Balance out "kill" function

[nvu1991]

I came here after view the video about the simulation. The section about the "kill" function has a terrifying implication. It kind of keeps me awake at night. But I think I finally found the solution.

• The "kill" function is a social action but the sims have no social evaluation. I will refer to the Sims collective/community/collection as "the Sims", therefore using singular verbs. The "sims" without capitalization refers to multiple of sims. That means the Sims has no "motive" to evolve into a stronger community, they simply evolved to survive.
• The "kill" function also is a purely negative function in terms of social benefit while it is the ONLY social function. And by "social" I mean the interaction between the sims themselves, not "environmental" factors. And by "negative" I mean having less sims seems worse than having more.
• After those realizations, it would be kind of surprising to see a long-term equilibrium that does not involve mass killings.

I think if we can introduce a mechanism for the Sims to evaluate its actions (without implicit instruction aka "divine intervention"), it will evolve differently. There is an elegant way to do it. I think the conditions to reproduce should include 1 more dimension. The sims can only reproduce if it has at least 1 sim in close proximity. It's not stated explicitly but repopulation/reproduction is also a social function, a passive/hidden one rather than an active one.

I think that can be achieved in multiple ways. I can see there are multiple sensory inputs coded about population/pheromones gradient/density in the video which were not used. But I am not qualified to say which way represents best whatever the program wants to achieve.

I hope someone can take the suggestion to tweak the project to see if we can find "humanity".

I don't know how much resource is required to do that tweak so I will just put one of them up here. I of course couldn't do it myself as I barely understand the requirements to run the simulation. If anyone wants more ideas, here are a few more "natural social evaluation":

• the more crowded the proximity, the higher chance of reproduction. That means repopulation is not an equal game for all genes, the "killing loners" are what they are.
• We can introduce genders where reproduction requires different sexes in close proximity. That probably will also reduce the "kill" gene. I think that tweak could reveal some fascinating understanding about who we are.

[venzen]

Interesting ideas to modify the code. Biosim (this code) has compelling implications and pathways. Reading your concerns and suggestions sparked some thoughts which I will try to describe as briefly as possible but which ended up being quite a long response.

Perhaps it is worth considering what you're trying to simulate in relation to what the code is actually simulating. Others, including the author, will no-doubt have additional comments.

For now, Biosim has a simple criterion: survival of the individual. The only conclusion that we can come to (with survival as a criterion) is that having genes allows agents (sims) to evolve because they can. Those who possess the behaviors needed to pass the survival criterion have the highest probability of survival and get to reproduce.

The core value that you mention is "humanity". I think you agree that this is a complex and ultimately mysterious quality. In my view, it will be difficult to simulate the rational and moral and compassionate ( as well as emotional/traumatized) qualities that lead humans to behave differently from animals and fungii and bacteria and virii. The agents in Biosim closely approximate bacteria - more than virii, because of their ability to locomote and lacking the networking (social consciousness) of fungii. They most closely resemble nematodes when they have the ability to selectively kill.

Sticking to the complex Homo Sapiens theme, there is also the matter of environment - which you mention and set aside - but let's consider social environment... Several thousands of years of social evolution elapsed as different societies progressed from hunter-gatherer to tribe, to nation state. Plato, Aristotle and the Buddha's philosophical discussions about social hierarchy, ethics and the ideal state are, arguably, quite recent phenomena in human history. And their political science was not new because the faculty to philosophize was new (at the time) but because the State was a new phenomenon (of their time). It would be laborious for me to outline their descriptions of the social problems of the states of their time but suffice to say that murder and theft and corruption and competition for resources were worrisome phenomena - as they remain today.

So, you might ask me: "why talk about social environment in relation to humanity and murder and Biosim?" For one thing, the state is a high level - and managed - social environment. In the state environment we have laws and rights and responsibilities and resources are distributed as equally as possible to preserve a peaceful society (as you describe in your 2nd bullet point). In this environment we think of murder and killing as an abhorrent and unnecessary deviant behavior.

However, I think it is important to acknowledge that history is cyclical and that certain environments bias for certain behaviors. For example, a pervasive failure of the electrical grid would present most people with an environment that requires very self-centered and non-altruistic behavior for the sake of survival (as you mention in your 1st bullet point). Therefore, physically dominant genes and self-preservative behavior would be biased for in a survival situation. Is that still the "truth" about our fallible humanity?

Biosim does not, yet, account for food/resources or acquisition of resources via murder. If food/resources could be included as survival criteria (and access to women as a reproductive criterion), without State protections, the outcome seems self-evident. Coding State protections - laws and penalties and enforced monogamy - would probably yield a simulation outcome that is similar to what we see in the world today.

[nvu1991]

I originally wrote this "issue" as an email. There was something that I left out of my "issue" because I think it delves a little too deep into personal opinion. I feel like what we call "humanity" has a slight scent of arrogant from natural selection point of view. Sure, we are the most elite communicators on the earth but that might be the difference of capability, not a unique attribute/drive to human. Most animals/organisms don't kill their own indiscriminately, most of them share resources, many of them have social hierarchies etc. So is what we deem "humanity" uniquely to human? I personally think not, I used to think so.

I think "killing" (our own) is obviously wrong from natural selection point of view. Homo Sapiens was not apex predator, we NEED other members to survive, to collect resources and to defend ourselves against plenty of obviously stronger, faster, deadlier species. Bearing a child was a deadly endeavor, raising one to adulthood with no hygiene protections alone was mostly impossible. For human, killing a single community member without cause simply reduces the chance of survival of that community. Apex predators need no community. To put it in RPG term, why bother with charisma stats when you are already maxed out in strength :).

However, to your point of social environment, I don't think we should run the simulation to only confirm what has already happened. It's kind of hard to think million years of evolution has been wrong. If it was wrong, it had plenty of time to correct. I think we should run simulation to understand the process of how it happen, of what variable affect which part of our lives, to gain a deeper understand of who we are.

Maybe reproduction is the process that reduce the killing gene to minimal, maybe NOT. We just have to run and see. Once we have proper understanding, we can see if natural selection was "wrong". And if it's "wrong", what's the reason or mitigation? And by "wrong" I don't know what I meant yet. To clarify, I am not unsure, I am sure that I don't know yet.

I don't know if this community welcome philosophical discussions rather than technical ones but I just like to elaborate my understanding and reasoning for the "tweak".

[LeonardTheMagnificent]

Interesting Ideas, this simulation offers a beginning to some cool discoveries. I wonder how much it could be developed without hardcoding behaviors.