The Miracle of ALife

I don't only think about masturbation, I am in fact a PhD student (although the two aren't mutually exclusive). My research is in the field of evolutionary ethics, a weird hybrid of philosophy, biology, sociology and computer science. I design, implement and experiment with computer simulations to study ethics, in particular, biological altruism. Or, as Jodi says, I make numbers have sex. This is useful as it's particularly hard (and most likely unethical) to do these studies on real people. My simulations are abstractions of the real world, where things are a little (that is, a lot) simpler (e.g. they don't have to wear pants). ALife (i.e. Artificial Life) is a subset of artificial intelligence (in the same way that real life is a subset of natural stupidity). I realise that this topic is potentially (in fact, inevitably) a little heavy for a blog, although I'd like to think I'm capable of making it (sorta) light.

Most definitions of art require a liberal definition. My studies are concerned with emergence. That is, with my simple simulation rules (A sees B, C eats D, and E bonks F), the simple, mindless, rules of evolution, I see the emergence of complex, albeit mindless, social behaviour. I was working recently on the visualisation of my results on speciation, taking the lead of Darwin and his famous "Tree of Life" diagram. That is, at the root of the tree you have the oldest, most primitive organisms (e.g. Australian politicians) and over massive stretches of time, and countless reproductions, we see the great diversity of organisms today (obviously, there is, otherwise, no real progression, as we still have the politicians). Anyway, Jodi thought my upside down "Tree of ALife" looked pretty (not a prerequisite of art (c.f. expressionism), but still a good indication of it), like a weeping willow, and suggested that I post it here:


I'm excited by these results because they demonstrate the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium, which I'm not going to get into here (actually, I lie, the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium is that all biological change occurs in rapid bursts, during speciation events, and the rest of the time sweet FA happens. If you're interested, I recommend you see a shrink and a book by Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" chapter 10, section 3 "Punctuated Equilibrium: A Hopeful Monster"). Anyway, it got all this special attention because the creationists thought it was a denial of evolution and therefore scientific proof of the existence of a creator (aka god). I'll spare you the suspense (all ye worried about going to hell for spanking the monkey last night): by the time everybody was clear on what they were saying (Gould, one of the originators, being notoriously unclear), it was clear that the controversy was all a bit premature on the behalf of the creationists (who should worry about spanking the monkey). Of course the idea of conserving semen serves the purpose of both god and genes, which both, in a sense, propagate themselves via their offspring (i.e.memetics).

Another thing I'd like to share, a common bug in my simulations, is the evolution of necrophilia. A consequence of my mate-finding algorithm: when an agent is sexually mature it looks for a mate in its local neighbourhood (they are genderless, so everybody's fair game). If it is unable to find one, it puts up its hand, which is more like a flag that says yes or no, and waits for the next agent to come a knocking (on their abstract door). As an aside, this hand waving puts me in mind of "traffic light" parties, where red means "stop", green means "go", and amber presumably means "if you're good looking enough", perhaps this is where that all illusive "free will" demonstration can be found (calling all philosophers). When two agents eventually find each other, the loving begins, resulting in the production of an offspring. (There isn't much room for romance, perhaps a consequence of the lack of necessity of pants removal or record players to play some of Marvin Gaye's "lets get it on"). Anyway, occasionally an agent would put its hand up, requesting a mate, and then promptly kick the bucket, leaving an erect extremity to indicate an insatiable undead virility, (hellooo, mills & boon!) unbeknownst to any would-be lover, who proceeds regardless with the "getting dirty".

PS - After looking over my last two posts, which seem to suggest an inability to stop sexualising things, I started this blog entry with a clean break in mind. What could be less sexual than science research? Therefore it pains me to note that there is no less than two references to sexually deviant acts in this entry. Now, I like to be romantic about the whole sex thing, but I worry, given the common criticisms leveled at my gender of killing the romance of love.