Digital Life and Evolution

mrivorey writes "Discover Magazine has a story about The Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State University. Scientists there have created virus-like computer programs that replicate, mutate randomly, and compete with each other... in other words, they evolve. Among such feats as learning to add and compare numbers, these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them, by playing dead. You can download the project yourself from SourceForge." We first mentioned this in early 2003, but it appears to have developed a good deal since then.

Comments

Re:QUESTION #4: WHY SEX?

[FrYGuY101]

The only interesting part that caught my attention is: "One of the biggest questions in evolution is, why aren't all organisms asexual?" says Adami. Given the obvious inefficiency of sex, evolutionary biologists suspect that it must confer some powerful advantage that makes it so common. But they have yet to come to a consensus about what that advantage is. I think this built-in inefficiency is to control the population, no? So it's important to introduce the idea of "mating" to virus/robots to keep them under control.

More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange.

The offspring of two sexual creatures is a blend of their genetic material, creating a more diverse species able to endure changing conditions better since there are variations which can adapt. Asexual species exchange genetic material far less and are more similar overall, meaning that come next climate change, they could be screwed, whereas the sexual species might have enough diversity to not only adapt, but thrive under the new conditions.

Not "virus like"

[Syre]

Viruses replicate by taking over the mechanisms of a host cell. They have no ability to replicate on their own.

What these researches have created are "digital organisms" which are intended to emluate cells. They don't need to invade other systems to replicate, but do it on their own within the runtime enviroment the researches set up.

Re:Great, now all we need

[Copperhead]

Well, it is a bit noteworthy that you need an intelligent being to create the program to kick off the evolving software.

Re:This is called the "marching morons" problem

[tgibbs]

You will notice that there is no place in there for Atheism, since Atheism defaults to selfishness, which in turn implies no troublesome descendents.

Not necessarily. "Selfishness" may lead to altruistic behavior if altruism is rewarding (i.e. activates brain reward systems). Because there are selective benefits to altruism in many circumstances (reciprocal altruism, nepotism) there are likely genes that cause individuals to enjoy being altruistic, quite independently of their religious beliefs.

Re:Intelligent Design vs Darwinism? Or both?

[Black Parrot]

> Darwinism doesn't explain everything as tidily as some may think.

ID doesn't explain anything at all.

> Behe goes on to say some systems can't be produced by natural selection because "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional."

His IC argument ignores the possibility of changing the function of a system, which is probably the most common way evolution acts.

> Heavy stuff

I would have said "deep".

ID is nothing but creationist apologetics, bowlderized to try to sneak it past the US court system.