Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - AZPaul

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6
1
Bugs and fixes / Single Bot Simulation
« on: August 07, 2005, 10:18:52 AM »
From Shen:

Quote
Nope its not you. Its something to do with the shot collisions. If you check the veggies ? .shflav in the console you will see its -2 when its supposed to be -1, as its collecting its own -2 shots somehow. I believe this is fixed and we are waiting on nums for the next release.

 :clap:  :clap:

My meds [you]are[/you] working! I [you]am[/you] lucid! Oh, Ode to Joy, thank you, Shen!

 :clap:  :clap:

Of course I continue to work around this thing. It is just a nit after all. It's just nice to know my sanity is somewhat stable.

The hole in this eco-collapse scenario, imo, Shen, is that even as the inner core collapses the outer edge remains vibrant and expanding. Fermi's point was that if such a species existed they would have been here by now, or, we should see some evidence of such in the astronomer's gaze.

From Bots:

Quote
How about all this ufo's and sutch , I mean it can't be all bs.

Maybe not ALL bs. Just the vast majority is bs. There are some anecdotes of experiences that still want for some sort of cogent explanation. The problem is that there is no evidence, no data, no artifacts to support a "they're here" hypothesis.  Unfortunate for the UFO crazies the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." There is nothing to support the hypothesis and it fails. Plus you have the problem of  "belief," as in a religious sense, that has become attached to the UFO phenomenon. Such people believably see things that really aren't there.

Until something physical is presented we can not say either way. Carl Sagan said the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  As a scientific proof, this is so. But in the UFO instance the absence of evidence does lean quite heavily in one direction.

OK. I will now resume lurk mode and talk at y'all when...

well, when I have something else to say.

Thanks, folks,

-P

2
Bugs and fixes / Single Bot Simulation
« on: August 06, 2005, 12:23:42 PM »
Hey y'all.

It's been a while since I said anything, since I've had nothing much to say, but now that's changed.

Oh, I've been lurking in the corners periodically, loading updates, laughing at bunnies and such, looking for strange things like [begin hint] a working .sexrepro [end hint] and [begin hint] some utility to get access to Bot memory locations that I can import to Excel [end hint] and like that, but I just haven't had a lot to say.

Well, now, that's changed.

While patiently awaiting these additional capabilities I really haven't been able to devote much time to this little hobby. Not that I don't have the time to devote, but running my evo sims time and time again without being able to extract the data is pretty useless in my view and, frankly, is boring. So I decided, after feeling that hankering to do some exploring of other aspects of DBII, that I would create another simulation bot. Thus the trouble begins.

I suppose most Bot makers write a few lines of code, cut and paste genes from existing Bots, making a precursor of what they want and throwing the new bot into a small limited sim to see what happens. Well I'm not too different from everybody else so I do that too.

Just a simple little thing Bot. Just walk around, find a veggie and have some lunch. That's all. The grand design can wait till the basics are working, right? Cept the basic wasn't working.

Now, I was somewhat embarrassed by having you helpful people point out missing 'stop', 'end', 'store' and like that in some of my previous code (help for which I am still grateful btw) and was not about to trip over some obvious piece of junk code again if I could help it. So I did some extensive desk checking (I mean, my god, how screwed up could 15 short genes be) but no problem there.  Honest.

After some exhaustive, and, if I may say, brilliant, troubleshooting, this is what I've done and what I see.

A single simple little pre-bot goes into a simple small field with plenty of veggies upon which to feed. She snuggles up to a veggie, zaps it with plenty of -1 shots, gets no energy in return, exhausts her energy and pops like an overripe tomato. Not good.

I have my other simulation setups and I know my PA Alpha bot really works, feeds, survives, prospers. Thinking that maybe I have somehow screwed up this new small field by fiddling with veggie energy, veggie numbers and the like I put a single proven Alpha into the new field and let her loose. She snuggles up to a veggie, zaps it with plenty of -1 shots, gets no energy in return, exhausts her energy and pops like an overripe tomato.

