Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!shelby!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!gatech!uflorida!cs.fau.edu!tomh From: tomh.bbs@shark.cs.fau.edu (Tom Holroyd) Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata Subject: Re: Something for the ants to do Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 91 13:30:28 GMT References: <1991Feb18.001127.16317@news.cs.indiana.edu> Sender: bbs@cs.fau.edu (Waffle BBS) Organization: Florida Atlantic University Lines: 34 marek@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Marek W Lugowski) writes: > I don't buy into this "should emerge almost by themselves." That's just > alife propaganda that we should be careful not to get zapped with. In OK, sorry for the somewhat un-scientific statement. In the real world, interesting behavior DID emerge by itself, but perhaps only because the environment itself was already complex. As Marek says, better ants via better antworlds. Additionally, directed evolution can be a lot faster than waiting for it to happen "by itself". Cooperation between ants at least requires that the ants be able to communicate with each other. (If all the ants are turning to the left because their programs say turn left, I don't call that cooperation.) A uniform dynamical system with positive feedback can undergo a symmetry breaking, where small random fluctuations are amplified into some non-uniform structure. What I'm hoping is that an initially uniform scattering of ants which positively reinforce each other's behavior could spontaneously generate some structure (a higher level of organization than just one ant). Selection would then operate on the higher level structure. The point is that if I want to have the ants cross a river, I don't want to program each ant with "bridge building and river crossing" behaviors; rather, I would give them the ability to communicate and cooperate with each other, and let them self- organize a behavior which, if it resulted in the ants crossing the river, would be selected for. Tom Holroyd Florida Atlantic University Center for Complex Systems tomh@bambi.ccs.fau.edu > cc: alife@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (alife-request for additions)