Sat Jan 8 17:03:38 2005 Avida (Digital Referencing: https://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/
I came across this in the latest issue of Discover - a fascinating article; I really suggest picking this up if you are interested in evolutionary theory.
The link for the Mac version seems to be broken. I did download the Windows version (hint - click on QT-Viewer to run it once you've unpacked it), but I wanted something much simpler to play with.
So (of course) I wanted to write my own little piece of digital life. The basic idea is simple:
$generation=0; $alive{'abcdefg'}="0"; $alive{'gfedcba'}="0"; $goal="Goal"; while (1) { score(); print "Mating..\n"; mate(); killweak(); $generation++; show(); print "Generation $generation ------\n"; }
The score() assigns points to the string based on many times it contains $goal or part therof, mate() creates new strings from old with random mutations, killweak() takes the lowest scores out of the population, and we repeat. Sounds simple, and very quickly I had code that was driving toward the goal. But then somewhere I introduced some bug that has my generations getting stuck in infinite loops, so I'm still hacking at that. Fun way to spend a rainy Saturday. I'll share when I get it working.
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More Articles by Tony Lawrence © 2010-09-01 Tony Lawrence
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. (Mark Twain)
---January 27, 2005
hey, I read that artical too, and like you I just had to see the program. Its fun but I haven't quite figured it out completly yet.I've been tring to set up my own experiments, with a lack of sucess. I think this is the next big step/test for evolutionary theroy. I read on Dr. pennock's website( www.msu.edu/~pennock5/research/Avida-ED.htm) that he want's to use Avida for educational use in the class room.that would be great.thanks for posting
-Corey Hooker
(corey_hooker@thecenterforadvancedlearning.org)
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Avida (Digital Life Laboratory ) Copyright © January 2005 Tony Lawrence
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