Obviously, I've f#<&%@up the sim field. So I abandon the new field for the larger ones where my Alphas and Deltas live in veggie engorged splendor and I know all is well with the universe. A single simple little pre-bot goes into my well established and working-fine sim field with plenty of veggies upon which to feed. She snuggles up to a veggie, zaps it with plenty of -1 shots, gets no energy in return, exhausts her energy and pops like an overripe tomato. Shit.

Can't be. Run the main evo sim with my Alphas, everything works. Veggies get shot, give up energy, everything works.

Wait! A single pre-bot vs multiple Alphas. Naw, couldn't be.

A single known working Alpha goes into my well established and working-fine sim field with plenty of veggies upon which to feed. She snuggles up to a veggie, zaps it with plenty of -1 shots, gets no energy in return, exhausts her energy and pops like an overripe tomato. Ah!

Put in 5 Alphas. Some of them are being fed by the veggies, periodically. Seems that if only one Bot is feeding the veggies will not give up their goods, no little white dots appear. If a second Bot starts to feed on the opposite side of the field those little white energy dots stream out of both veggies just fine for both bots. Eventually, however, all succumb to the famine and perish.

Put in 10 of the new little simple pre-bots and everybody feeds just fine and goes about their little daily lives. Nothing is amiss with the little simple pre-bot. Nothing is amiss with the sim field layout or parameters.

But only one new little pre-bot or only one lonely Alpha or only one bot of any type in a simulation will not be looked upon kindly by the veggies and will starve to death.

Something is not right in Bot-land.

Two questions:

1. Why?

B. Anyone else seeing this?

3. Have I lost it? Am I in a Twilight Zone episode? Do I need to re-do my meds, again?

d. Did you know that the Fermi paradox can be easily resolved if we consider the possibility that we may be one of the first intelligent species to arise in this gallaxy? Someone has to be first, yes? There may be plenty of 'others' out there just no one has yet made it to the point where they send messages into the sky and listen for answers like we do. Maybe the ones that are doing so are on the otherside of the gallaxy and are too far away for either of us to yet discern the other.  There are hundreds of resolutions to the Fermi Paradox that do not preclude the existance of intellegent (even young inter-stellar) species in this gallaxy.

-P

3
Off Topic / General question!
« on: June 10, 2005, 11:57:36 AM »
Quote
Dont you know us DB'ers havn't evolved sexual reproduction yet?

Hey! That's my line!

 :lol:

-P

4
Off Topic / Statistics Question
« on: May 28, 2005, 01:47:50 PM »
Quote
A
= B or C or D or E
= (B or C) or (D or E)
= (B + C - B*C) or (D + E - D * E)
= (B + C -B*C) + (D + E - D*E) - (D + E - D*E)*(B + C -B*C)
= B + C -B*C + D + E - D*E -DB -DC -DBC - EB -EC- EBC +DEB +DEC -DEBC
= B + C + D + E - BC - DE -BD -CD -BCD - BE - CE - BCE + BDE + CDE - BCDE
= B + C + D + E - BC - BD - BE - CD - CE - DE - BCD - BCE + BDE + CDE - BCDE
(check over my math)

ick.  You're right. The baby's ugly.

I see where you're trying to go.  Unfortunately, if I am reading this right, in a general case of n variables composing 'A' there will be n^2 solutions. The scaling requirement may be the key. That puts a bound on the number of solutions.  I haven't cracked a matrix mechanics book in decades. I suppose now would be a good time to see if I can even find the &%#@ thing.

I'll try to hunt it down today, but, don't wait up for me.

Good God, the things you get into when you're having fun!

-P

5
Off Topic / Statistics Question
« on: May 26, 2005, 12:20:16 AM »
Quote
Probability of A = (B or C or D or E)

The original relationship is not as above?

What then is the  formula?

If indeed the above is correct then 'A' MUST equal the highest value in the list.

6
Off Topic / Statistics Question
« on: May 25, 2005, 10:20:05 PM »
Quote
B,C,D and E are all user defined, ranging basically from 100% to 0%. Becauset they are independant, B + C + D + E do not have to add up to be 100%, or 0% or 300% or any other value.

So, OK, something is amiss because right now I have:

All values are probabilities between 0-100%

Your original relationship is:

Prob A = (prob B ) or (prob C) or (prob D) or (prob E)

A, then, is the value of the highest prob in the list.

