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UNORTHODOX ADAPTATION. "The five separate logic cells were clearly crucial to the chip’s operation, but they were interacting with the main circuitry through some unorthodox method— most likely via the subtle magnetic fields that are created when electrons flow through circuitry, an effect known as magnetic flux." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT TRAITS. "In the past, the approach has been to start with high-level intelligence and reproduce that in a computer. This is the opposite. We're showing how complex traits like memory can be built from the bottom up, from things that are really very simple." https://lnkd.in/dQNwFn2 View in LinkedIn

ADAPTED FOR ELECTRONIC MICROENVIRONMENT. "It seems that evolution had not merely selected the best code for the task, it had also advocated those programs which took advantage of the electromagnetic quirks of that specific microchip environment." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn

RUDIMENTARY CODE MEMORY. "Computer-simulated life forms which reproduce themselves inside their electronic world have evolved to produce basic intelligence. After thousands more generations, the Avidians had evolved something more impressive: a rudimentary memory. The environment sets up selective pressures so organisms are forced to come up with some kind of memory use - which is in fact what they do." https://lnkd.in/dQNwFn2 View in LinkedIn

PERPLEXING. "Dr. Thompson peered inside his perfect offspring to gain insight into its methods, but what he found inside was baffling. The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn

POLY-FUNCTIONAL DNA. "Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation. There is growing evidence that much of the DNA in higher genomes is poly-functional, with the same nucleotide contributing to more than one type of code. Such poly-functional DNA should logically be multiply-constrained in terms of the probability of sequence improvement via random mutation." https://lnkd.in/d2ZFuRp View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT PHENOMENA IN SILICO. "Finally, after just over 4,000 generations, test system settled upon the best program. As predicted, the principle of natural selection could successfully produce specialized circuits using a fraction of the resources a human would have required. And no one had the foggiest notion how it worked." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on coevolution. It seems intuitive that two interdependent creatures could affect each others evolutionary trajectory. Thus the continuity of the germplasm into the future — that driver of life — is not simply affected by successful mating and gene reshuffling, but by what type of company you keep, wittingly or not. This includes the microbiome of multiple creatures in and on your body. This is an exemplar of Darwin’s tangled bank seen through the lens of time, dynamic and active. View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL PRIMORDIAL SOUP. "He cooked up a batch of primordial data-soup by generating fifty random blobs of ones and zeros. One by one his computer loaded these digital genomes into the FPGA chip, played the two distinct audio tones, and rated each genome’s fitness according to how closely its output satisfied pre-set criteria. Occasional mutations were introduced into the fruit of their digital loins when the control program randomly changed a one or a zero here and there." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn

"HARDWARE EVOLUTION. The concept is roughly analogous to Charles Darwin’s elegant principle of natural selection, which describes how individuals with the most advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce. This process tends to preserve favorable characteristics by passing them to the survivors’ descendants, while simultaneously suppressing the spread of less-useful traits." https://lnkd.in/e5p4fXs View in LinkedIn