Re: Delicate complexity? (was: RE: computronium prime-oxide_

CurtAdams@aol.com
Sun, 22 Nov 1998 18:51:34 EST

In a message dated 11/22/98 4:34:33 PM, Nick Bostrom wrote:

>Hal Finney wrote:
>
>> they ran into balancing problems, where trivial
>> strategies would dominate (often a problem with alife simulations).
>> At last report they were introducing various ad hoc rules and limitations
>> to try to get robust evolutionary behavior.

>
>At this most basic level, complexity or growth in compexity does
>certainly not seem to be the most likely or natural situation. But
>since it's boring (for the human psychology) we change the parameters
>until we get something interesting. I makes me wonder if we may not
>be prone to overestimate the likelihood that the far future will
be
>complex.

I expect that it will be complex. Complexity is thermodynamically favorable - it's simplicity that's hard.

In the wild speculation department, I wonder if part of the reason that Alife has a problem with trivial strategies arises because alife doesn't generally try to deal with thermodynamics. Hence they're not modelling one of the biggest drives to complexity.