The Evolution of Clocks

[cjsmith]

The video linked here is awesome. Hat tip to cmeckhardt for the pointer.

This guy throws in gears, ratchets, hands, and springs. He defines ways they can stick together. He "shakes the box" by letting them "reproduce" and by choosing a criterion for which ones die off. He gets clocks. He tweaks the parameters and runs it again, and he gets clocks. Yet again: clocks.

It had occurred to me to try to run some kind of simulation, just to get a feel for that sort of thing myself, but I never thought of running one on clocks. That's simple enough to model, with "stickinesses" analogous to biological components and a fairly simple genomic data structure. I would love to read the code. :-)

Comments

[fyellin.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see the code, too! Let me know if you find it.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Wow! Very cool. Not really all that surprising given what people generally do with genetic programming, but a very visceral demonstration.

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

That is awesome! Thanks for the link!

[cme]

I just have to say, I love having friends who get excited by that video. :)

[1radicaldreamer.livejournal.com]

...Wow. Brain has been stimulated. *Grin*

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

extremely cool :)

[iridium.livejournal.com]

Hallo! Met you last night at mactavish's, and was just now entranced by the clock-evolution video. Neat!

Mind if I add you to my lj-friendlist?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hi hi! Feel free -- add or delete me at any time. If you're amused by things I come up with, keen! :-)

I'll go friend you back...