Which means that if B=20, C=10, D=50 and E=5 then A=50%, the value of D, yes?

Now you want A = 10%? Yet maintain the ratio balance between BCDE?

So the highest prob (D) must come down to 10%. The ratios with the others is just basic math. Reduce A (and thus D) to 1/5, reduce all values to 1/5. Divide everything by 5. A=10% thus B=4, C=2, D=10, E=1%

I'll take the shvarz route here and say that something is missing and I do not understand the question.

7
Off Topic / Statistics Question
« on: May 25, 2005, 09:21:44 PM »
Quote
I want to know how to modify B,C,D, and E if A changes. That is, if I want A to be 1/5 of it's original value, how should I change B,C,D and E?

I'm assuming B,C,D,E are probabilities of other distinct events.

It is the "or" between B,C,D,E that is the problem. If A changes then there are B*C*D*E solutions to solve for A. What are the constraints on the probabilities of B,C,D,E?   Is B reasonably +- 10% of present value while C can go from 0 to 100?

Good luck on this one!

-P

8
Off Topic / Do you run evo-simulation?
« on: May 25, 2005, 08:43:31 PM »
Evo-sims come in two flavors, chocolate and vanilla.

The vanilla kind involve creating a bot, some food, maybe an enemy, an environment and letting DB mutations act over x million cycles to see what happens. This is fun. Not really very productive, but fun in that it is interesting to see what can develop, which isn’t much, usually, but it's fun anyway.

The chocolate kind is a bit more complex. In a chocolate flavored evo-sim you are setting up a system to test some very specific evolutionary concept. You must take care to control everything but the test variable and be careful to NOT guide the test variable where you think you want it to go.

DBII mutations may be random but they are also overly extensive, coarse and extreme; well outside natural events.

Look at a mutation in nature. Except for muto-toxic poisoning which can change entire segments of genes (thalidomide) the vast majority of mutations involve changing one letter of the three-letter codon on a gene. In some cases this mutation does nothing since there are multiple codons coding for the same amino acid in the protein syntheses. In the other cases the codon change causes a different amino to be placed into the protein at that specific location. The resulting protein may fold differently and may have different electrochemical properties. It may or may not act differently within the system (cell). If the protein is a vital function agent, like hemoglobin, or is essential to other vital systems the mutant individual may not live. In other cases the individual may live but have a slightly longer arm, more muscle fibers in the biceps, truncated ganglia in the spine, you name it. The environment then determines if the individual prospers or not.

Most mutations in DBII are of the muto-toxin variety. No subtlety.  Most DBII mutations radically change the gene function in the extreme or make the operation nonsensical.

cond
  *.eye5 40 >
  *.in1 *.out1 !=
  *.refnrg 3000 <
  *.attacked 0 =
  *.horny 0 =
start
  mult mult 625
stop

A series of DBII mutations is apt to take the above gene and do this:

cond
  *.memval 40 >
  *.in1 *.out1 !=
  *.aimdx .shootval <
  *.attacked 0 =
  *.horny 0 =
start
  mult mult *.hitsx
stop

or this:

cond
  *.eye5 40 >
  *.repro *.out1 !=
  *.shot 3000 <
  *.attacked 0 =
  *.horny 0 =
start
store
  dec  sub  inc  6  sub  inc  inc  sub  inc  inc  rnd  sub  inc  store
  store
  6  6  store
  inc  store
  5  rnd  rnd  6  div  sub  mult .vel 625
stop

A more realistic mutation would take a constant and randomly apply a +- 10%.

cond
  *.eye5 36 >
  *.in1 *.out1 !=
  *.refnrg 3300 <
  *.attacked 0 =
  *.horny -1 =
start
  mult mult 688
stop

Or change a variable or operator  to some other related type.

cond
  *.eye1 40 >
  *.in1 *.out2 =
  *.nrg 3000 <
  *.attacked 0 =
  *.horny 0 =
start
  mult  rnd 625
stop

This will still change the function of a specific gene and may kill the individual but it may also lend more subtlety with less radical change thereby allowing, IMO, more realistic and more useful change to develop.

