From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Mon Sep 25 2000 - 22:03:54 MDT
Matt Gingell writes,
> Plainly, you have a much faster computer than I do.
You don't need a particularly fast computer to run digital evolution software.
Check out Tom Ray's Network Tierra experiment at
http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/pubs/reserves/
and
http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/tierra/
What
This project attempts to use evolution by natural selection in the medium of the
digital computer to generate complex and intelligent software.
Why
Evolution by natural selection has generated complex and intelligent life forms
in the medium of carbon chemistry.
Evolution is the only process with a proven ability to produce intelligence.
The DNA of living organisms is a genetic ``program''. This is a parallel
software of a complexity much greater than any that could be written by humans.
Experiments illustrated here show that evolution by natural selection works very
effectively in the medium of computer machine code.
Evolution will find forms and processes that exploit the possibilities inherent
in the computational medium.
How
Self-replicating machine code programs are introduced to the RAM memory of the
computer.
Genetic variation occurs due to ``mutations'' resulting from random flips
(between 0 and 1) of bits in the memory.
A ``reaper'' function of the operating system kills old or defective processes
in order to make way for newborn programs, once the memory is full.
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