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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

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 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

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

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

PRE-REQUISITES. "Population structure is required for the evolution of suicide. This pre-requisite had been previously proposed on the basis of experimental studies with a genetically engineered, suicidal strain of E. coli grown on agar plates and is theoretically extended here to a broader spectrum of population structures, suicide efficacies and co-occurring immune mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

LOW-COST SUICIDE. "Altogether, our findings demonstrate that low-cost suicide can evolve with ease, represents an effective host-defence strategy, and seems to be widespread among microbes. Moreover, low-cost suicide might also occur in higher organisms as exemplified by infected social insect workers leaving the colony to die in isolation." https://lnkd.in/d53-z28 View in LinkedIn

RANGE OF MEASURES. "Different defense mechanisms are geared to fight different threats. Immunity systems might be highly effective against certain threats but less proficient against others. Suicide can serve as a defense mechanism that acts on those threats against which the immunity systems are less effective." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

LOW COST. "Recent experiments with suicide-prone E. coli have shown that at least when defense against highly virulent phages is involved, the cost of suicide could be quite low because the infected bacteria are moribund in any case and have virtually no chance to propagate. Conceivably, these experiments reflect the regime with failing immunity and subsequent low-cost suicide." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

LAST RESORT. "Host suicide can potentially evolve either as an immediate response to infection or as a means of last resort after immunity mechanisms fail to stop pathogen reproduction. Intuitively, the second strategy would appear advantageous, and indeed in our model, when the two strategies evolve independently and then are allowed to compete, “suicide after immunity failure wins”." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn