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Artificial Life: where art, science, and computing meet in a very
groovy way.
I became hooked on Artificial Life after reading about
Boids,
a program that simulated the flocking behaviour of birds, with a twist:
it had no code that told it how to make birds flock.
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Applet by Conrad Parker
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Instead, each bird in the simulation followed a few simple rules, such
as don't crowd the birds closest to you, fly in the general direction of
other birds, etc., and when all of the birds were randomly placed
together, the flocking behaviour emerged naturally.
The point:
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Simple local interactions between agents in a system, such as a biological,
economic, or social system, can lead to complex global behaviours that are
often surprising and unpredictable.
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So instead of trying to create a complex model of a system, in order
to understand it, create simple models of the agents in the system,
and let them do the work.
The link between nature and mathematics has always fascinated me,
the way in which relatively simple computational algorithms can
reproduce natural, life-like, organic behaviour.
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Quite often the visual representation of these algorithms can be
very beautiful.
The use of evolutionary algorithms, where darwinian rules are used
to evolve solutions to a problem, is also part of Artificial
Life.
For example, try Gene Pool, a simulation that evolves physics-based
organisms. While you're there, try out the Bird as well :-)
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