For chocolate sims the DBII mutations are too coarse. In my mind DBII mutations are too coarse in the extreme for any reasonable evo-sim, even vanilla flavored, except as a game. But, you gotta start somewhere and I can imagine the coding effort is already quite intense. Besides, I can turn off mutations.

I do chocolate-flavored un-guided non-creationist evo-sims. At least I would do them if [begin hint] .sexrepro was working [end hint] which, in my genius, I managed to work around except now I can’t get to the data since [begin hint] there is no way to dump memvals into a text file [end hint] for analysis.

Having said all this I hold out much hope for the future.  DBII is by far the only system with the flexibility and capability to approach my needs. You folk have already done a superb job in putting this thing together and from what I’ve read in this forum your plans for the future are all stellar.

For now I lurk the updates with hope. And I’m learning that coarse vanilla can be quite fun.

Verbosely yours as always,

-P

9
Off Topic / Are u a creationist?
« on: May 15, 2005, 04:20:30 AM »
Quote
Given that my Mom had no way to directly influence the outcome of a Snooker match being played in another country (Ireland I believe), I am left with option 1.

First, Mom's abilities were miss-directed toward gambling. Shame, shame, shame.  I am proud of her for refusing your enticements.  She should be given a subscription to The Wall Street Journal.  Equities trading is an old and honorable pursuit and with her abilities she could make a killing!... er...tidy respectable profit from her labors.

Second, can you impose upon the lady to predict when an update of DBII might be available? How about a bot memory dump capability? .sexrepro?

And send her my love.:wub:

-P

10
Off Topic / Are u a creationist?
« on: May 13, 2005, 03:37:10 AM »
Quote
AZ Paul what happens when you die then(if there is nothing above humans)  .

Well, mrmound, I don't know. I've never been in the mood to find out. And I don't know of anyone who has ever survived the ordeal of death long enough to give any kind of report.

I can only surmise that when you die you return to that from which you came before you were born...the void.

Since I am the center of my universe I can only say that there was nothing but void prior to me and I suppose there will be nothing but void after me.

I know it is difficult to comprehend. I AM here. I AM feeling. I AM.

This life is real. I can feel it. These thoughts, these feelings, this ME that I know is. How can it ever be said to end? There must be continuance. There must be something after.

And there is. But not continuance of something so fleeting and ephemeral as life.

With limited knowledge we can only suppose that what comes after is the same that came before. The infinity that was and the infinity that will be. The void.

There might be something more. It doesn't look likely given what came before but we do not know. Until we have the experience we cannot ever know. At this point I'm in no hurry to find out. That will happen soon enough.

-P

11
Off Topic / Are u a creationist?
« on: May 10, 2005, 05:25:10 PM »
It's all your own fault. Y'all open this door. I'm just sticking both left feet in.

Something I wrote for another board.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The scientific problem with theology is its history.  Not the religious stories and writings but the independent historical records and artifacts that give a clear and reasoned history of religion in our species.

Primitive man used the spirits of the animals, plants and rivers upon which his very existence depended as the focus of his psychological need to explain what this "life" thing was all about. We're talking Homo erectus of 300,000+- years ago not the australopithecines of way back. Homo, it is believed, had the capacity to so wonder as evidenced by his stone trinkets of ornamental value rather than as tools. Some obvious "mother earth" and “pregnant deer” statuary and the like.

In Homo sapiens this focus slowly shifted to the great powers that seemed to control all the elements of the environment. Sun, moon, sea, wind, volcanoes, thunder and like that.  With the advent of agriculture and stable local populations the local god had local appeal and was structured for the close relationships of the tribe.  During this period the priests arose, self proclaimed, to read the signs and interpret the actions and angers of the gods. Since humans are as humans are the neighboring tribes were of course a lesser people with lesser gods and thus it was kosher to kill their men, enslave their women and eat their children most often at the behest if not the direct commandment of the local gods as interpreted by the priests.

