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Matt_Simpson comments on Your Evolved Intuitions - Less Wrong
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My guess is that simulations of group evolution have already been done with agent based models with simple agents (relative to the both us and the robots they were modeling in the article the grandparent linked). I would guess the answer to your question is yes, and if someone has already done something with these simpler agent based models and made group evolution appear, then I would put a fairly high probability on that 'yes.'
And if no one's done it, that just makes me want to do it...
The eating each other's babies thing is what you get when group selection doesn't appear.
But yes, simulations of primitive agent models in this sort of context has been done to death. Even before they did experiments with actual living creatures!
I've done this kind of experiment myself - more or less as play or tinkering with my research tools. And not so much baby eating as replication suppression via within-group sabotage. (My Masters work was in nature inspired collective intelligence. So not trying to be simulation of reality but relevant in the opposite direction.)
What I found curious (or amusing) was that they were doing it with actual robots. Something about it just seems so cute. :)
Is that right? I may be misremembering, but I thought that the eating babies thing was a result of group selection. Eating babies arose when a group was under group-selection pressure to have a smaller population. The group complied with the pressure by having individuals within the group consume babies within the group. It was just that the individuals ate the babies of other individuals, thereby acting in accord with both the group-selection pressure and with an individual-selection pressure.
Ahh, that's right.
I was disappointed when I read the article because it said they were doing it with models of the robots in a simulation. Real robots would have been infinitely cooler (and probably too impractical).
They checked their simulation occasionally by using real robots with the same programs ever so often.
That's closer, but unfortunately, that does nothing for my "coolness" sensors. I'm imagining a room filed with robots constantly reproducing and dieing, while interacting in interesting ways. I kind of want a room where this is going on in my house...
Now I'm imagining a residence rigged up with a robot-friendly Habitrail network.
YES! That's definitely the sort of thing I'm thinking of!