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The Secret Life of Chaos Page #6
- Year:
- 2010
- 60 min
- 314 Views
a cosmic timescale.
From the first life on
Earth, to us walking about,
took in the region of
But we now have in our hands
a device that can mimic this process
on a much shorter timescale.
What is the invention
I'm talking about?
Well, there's a good chance you've
been sitting in front of one all day.
It is, of course, the computer.
Computers today can churn through
trillions of calculations per second.
And that gives them the power
to do something very special.
They can simulate evolution.
More precisely, computers can use
the principles of evolution to shape
and refine their own programs,
in the same way the natural world
uses evolution to shape
And today, computer scientists
find that this evolved software
be beyond the smartest of humans.
One thing that we found particularly
in our original research is how
powerful evolution is as a system,
as an algorithm, to create something
that is very complex and to create
something that is very adaptive.
Torsten and his team's goal
was nothing less
than to use computerised evolution
that would control a virtual body.
To begin with,
they created 100 random brains.
As you can see,
they weren't up to much.
Evolution then took over.
The computer selected the brains
that were slightly better
and got them to breed.
The algorithm then takes those
individuals that do the best
and it allows them
to create offspring.
The best movers
of the next generation
were then bred
together and so on and on.
Amazingly,
after just 10 generations,
although they're still a bit
unsteady, the figures could walk.
Eventually, miraculously,
you actually end up
with something that works.
is you don't know why it
works and how it works.
You look at that brain and you have
no idea actually what's going on
because evolution has
optimised it automatically.
In 20 generations,
evolution had turned this...
..into this.
But these evolved computer beings
soon went far beyond just walking.
They evolved to do things
that really are impossible
to program conventionally.
They react realistically
to unexpected events.
Like being hit or falling over.
Even though we programmed these
algorithms, what actually happens
when it unfolds live,
we don't control any more
and things happen
that we never expected.
And it's quite a funny feeling
that you create these algorithms
but then they do their own thing.
An unthinking process of
evolutionary trial and error
has created these virtual creatures
that can move and react in real time.
What we're seeing here
is fantastic experimental evidence
for the creative power of systems
based on simple rules.
Watching how computers can
unconsciously evolve programs
to do things that no human
could consciously program
is a fantastic example
of the power of self-organisation.
It demonstrates that
evolution is itself
just like the other
systems we've encountered.
One based on simple
rules and feedback.
From which complexity
spontaneously emerges.
Think about it. The simple rule
is that the organism
must replicate with a few
random mutations now and again.
The feedback
comes from the environment
which favours the mutations
that are best suited to it.
The result is
ever-increasing complexity,
produced without thought or design.
The interesting thing
is that one can move up
to a higher level of organisation.
Once you have organisms
that actually have patterns on them,
these can be selected for
or selected against by processes
which are essentially feedbacks.
And so evolution itself,
is, in a sense, Turing again
with feedbacks happening
through different processes.
And that's the essence of this story.
Unthinking, simple rules
have the power to create
amazingly complex systems
without any conscious thought.
In that sense, these computer beings
are self-organised systems,
just like the one Belousov
observed happening in his chemicals.
Just like the ones in sand dunes
and the Mandelbrot sets,
in our lungs, our hearts, in weather
and in the geography
of our planet.
Design does not need
an active, interfering designer.
It's an inherent part
of the universe.
One of the things that makes people
so uncomfortable about this idea of,
if you will, spontaneous pattern
formation, is that somehow or other
you don't need a creator. But
perhaps a really clever designer,
what he would do,
is to kind of treat the universe
like a giant simulation,
where you set some initial condition
and just let the whole thing
spontaneously happen
in all of its wonder
and all of its beauty.
The mathematics of pattern formation
shows that the same kind of pattern
can show up in an enormous range
of different physical,
chemical, biological systems.
Somewhere deep down inside,
it's happening
for the same mathematical reason.
Implicit in those facts
that we see everywhere.
This, I think,
is a mind-blowing thought.
So, what is the ultimate
lesson we can take from all this?
Well, it's that
all the complexity of the universe,
all its infinite richness,
emerges from mindless simple rules,
repeated over and over again.
But remember,
powerful though this process is,
it's also inherently unpredictable.
So although I can confidently tell
you that the future will be amazing,
I can also say,
with scientific certainty,
that I have no idea what it holds.
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"The Secret Life of Chaos" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Aug. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_secret_life_of_chaos_17702>.
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