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It's crazy to think about that molecular nanoassembly was the position that evolution started out from.
by FeepingCreature 11y ago
It's crazy to think about that molecular nanoassembly was the position that evolution started out from.
- kanzure 11y agoYeah I guess that is pretty crazy. OTOH, there was a study of a virtual machine where someone filled RAM up with random opcodes and running the machine forward in time brought about self-replicating programs because of random self-copying sequences of opcodes. So maybe self-replication is simpler than we've been making it out to be? http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/ai/The%20evolution%20of%20self-replicating%20computer%20organisms%20-%20A.%20N.%20Pargellis.pdf http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/ai/The%20evolution%20of%20se... (To be clear, the first "self-copying sequences" didn't look like self-replication in CoreWars or whatever, but evidently they did observe the construction of self-replicating programs over time.)
- sampo 11y agoThomas S. Ray's Tierra is a very similar study, published already in 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_%28computer_simulation%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_%28computer_simulation%...
- kanzure 11y agoTierra was interesting, but these days I would point anyone interested in that direction instead at Avida and BEACON. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida http://beacon-center.org/welcome/ http://beacon-center.org/welcome/ In particular this was a surprisingly interesting overview of their recent work: http://beacon-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BEACON2014AnnualReport_Public.pdf http://beacon-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BEACON20...
- kazinator 11y agoDon't also forget Conway's Game of Life.