Year: 2022

HUMAN-FREE. "In an earlier art-science project, Evolving Virtual Creatures, Sims left higher intelligence out of the loop, letting the computer provide both the variation and the selection of "winners." The 3-D world of Evolving Virtual Creatures – with physical laws such as gravity, friction, and fluid viscosity – was populated by crude animals built from rectangular blocks." https://lnkd.in/dD4T763 View in LinkedIn

HUMAN LIMITS. "The answer...is in "creating software to breed it. Few people can design something so complex—we don't have tools or imagination." https://lnkd.in/dtVFGBG View in LinkedIn

STEP 1: LUMPY START. "Two at a time were plopped down in an arena, facing a small cube. A battle commenced, and the computer measured the creatures' success in gaining control of the cube. Typically, the first generation did a lousy job. Most of the creatures simply sat there like, well, blocks; a few flopped or twitched, often away from the cube. But after each competition, the animal that had the better score was allowed to live – and to breed and mutate." https://lnkd.in/dD4T763 View in LinkedIn

STEP 2: GETTING BETTER. "Over time – Sims has run some experiments out to 300 generations – the creatures started behaving like real animals, wanting nothing more than to seize and keep the cube. Some developed arms to reach out and encircle it; others evolved large flat bodies to cover it. Some walked toward the cube, others hopped, paddled, or crawled." https://lnkd.in/dD4T763 View in LinkedIn

STEP 3: SOPHISTICATED. "Some developed counterstrategies, learning to push opponents away from the object. One learned to grab the cube, then pin a smaller rival, preventing it from taking the cube back. As with organic life, the creatures evolved many body types and behaviors to achieve the same goal." https://lnkd.in/dD4T763 View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL WORM. "Scientists digitize the brain of a worm and place it inside a robot." https://lnkd.in/dehvuZe View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE considers the phenomenon of host suicide, the sacrifice of individuals for the betterment of the population. This is not rare in biology and has been quite well studied. The function of host suicide is to thwart the reproductive strategy of the parasite. And curiously, some viral parasites have evolved cunning strategies of preventing host cell death. View in LinkedIn

CO-EVOLUTION OF PARASITE AND HOST. "The arms race between pathogens and hosts is a major force in evolution that is likely to have played key roles in the origins of multicellularity and sexual reproduction, among other biological phenomena." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

"HOST SUICIDE is the term coined to describe aberrant behavior on the part of an infected host which leads to increased probability of death by predation." https://lnkd.in/dzrwDbd View in LinkedIn

INCREASED HOST FITNESS. "Host suicide will increase the inclusive fitness of the host if (1) the suicide prevents the maturation of the parasite; (2) the mature parasite is more likely to infect the host's kin than nonkin; and (3) the benefit to the host, in terms of the increased fitness of the kin, is greater than the cost of the suicide, measured in terms of the loss of the host's own reproductive fitness." https://lnkd.in/dzrwDbd View in LinkedIn