Re: Formalization of the Artificial Life Systems

[Vladimir Jojic]

Dear Barry,

First of all, thanks a lot for the list of the references.
 
Interesting thing is that, Swarm agents should be dynamic, am I right?
(adding new methods (objc feature) , allocating new space for new
variables and so on ...)

Presently I am interested in solving the simple problems first, meaning
unique simple composite systems representing agents, later on expanding to
more than one kind of agents (as Dr. Landauer suggested), and finally if
possible expanding to the dynamical systems (though, I don't see a way to
formalize those ... yet). 

I am aware that this approach, could lead me to a dead-end, after the
second phase (more than one composite system agent), but I am willing to
take that risk, rather than trying to do something I am not sure I am able
to bring to an end (at this moment at least).
 
I have an ugly, brute-force solution for the problem of dynamic agents We
have world/environment represented with an affine space and one dynamic
agent. Our agent decides to change his state space (I suppose we have a
function that maps old state space to a new state space). What we should
do is to construct a function that maps (projects) our old world to a new
one (so that it conforms to change in the agent) and old vectors
(behavior) to new ones. My guess is that function (or linear operator) 
that project worlds onto new one, can be constructed from the function
that maps old agent's state space to new one. 

This way we would create a dynamic environment, that actually conforms to
the way agent sees the world !

When I started thinking about formalization of ALife, I came to
realization that set of agents, set of behaviours, description of the
space, schedule (I am taking swarm components for example) are actually
projections of the real world in time onto different planes. 

If we were to agree, that dynamic agent can change his state space, and
that this change would cause the world to change its `look' (as I
suggested up there), we would be again working on a projection of the
world (this time on a higher level: how does the agent see the world
around) ... discussion theme for the cognitive scienctists :)

I am afraid, that this is all rather vague in this moment, and it will
remain so, until I get some work done :) 

Regards,
Vladimir







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