Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!apollo!nelson_p
From: nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.self-org-sys
Subject: self org principles II
Message-ID: <48810829.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 7 Feb 90 16:42:00 GMT
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 39


  Earlier I posted:

  
>  Are there any general principals that may be applied to 
>  problems like this [microscopic behavior resulting in
>  macroscopic structure] in simulations?   If I wanted to
>  create a CA program that would produce a particular shape,
>  say a star or a triangle, is there any systematic way to go 
>  about it?                         


  I've been wondering if anyone has taken an evolutionary 
  approach to this?   Suppose we populate a CA universe 
  with cells that obey *different* rules?   Moreover, suppose
  we add some source of variablity to the rules, like "mutations"
  or daughter cells that have some combination of their (not
  neccesarily just 2) parent's cells.   All of the above would
  probably not be hard to implement.

  The crucial part, which might also be the hard part, would
  then be to have some way to "train" this soup.   Say we wanted
  to evolve cells that would form star-shaped structures.   If
  we could find a way to favor those cells that exhibit this
  characteristic, then over time we could end up with a universe 
  that had cells which mostly formed stars (or whatever).  An 
  added problem to the one of providing the "feedback" to our
  simulation is that of identifying "right" results:  Such a 
  system will not go straight from chaos to stars; you will have
  to "shape" the behavior in small increments, and recognizing 
  the "right" behavior in its earlier forms will be difficult.

  Finding some way to automate the shaping function would also
  be helpful since this process could take days or more of computer
  time at it would be nice to just let it run unattended.

                                                 ---Peter