peter@wam.umd.edu (Peter Arensburger) (03/12/91)
A couple of days ago I was listening to a talk by Richard Dawkins about modeling evolutionary processes on a computer. He mentioned an experiment by Thomas Ray in wich small (40 instructions long) autoreproducing programs where allowed to spread freely in a certain amount of memory. Then, by randomly mutating some of the programs you could see mutant programs become better adapted for reproduction. This experiment has not yet been published, and I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about it (what was his "parent" program, how did he induce mutations, a general description of the processor emulated, etc.). Has anyone heard about this experiment? If so please answer by e-mail. -- In real life: Peter Arensburger, biology weenie peter@cscwam.umd.edu ..!uunet!mimsy!cscwam!peter