Next: A Digital Analog
Category: Artificial Life
Selecting Naturally for Differentiation
Thomas S. Ray
ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories
2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-02, Japan
E-mail: ray@isd.atr.co.jp, ray@santafe.edu, ray@udel.edu
http://www.isd.atr.co.jp/~ray/
Tel: 81-774-95-1063
Fax: 81-774-95-1008
Abstract:
A progress report on an effort to create conditions under which
natural selection will favor cell differentiation in multi-threaded
self-replicating machine code programs. ``Cell differentiation''
means that different threads of the process execute different code.
The machine code algorithms exist in a networked environment in
which they are able to move from machine to machine. They have
a mechanism of sensing conditions on any participating machine
of the network. This sensory data provides information on the CPU
speed (in virtual machine instructions per second) and the number of
competing processes (among other things) on each machine. The
sensory data can be used to support a strategy for foraging for
CPU cycles on the network. In this environment, natural selection
might maintain or improve differentiated multi-threaded network
navigation algorithms.
On Earth, evolution by natural selection in the organic medium has
caused replicators to undergo a phenomenal increase in complexity.
The fossil record indicates that this increase in complexity did not
occur gradually, but rather that the bulk of the increase occurred
in a small number of major transitions [3]. These major
transitions included: origin of chromosomes, origin of eukaryotes,
origin of sex, origin of multi-cellular organisms, origin of social
groups.
Of these major transitions, perhaps the most dramatic, and best known,
was the rapid origin and diversification of large multi-cellular organisms
from micro-scopic single celled ancestors, in what has come to be known as
the Cambrian explosion of diversity [1,2]. It has understandably
been called evolution's ``big bang'', when there was a dramatic inflation
of complexity of organisms, and species diversified rapidly into an
ecological void.
Next: A Digital Analog
Thomas S.Ray
Tue Jan 14 16:09:05 JST 1997