into lots of smaller areas so that enviromental conditions can vary across the region. While trying to model chemicals and enzymes to use these chemicals is most accurate it is also by its nature most complex, I suggest just three conditions to be defined in the Envgrid.  Firstly the ammount of energy available to a browsing bot (or veggie) secondly Enviromental damage this could represent many things (simplest implementation would be a per cycle reduction in energy for bots in the affected area), and thirdly temperature, which I envision as affecting the energy cost of actions, my limited understanding suggests that in a cold environment things slow down, this could be represented by increasing energy costs for actions,  and conversly decrease energy costs as temperature increases above the norm.
High temperature as I understand things also causes damage to cell structures, which is one area where the environmental damage could be used to help find balance.

A fourth variable I'm not so sure on the practicality but I consider worth a mention is enviromental mutagenic factors, that either increase or decrease the chance of mutation when a cell splits in the affected area.

As a side note this simple modeling of environment would I think allow an attempt at modeling the black smokers... but I don't know enough on the topic to do more than guess that it would be possible.

The other consideration of great import in this envgrid is the size of the squares (I presume squares, though any other tessalating shape could work in theory, but squares are simple). If the squares as much smaller than the bots then each bot is geing to be on multiple squares and I think for simplisty the affects of each should accumilate, this would have to be taken into account when setting the values of the affect that environment has on on the bot, also this would make shared resources rarer. However I think more interesting things will happen if the squares are closer to the size of the bots (as long as the sides of the square are less than the diameter of a bot the least number of squares a bot can be touching is four and I do not recommend having squares with sides larger than the diameter of bots), larger squares allow for multiple bots to be affected by the same part of the environment and for an energy source to have to be split between browsers, in this model I would suggest for greater variability the average of environmental affects be used, yet with some added formuli to show the shared resources. For example two browsers next to each other each occupying a total of six envigrid squares (simple 3*2 grid), each bot touching four of the squares, the middle two being occupied by both bots.
For temperature and environmental damage take the average of the value for each square occupyed, for browsing (energy gain from environment) the middle two squares being both occupied have their values halved. So if the energy available in each square is E (assuming equality for simplisty in this first case) each browser can gain (E + E + 0.5E + 0.5E)/4 or 3/4E Where as if they seperate they can both gain E.
If the distribution of energy is uneven then things become more complex, and if browsers have the ability to test possible positions arround them to look for richer feeding grounds interesting patterns of flocking to rich sources and solitary browsing could emerge.
That the damage caused by the environment is not dived is intentional in my thinking, I think that if an area is dangerously acidic/hot/whatever this is not reduced because it is effecting multiple bots.

I think that the ability to detect the energy availably from the environment and the ability to feed on it should be seperate functions, but that the ability to browse should have some inherent disadvantage, I suggest an increased cost for non browsing actions, this would allow preditors to monitor the available energy and wait for a browser to get close enough, effectivly ambusing it. If the ammount of increased cost is a user set variable the user can define the likelyhood of developing omniverous bots by evolution, seems to me to be an interesting thought, yet for leagues it can be set so high as to make omnivours impractical,  which is I believe one of the arguments against removing the distinction between bots and veggies.

I hope that's comprehensable to everyone, I know some of the parts I mention are more relevent to other threads, but as I wrote I kinda got into a flow of thought and hacking this appart to post it multiple places seems inappropriate as I think it is all linked.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found it worth the time.
Math

6

Newbie / Howdie

« on: June 30, 2005, 03:47:58 AM »

Thanks everyone for your kind welcome.  My apologies for posting the idea without having read everything... could you point me to where it is being or has been discussed as I had some thoughts on how to approach modeling it.  Though before I give I want to check that they're original (and not entirly embaressing) before I post them.

Thanks for reading
Math

7

Newbie / Howdie

« on: June 29, 2005, 08:14:10 PM »

Howdie folks, I'm completly new here, found my way from a review on the Underdogs website (yes I filled in the poll). I have to admit that I'm not a biologist, or a programmer, or ever likely to understand all of the posts I have so far read, let alone those I have yet to get to.

However I have had some thoughts. It seems to me that there is anassumption that energy gained by vegies is equally distributed accross the field, and that the proximity of veggies to one another is irrelevnt to their ability to gain energy, and this seems illogical to me. While for simpilsity I can see the need for an ability to feed seemingly on nothing, would it not also make sense a vegie bot to gain less while it is in the thick of a crowd ? ie for a veggie to gain the maximum possible each cycle there would have to be no other vegies within a distance (whatever distance seems appropriate to the source of energy being modeled). Of course there maybe advantages to crowding, if you're alone and a predator arrives you're definatly the target.

I have had more thoughts as I've been reading, but I think I shall keep those to myself for the moment as I don't want to make too much of a fool out of myself in my first post.

Thanks for reading,
Math