Experiment in Evolution.

What? I'm supposed to feed them? darn... I knew I was going wrong somewhere.

yes, this hilites our problems... a flock of physical creatures using sensors and all chatting to to each other needing listeners ... erm what a shame, we seem to be requiring all the heaviest features

passing n00bs ?

The fish that Ratt Foo made on Numbakulla have a little fish feeder that you can click to feed them with. They'll gradually come to the food, feed and then swim off again.

ok, my phish use fisics, and have to use sensor (only one mind) to 'see'. but so far I've avoided using any listens. When was the last time you heard phish talking in RL? (Babel fish excluded)

Yes, you're absolutely right.

No, not really. Although some conditions ( for example radioactivity can denature DNA) can increase the chances of mutation, it is essentially a random process, a defect in the replication of DNA. Evolutionary selection pressures, it's environment, then dictate if this mutation is advantageous or not. (assuming the mutation is not so disastrous that the organism can not function at all) .



OK well I am dreaming of course, but I would love to be able to create something uni-cellular that evolved to multi-cellular organisms.

It's something I would love to be involved with. Alas, I couldn't script to save my life and so will probably end up watching from the sidelines lol.

Thnx for everyone's input

As there appears to be no active alife group in SL (both of the groups in existence are officer'd (sp?!) by people who don't appear to come into SL anymore), would anybody else be interested in setting up a group and hopefully we can get enough people to get a group forum together from that? There are many interesting topics that could be discussed around it that I guess a single thread isn't suitable for.

Sorry to keep harking on about my fish... but..

The are individuals, each fish holds the same (approx) code and do not 'talk' to each other, ie, they act independantly. They are singularly unicellular.

The result of the code in the fish makes them swim together, you can place obstacles, or use your av, to direct the movement of the entire shoal. As such you could argue the shoal is a multi-cellular organism in it's own right.


This is why it's taking me so long to develope the fish... I love playing with the shoals so much I don't have time for the individuals...

Moopf, I would love to get involved, altho I have no scripting skills to bring to the table, but maybe this is a chance to learn

Yeah, I'd join.

I once wrote a little app where a bunch of single celled creatures lived in a cloud of 3D fractal noise. They would evolve to live in bandwidths of the noise and attempt to follow it around as it moved through time. They would mate with each other, change shape, size and colour, and sometimes move off to form other colonies in emptier parts of the noise cloud. My little girl was only 4 at the time but she became fascinated by it and would watch it for as long as a 4 yr old could and come and tell me stories about the individual organisms she'd be following.

Sounds like a fun project, will have to check them out when I get in world

*puts dreaming hat on again* what i am looking for is for a multicellular oganism evolving from different types of single-celled organisms. Each different cell contributing something different but essential for the survival of the whole organism.

OK, I'll set a group up, what should we call it? Decisions, decisions

"Second ALife" or "Second Life ALife" or..........ideas?

PS. Actually, can you change group names later at all?

Hmmm, should 4 year olds be watching single celled digital organisms mating??

I-Avatar? lol

oh...and no, you can't change the name of the group

Moopf, I'd join such a group for sure, I like the idea of a forum too.

Is 'ThirdLife' to obvious? If ALife is gone, how about 'BLife'? or 'Get ALife'?

I'd forgotten that SL is closed now, so I'll setup a group when it's open. If anybody has a good name idea in the meantime let me know

lol, when they're 4 anything that keeps them from hanging on your skirt for a few minutes is welcome. And i assure you my little organisms were very discrete with their mating habits

OK, I've setup a group with the name 'Artificial Life' (yeah, simple ones are sometimes the best lol). It's open enrollment. Just need to make sure that there's at least 3 people in it soon so it stays there. Please join and we'll take it from there.

Does anybody know how many people are needed to get a group forum setup?

Do you happen to have a copy of that app? I'd be interested in watching it.

LF

I'd be interested in getting a copy of the app too

I don't know anything about scripting, but I just wanted to step in and say you people are all really freakishly smart... and I can't wait to see what you come up with

You don't need to have them talk to each other, if there is some way to tag the environment somehow, such as with a pheremone, or preferrably several independent pheremones. From that simple construct you can get all sorts of neat, self-organizing behavior. Combine that with a sort of adaptiveness or growing ruleset in the individual entites then you can do a lot of neat stuff. I've done some really mindblowing things with these as part of my work.

I strongly recommend Mitchel Resnick's "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams" (ISBN 0-262-68093-9) for anyone interested in this sort of thing.

--v