Skip to main content

Evolved

I've successfully tested trait inheritance in my water peas.

This happens quicker the more frequently that reproduction occurs, so I set their reproductive rate very high and then constructed an environment in which, if any peas were to survive, they would have to evolve. In order to eat, they would have to pass through a small hole. Needless to say, many water peas died of starvation because they were too big to fit through the hole. But not all.

It didn't take long until I noticed that the entire population of water peas was smaller than the earlier generations. That trait, being the only one that was heavily favored by the environment, ended up expressing itself the most strongly. Those that were able to eat were able to survive long enough to reproduce.

Interesting!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SQL Types

SQL Types The SQL Types mobile app for Android is now available. It is a quick reference for SQL Professionals and Database Developers.  SQL Types provides easy access to various database vendor supported data type documentation. Check it out on the Google Play store . Current supported database vendors: PostgreSQL Oracle SQL Server MySQL SQLite

Artificial behavior, or intelligence?

Artificial behavior is an area of research that seems to have been missed, or skipped over, on the path that companies like Google are taking to develop artificial intelligence. They have also jumped straight to working on human intelligence. Why not start smaller first? What about a cat or dog, or an insect? An insect may not seem very intelligent, and companies are probably not interested because they can't make much use of an artificial insect intelligence, but simple insects are quite complex. It is also quite probable that they have a consciousness, the thing that makes them "alive". Though we don't know what consciousness is, it is thought to arise naturally as a result of the complexity of the brain. The interesting thing is that, if this is so (and it likely is), then there is no difference between a "live" human and an artificial human, a computer program that mimics the human brain. They are the same thing. We can say the same, then, of someth...

Collisions with line intersections

Collisions can be determined by testing for line intersections. Imagine a line representing the ground and an object above, falling down. At time t1 , take the center point  p1  of the object. At time t2 , move the object down and take the center point p2 of the object. If the line formed by endpoints (p1, p2) intersect the ground line, a collision has occurred. On a collision, reset the object to its original position before the movement. When a collision occurs, be sure to reset the object by the same point used to determine the line intersection. In this example, I use the center point, so the object should be reset by the center point, not its actual x, y (usually top left) coordinate. It is not always the case that resetting by the x, y coordinate is sufficient. This can be seen in the following picture. It can be seen that even if the object isn't moving, but its size changes, a line intersection can occur, and resetting the object to its x, y position will...