Where are all the missing links?

This is a great idea, Chiroptera! I'd be very interested in seeing the results of this.I wonder if there might be a way to conduct such an experiment right here... well, not here but in a thread of its own. Would it be possible, say, to exploit the post-specific reply function somehow to create a thread with "branching" replies?I suppose a written forum doesn't really lend itself well to such an exercise, as the whole point of the game is to try to remember what you've been told and accurately relay it to the next person.Still, I wonder if something similar to Charles Knight's invisible post script could be incorporated in just that one thread, such that participants could only see the post they're replying to. It could run for whatever length people wish and, at the conclusion, the entire "tree" could be made visible to all participants.It would, of course, need to be assured that everyone was relaying the message without referring back to the post, and so would require the total honesty of all involved.The numbers required could be a problem, though. With the number of recipients doubling every time, it would quickly become huge, though I suppose participants could rotate "branches" or something once they become numerous enough. In this case, the onus on the participants would be to disregard any previous messages they may have seen and always attempt to relay only the current message and nothing else.Of course, in a single thread, at the rate of increase proposed, even the 300 post limit would allow for less than ten steps on each branch. Still, even that should give us enough for some interesting comparisons, I think.I must admit, though, that the more I think about this the less feasible it seems on a written forum. That's a shame. In principle, I think it's a terrific idea, and I'd love to see the results of it. It would be well worth doing, in my opinion, if there is some realistic means of executing it.Any thoughts? Can anyone think of a practical way of doing this on a written forum?

Hi Chiroptera.Nearly forgot about this. Er... it would? Perhaps I misunderstood your scenario so correct me if I'm wrong, but beginning with a single individual and given that every individual would "descend" to two new individuals, would it not simply be a matter of the population doubling each generation?If so then it should proceed as follows:Generation 1: 1
Generation 2: 2
Generation 3: 4
Generation 4: 8
Generation 5: 16
Generation 6: 32
Generation 7: 64
Generation 8: 128
Generation 9: 256
Generation 10: 512The way I figure it, by the time we reach generation 8 the total number of posts in the thread would be 255. Going to generation 9 would push it up to 511, well over the limit. So it would appear that the most generations we could fit evenly into a single thread would be eight, requiring a total of 255 "individuals." But, again, I may have misunderstood your proposal.Just to clarify, though, I wasn't actually referring to the feasibility of the large numbers required. As I said, rather than expecting 255 unique posters on the forum to participate, perhaps after several generations have gone by and the population numbers have become considerably large, the participants could start replying in multiple branches. I don't know how well this would work but if there were, by this time, a significant difference between the messages of corresponding "individuals" within each given generation then it may work well enough.What I thought was not particularly feasible was performing such an experiment in written form. Reading a message and then relaying it in writing is one thing... hearing a message and then relaying it verbally is quite another. I think your idea about relaying the message by memory the following day is a good one, though. That could go part of the way to achieving the desired effect. The key to making the thread's development resemble descent with modification would be to assure that the "replication" process is imperfect. I've only played it once that I recall, and that was in about grade seven. I'm probably changing the details even more by relaying this now, but to the best of my recollection, it began with a message about some kind of competition that you could send away for, and ended up being about a place where you go to learn calligraphy.This was after passing through everyone in our class which consisted of perhaps 25 - 30 students. To be honest, I was quite surprised that even that number of steps was enough to change the original message so significantly.EDIT: My apologies, Chiroptera. I've just now re-read your message and I made an obvious error. I was only taking the tenth generation itself into account. In retrospect, I assume that when you said "ten generations" you meant the total number of individuals (i.e. up to, and including, the tenth generation). That would indeed require more than a thousand people.Sorry about that. I really shouldn't post when I'm half asleep.This message has been edited by Tony650, 09-09-2005 12:52 AM

Indeed. That's why I'd previously suggested some kind of "invisible post" implementation in the respective thread, a la Charles Knight's Randman script. I wouldn't know how to execute it but I thought that might be one way of making the whole thing more workable.But, yes, I am getting off topic. Just wanted to clarify that point. My apologies, jar.