Artificial Life
Can you simulate life? Sure.
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In this video I talk about the field of artificial life while exploring a variety of programs that simulate evolution and life-like behaviors. We take a tour from genetic algorithms to evolution simulations to emergent alife. I try to bring some useful concepts and categories to the conversation, like Darwinian replicators and implicit vs explicit design. I highlight the work of many, many people in the field, and give a brief history of the journey towards open-ended evolution.
Special thanks to Akarsh Kumar and Bert Chan for helping with the Lenia implementation!
~SUPPORT ME~
Learn to code faster with Scrimba! (saves you 20% and supports me): https://scrimba.com/?via=EmergentGarden
Patreon: / emergentgarden
Twitter: / max_romana
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emergentgard...
I'll fill this out more later......
~PROGRAMS~
Lenia: https://evolvecode.io/alife/lenia.html
Evoloops: https://evolvecode.io/alife/evoloop.html
Particle Life: https://sandbox-science.com/particle-...
Bibites: https://store.steampowered.com/app/27...
Life Engine: https://thelifeengine.net/
Convolutional CA: https://neuralpatterns.io/
Game of Life: https://evolvecode.io/alife/gol.html
Multi-neighborhood CA: • Compilation of Cross-Channel Selective Mul...
Alien Project: https://www.alien-project.org/index.html
Germs Genetic Algorithm: https://evolvecode.io/alife/aquarium....
Subnautica: https://store.steampowered.com/app/26...
Synthetic Selection: • What is Synthetic Selection? Game Dev Log 0
Neural CA: https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
Particle Lenia: https://znah.net/lenia/
~VIDEOS~
Self Replication 1: • Universal Constructor / Self-Replicating D...
Self Replication 2: • Self Replication #3
DNA Animations 1: • Kinetochore and Mitosis (2014) Drew Berry ...
DNA Animations 2: • DNA animation (2002-2014) by Drew Berry an...
Flow Lenia: • Bootstrapping the open-ended evolution of ...
Chemical Gardens: • The Chemical Garden - A time lapse movie
Cambrian Animations: / @paleozoo
Microscopic Footage: / @journeytomicro
Cosmos Evolution: • Carl Sagan - COSMOS - Evolution
Red Tailed Hawk: • Hunting Bats with a Red Tailed Hawk | BBC ...
Crystals: • Droplets Transforming into Crystals | Crys...
~READINGS~
Artificial Life, Chris Langton: http://www.probehead.com/log/texts/La...
Lenia: https://chakazul.github.io/Lenia/Java...
Source of Lenia Species: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17799
Theory of Self-Replicating Automata, von Neumann: https://cba.mit.edu/events/03.11.ASE/...
Influential Paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
"The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins
"A River Out of Eden", Richard Dawkins
"Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Dan Dennett
"Complexity: A Guided Tour", Melanie Mitchell
Robert Sapolsky Emergence: • 22. Emergence and Complexity
Wolfram Quote: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/...
~MUSIC~
/ @acolyte-compositions
"Fortress Europe" Dan Bodan
~TIMESTAMPS~
(0:00) Artificial Life
(4:28) Darwin Among the Machines
(10:36) Genetic Algorithms
(14:22) Evolution Simulations
(20:00) Emergent Alife
(23:24) Self-Replication
(27:32) Open Ended Evolution
(31:35) Get A Life
~*===*~
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. -Darwin, Origin of Species, last paragraph
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