Introduction of Structural Dissolution into Langton's Self-Reproducing Loop
Hiroki Sayama
Department of Information Science, University of Tokyo
http://proton.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~sayama/
Abstract
The phenomenon of death, or disappearance of life, has two aspects. One is
failure in the function of life and the other is dissolution of the
structure of life. In order to examine the significance of the latter
aspect, the author contrived a "structurally dissolvable self-reproducing
(SDSR) loop" by introducing the capability of structural dissolution into
Langton's self-reproducing (SR) loop in which death as functional failure
has already been installed. To be more specific, a dissolving state '8'
was introduced into the set of states of the CA, besides other
modifications to Langton's transition rules. Through this improvement, the
SDSR loop can dissolve its own structure when faced with difficult
situations such as a shortage of space for self-reproduction. This
mechanism (disappearance of a subsystem of the whole system) induces, for
the first time, dynamically-stable and potentially evolvable behavior into
the colony of SDSR loops.
SDSR Loop Homepage
A simple CA simulator "LoopS" (ver 1.0), for observing the behavior
of both SR/SDSR loops, is now available on the following ftp
site. This program is made for UNIX platforms provided with a standard
C compiler and X11 libraries. In addition, you can utilize it as a
general-purpose simulator of 5-neighbor 9-state CA if several options
are specified.
Click here to download LoopS-1.0.tar.gz
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