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Author Topic:   Design without a designer?
Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 2 of 14 (58773)
09-30-2003 1:33 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by IrishRockhound
09-30-2003 9:55 AM


I played with this algorithm a lot when I was younger, and had a lot of variants. I even made a psychodelic DOS screen saver based on it (it had 256 levels which the ants could alter, not 2; it then did smooth palette rotation on the results). It is an excellent example of complexity coming from a simple set of rules (far simpler than the set of rules our universe operates in). Not quite as enthralling as the Mandelbrot set, but the complexity that it gets does is really neat
It inspired a completely different fractal "art generator" by me which I called "roaches", that had reproducing ants that had mutable rulesets that ate away the screen (which was steadily refreshed). Of course, that was back when I was just programming in Qbasic (7th grade?).
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 4 of 14 (58796)
09-30-2003 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Warren
09-30-2003 3:16 PM


Warren, what have you seen of genetic algorithms? What leads to your assertion that they are "tuned to seek adaptive change that is most certainly non-random with regard to the reasons for adaptation"? Give an example.
BTW, this is in no way a genetic algorithm that was discussed here. It is simply a case of complexity from simplicity.
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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 Message 3 by Warren, posted 09-30-2003 3:16 PM Warren has not replied

  
Rei
Member (Idle past 7012 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 7 of 14 (58977)
10-01-2003 2:06 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by MrHambre
10-01-2003 1:39 PM


I think one of the simplest and most beautiful examples of this is the Mandelbrot set. Such a simple algorithm. You take a graph of the complex plane near the center, having your x-axis be the real component and your y-axis be the imaginary component. You pick a point on the imaginary plane - it doesn't matter where, it'll get you pretty, complex results no matter where you pick. Then, for each complex point you want the color of, you do the following algorithm:
Given a point to plot Z, and the initial point you picked C, run:
Z = Z^2 + C
This algorithm will either converge on zero or on infinity. If you set a threshold for where to decide that it is going off to infinity, then you can look at how fast it is converging to infinity by how many steps it takes to get to that threshold.
The mandelbrot set is the plot of the number of steps it takes to get past that threshold. That's it. For all it's beautiful complexity, it is such a simple algorithm.
Simple rules in themselves create simple results. But iterative simple rules can produce amazing complexity.

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