Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!emory!mind.org!runic!thantos
From: thantos@runic.mind.org (Alexander Williams)
Subject: Re: ALife Park
Organization: Runic Writings UUCP Link: Convoco Hasturam
Message-ID: <D87JK8.A29@runic.mind.org>
References: <3o61j0$cbp@ns.cityscape.co.uk> <Pine.ULT.3.91.950502193231.12947A-100000@rac7.wam.umd.edu> <3oavu0$9c6@molson.merak.com> <3odd9q$7h6@hustle.rahul.net>
Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 12:19:19 GMT
Lines: 30

In an arcane scroll, Alexander Williams quotes the holy scripturist
Peter C. McCluskey, replying to the mystic words as written, saying:

> That assumes that the virtual computer is bug-free. Alife has an impressive
>ability to find loopholes in virtual instruction sets. The internet
>communications that the digital wildlife preserve would require increase
>the complexity of the virtual computer. The increased cpu power that it
>would make available will probably enable organisms of unprecedented
>sophistication. I don't think complacency is justified.

   I think its safe to say you've never looked at the proposal for
net.Tierra and thought about how it'd be done.
   The creatures would /not/ be moving themselves.  For all intents
and purposes the Tierrans cannot tell the difference between the
insids of standard Tierra and net.Tierra, primarily because there
/is/ none.  The architecture in which they execute is /precisely/
the same in both cases.  The difference comes in an additional bit
of code akin to the Reaper which would sample current creatures,
choose some by some algorithm and ``export'' them to another
net.Tierran island.
   Worrying about the Tierran organisms breaking into the net code
is as obscene an insult to intelligence as worrying about the
Tierrans breaking into the Reaper and rewriting it, or worrying
about /you/ having offspring that will negate the force of gravity
simply by their presence.
-- 
thantos@runic.mind.org (Alexander Williams)     | PGP 2.6 key avail
  Should we shed our mental pants and compare   | DF 22 16 CE CA 7F
  the size of our consciousnesses?              | 98 47 13 EE 8E EC
      Jan Sand to Marvin Minsky                 | 9C 2D 9B 9B
