New Scientist: Simulated society may generate virtual culture

[FrostyBoy]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7674&feedId=online-news_rss20

The experiment will see about 1000 agents live together in a simulated world hosted on a network of 50 computers based at the various institutions involved.

Each agent will be capable of various simple tasks, like moving around and building simple structures, but will also have the ability to communicate and cooperate with its cohabitants. Though simple interaction, the researchers hope to watch these characters create their very own society from scratch.

Every character in the simulated world will need to eat to survive, and will be able to learn from their environment through trial and error - learning, for example, how to cultivate edible plants with water and sunlight. In addition, characters will be able to reproduce by mating with members the opposite sex and their offspring will inherited a random collection of their parents "genetic" traits.

Interesting

[Dis]

why do I see this experiment ending with all of them killing each other.

But I doubt they programmed violence into the model making it unrealistic and entirely worthless on a human scale.

[Dis]

and the landscape looks a little arid. Good luck growing food to survive. they are going to have to eat each other. I doubt they programmed that into the model either.

[Saras]

There is no spoon.

[BeBMan]

Like we didn't know this from the last few thousand years

[FrostyBoy]

Well think about it, with this we can learn how to reverse evolution in simulation. Then we will know all things that ever existed and when they came and so on and so forth.



edit: I should include a smiley just in case you take me seriously.


Though I like to believe it is possible.

[DRoseDARs]

Introduce religion and watch the fun begin...

[DRoseDARs]

Or mice...

[FrostyBoy]

You read the article?

It says something about them even developing their own religion (a sort of belief system I think)

I didn't read the article completely.

[Spiffor]

They are extremely confident in their AI.

I strongly doubt this thing will deliver results that are anything like the scientists expect (well, the language should happen, but I'm not even sure they'll assist to an evolution of language). They'd have to have a knack for computers, psychology, sociology and linguistics to make the project lifelike.

As a critics said, it's much more interesting to study the emergence of actual online cultures. At least, these cultures are there, so there's a real phenomenon to study, instead of attempting to create one.

[DRoseDARs]

They don't mention "religion" specifically in the article. The creatures may develope their own language based on objects in their environment and may even progress towards symbolism. The people working on this project think it's possible that rituals might evolve out of the symbolism.

[DRoseDARs]

http://www.new-ties.org/mambo/

Apparently, the apocalypse comes August 31, 2007...

[Immortal Wombat]

That's would have to be very impressive AI coding to completely decouple it from human culture and enable a completely new system to emerge.

[Dracon II]

Simulated society may generate virtual culture....

... it's already happened

[Kuciwalker]

Just something I thought of while thinking about how rituals could develop.

Say you have to kill animals for food, and so the hunters have rpg-esque stats that are not visible to them directly. So a custom could develop that, before you go off on a big hunt, you test your stats by killing a smaller animal.