Joseph Campbell wrote an excellent series of books on the power of myth as religious symbology and tracing the history of religious development. He writes about the strong rulers in Mesopotamia, like Sargon Of Akkade, born of a virgin so it is proclaimed, son of the (then) greatest Mesopotamian god Enlil.  Sargon went on to conquer everything he could see, declared himself the true embodiment of Enlil and had the remaining priests in his conquered cities so declare this truth after beheading the local kings and ruling high priests.  He installed his daughter as High Priestess of the Temple of the goddess Nanna at Ur and in all just helped himself to all the goodies by usurping the social powers (along with the gold, granaries, and gals) that were the purview of the local priests which had accumulated their powers and riches by taking credit for good harvests and fine weather as signs of their intercession with the great gods of the past millennia and the present great god Enlil and blaming catastrophe on those unbelievers, especially tribal outsiders and their lesser gods, who brought the wrath of Enlil down upon an innocent people except now Enlil was Sargon or vice versa and it gets confusing from there.  One of the first known instances of man claiming divinity.

In the history of human theology, I suppose as differentiated from Canine or Equine Theology, monotheism is the new kid on the block. Still, the first major mono-theologies, in Egypt and the Indus river valley, were tribal in origin, of, for, and by the tribe with rules, laws and sacraments; a complete cultural morality that did not apply to outsiders. The same then were adopted by and applied to the three great modern mono-theologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Some may argue that these are all one theology owing to their common theological godhead - the god of Abraham. Bull. But that’s another tome for another time.  

There is nothing in any present religious philosophy on this planet, no tenet, no myth, no story, no attribute, no miracle that does not have precedence in some other tribal religion millennia past complete with virgin births, attaining nirvana, water walking, parting seas, lotus blossoms, halting suns, miracles of healing, plagues of disease and the infinite love of the great god for the tribe and his ordered/inspired conquests and murders of  “others” in city-states and territories of those not of the tribe.  Like plants and animals, religions evolved from older forms taking the myths, stories and miracles of the past and adapting them to the new sets of gods.

The crux is this.

We know this history. We know where, when and why things happened. In all that history there is nothing to indicate, to suggest or reasonably speculate that some magical being with special powers has or had any effect upon any natural, non-natural, fattening or non-fattening phenomenon, action or inaction dealing with any living or dead, non-living or non-dead, person, place or thing of any kind at any time whatsoever anywhere ever. Everything we see and have seen, everything we experience and have experienced, everything we know (incomplete as that knowledge may be) about our species and our history, and through our intellect everything we know about any and all other species and their histories since the dawn of life on this planet and still further back than that, has reasonable natural explanations without having to resort to “poof – magic happened!”

There is no reason for any type of god to exist. There has been no phenomenon anywhere at any time that can reasonably be attributed only to the magic of a supernatural sorcerer. There has been no phenomenon anywhere at any time that cannot be more reasonably attributed to natural forces than to the magic of a supernatural sorcerer. Science cannot address and has no need to address any type of god since there is nothing anywhere in nature, the earth, the heavens nor beyond that reasonably indicates any gods would, could or should exist.

If we are going to leave open as scientifically viable the wild speculation of the maybe existence of gods then we must also leave open the wild speculation that there may exist a planet in the M67 galaxy accreted wholly from Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese (the real thing; not some generic store brand) with Chives. Science cannot say there is or is not some flavor of god because science has no reason to presume that such a thing, with or without chives, would, could or should exist. Gods are a scientific non-issue.

Theology started as a psychological salve to help explain this “why” question some newly sentient beings seemed to have asked when they came down from the trees. Then it acquired the tribal pack mentality with restrictive rules, rites and sacraments. Finally, there is its usurpation by the political establishment where it seems to have gotten stuck for the past three millennia.

And since we know the history of religion, its origins, its limits, its evolution, its very reason for being, then by the same token gods should be a human intellectual non-issue as well.  A reasonable dispassionate reading of the history of Human Theology must conclude the same as the scientific treatment. There is no reason for any type of god to exist. There is no evidence such a thing would, could or should exist in our lives.  There is no need.

So why do religious memes persist? I’m glad you asked.

Religious memes propagate by acculturation like knowledge of how long after eating you have to wait before swimming and how many times you need to say “I love you,” before you can screw the girl.  The political/social reinforcement of this acculturation continues since it seems to serve a useful purpose in morally stabilizing and mollifying the sizable populations (hundred of millions) that now exist as “the tribe.”

