Year: 2022

BOLD IDEA. "Natural selection or selection and amplification are part of evolution. Evolution can happen in any material substrate. The substrate does not need to be biochemical." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF CODE. “Self-replicating computer programs may make copies of themselves with small variations. One of these variations may make the self-replication action a little faster, so that it can make more daughter programs. If we assume a constant population size, more of the fast replicators will eventually be selected for, and you see an evolutionary change in the populations from slow to fast replicators." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

NATURAL SELECTION OF CODE. "Evolution is a physical process, and it can be implemented in many, many different systems. We have computer processes that undergo evolution just as real as evolution seen in bacteria in the lab. Darwinian selection within artificial computer systems has existed for more then 20 years, and the properties are documented all over scientific literature." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. "There is also selection in society today between technologies, where different possible solutions are put to the market, where certain technologies prevail while other companies have to retool, do something else. That’s just how it is. Evolutionary technological processes are also documented in the literature by following patent records to see how different technologies are related." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

"EVOLUTION does not just occur in biological systems." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

REPLICATION FIRST. "Walter said the problem is not understanding survival of the fittest but understanding arrival of the fittest. How can a system acquire the ability to replicate? You cannot have evolution of a system toward its ability to replicate. Replication is necessary before you can have evolution. Something else has to come into play before you have the first system that can undergo evolution." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

FIRST STEP. "How do you get the first system to replicate? There's a process called self-assembly where you can aggregate materials and suddenly get new properties. For instance, if you have a lipid molecule in water, if you allow many, many lipid molecules to swim around in water, then they will form a membrane. Once you have a membrane, suddenly you can design an outside and an inside. You'll be able to define permeability through the membrane." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

ENERGETIC PREREQUISITE. "The way we have to get to a system that can undergo evolution is, we first need self-replication. We need to put materials together in a way such that the result of their interactions is that the whole system replicates. To make that happen you need free energy to drive the whole thing. That’s why metabolism is also necessary as it can drive the replication process." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT PROPERTIES. "The individual building blocks of the protocell can't explain the higher-level structure and its functionalities when we put them together. They are an emergent structure. So we have to put a set of appropriate molecular aggregates together to get the first replicator." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn

REPLICATION FIRST. "Once you have replication, then you can have evolution, but you don't have evolution before you have replication. At least I don't think so." https://lnkd.in/dwADMWc View in LinkedIn