No, I’m not saying a sinister government is perpetrating a religious hoax upon the populous. Our society, our culture, sees the propagation of religious memes as a good and necessary adjunct to the secular constraints on our actions by modern governance. In other words our society sees religion as helping secular governance keep us from eating each other.

That prevailing view is bogus. Religious memes really aren’t necessary and detract and separate more than they add and meld. Secular governance does quite well on its own.  In fact it does better the freer and farther it spreads. Again, another tome for another time.  

But we are going to have one hell of a time getting rid of religious memes.  Some memes, like that really stinky advertising ditty that you absolutely hate, just keep pounding the inside of your head no matter what you do to get rid of them. Religion is a societal meme that is pounding within the collective heads of the broader global tribes and just won’t go away. Pity.

12
Off Topic / Dead?
« on: May 09, 2005, 03:17:13 PM »
Quote
QUOTE 
those values are in the bot memory which we do not [hint] have access to [end hint] at the present time.



Could you elaborate on this.

As far as I know (and I programmed it) we have access to all the memory values using memloc and memval.


Sorry, PY for having gotten confusing on this. Nums is right. The sextrait values in my sims are in bot memory locations. My way of getting around .sexrepro.  After x,000,000 cycles I want to see how these values have spread, congregated, moved. Unfortunately, snapshot does not save the memory values in the text file so I have no way to see and compare, say memloc #981 #982 #68, values over some 1000 bots.

There was some discussion of a 'mem snapshot' routine that would create a text file of all bots' memory with options to record certain locations only.  This would be wonderful.  Until such is available, and not being a gamer interested in making combat bots (combots?), I've taken DBII as far as I can.

Lurking Patiently,

-P

13
Off Topic / Dead?
« on: May 07, 2005, 10:21:21 AM »
Quote
I think he's waiting for the sexual repro to be fixed.

See, all those hints weren't falling on deaf ears.


Actually, I've coded around the sexrepro issue using memlocs.  My issue now is that I cannot get to the memvals. After a few million cycles of sexual selection (simulated) the sex trait values would have moved (maybe) except those values are in the bot memory which we do not [hint] have access to [end hint] at the present time. A memval text file, a memval textfile, my kingdom for a memval text file.

Trivia note: Erwin Schrodinger was so disgusted by the results he was seeing in his equations that he devised his famous cat paradox to show just how rediculous his results were. He did this hoping he or others would help find the error that obviously had to be in the equations. Poor pussy's been suspended in uncertainty ever since.

14
Off Topic / Dead?
« on: May 06, 2005, 03:09:12 AM »
Dead? Yes. Dead-on dead. The Big Sleep. The end-all of all end-alls.

My sims are dead. My DBII is dead. At least until the next release.

So now I spend my precious little play time explaining time dilation and crossing swords with creationists.

Those of you in the struggle against stupidity need to aware that there is a new point of attack being used by the Intelligent Design crowd. Not really "new" but more "look here we're mainstream" kinda new. Seems Stephen Meyer had a paper published by the Biological Society of Washington in its peer reviewed Proceedings. If you're not familiar with brother Meyer he is one of the most avid advocates of Intelligent Design.

So now the Cretinis...er...creationists are touting their acceptance by mainstream science. Therefore science sees value in their hypothesis. Therefore evolution is dead and that only leaves god. And etcetera like that.

Except, it seems Meyer's paper was published in error. Somehow the screening council never saw the submission, the wag was never submitted to peer review, and the Editors are falling all over themselves trying to distance themselves from the deed, their web site is full of long apologies, recriminations are flying and heads are rolling. No one is saying if any $$ changed hands to affect the conspiracy.

In the meantime, Meyer and cohorts are losing no time in spreading the news, reprints of the paper with PBSW's imprimatur, web links to Meyer's CSC Discovery site with PBSW's imprimatur, all showing how now Intelligent Design has been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed, real-life prestigious science-type publication.  Creationists are beside themselves with blissful religious joy.

As if this job wasn't tough enough.

Love and kisses to Num's dream girl, even with the clothes on.

-P

15
Off Topic / Once again, I come to brag
« on: May 06, 2005, 02:15:12 AM »
Very good, Nums. And pretty, too. Not bad at all, my man.

Now, about them clothes...

-P

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6