Project Goal

Here is the grand plan.

The ultimate goal of Narjillos could be Open-Ended Evolution. The problem is, I'm not sure what "open-ended" means to begin with. I have a feeling that evolution will look more "open-ended" to me as the system becomes complex. There is no need to evolve something if your system doesn't reward it. So, to make open-ended evolution, I'd have to write a very complex simulation. I don't want to do that.

So the more concrete goal of narjillos is more modest. I'm trying trigger to an Evolutionary Arms Race: creatures becoming more and more specialized by competing with each other.

I already have symmetrical arms races, where Narjillos become more specialized to compete with other similar narjillos–just like trees in a forest grow higher by trying to get more sunlight than other trees in the same species. That's easy. The hard one is getting an Asymmetrical Arms Race, where two or more different strands of DNA compete with each other–like the genes in leopards and gazelles, that result in beautifully specialized body shapes.

To get an Asymmetrical Arms Race, I need different strands of DNA (call them "species") that live together in the same environment. That is, I need Speciation. Speciation isn't easy to get in artificial life. Most systems (including the current version of Narjillos) end up with a single species taking over the world and driving everyone else to a quick extinction. So, how do I get Speciation?

Most systems force species to happen by using allopatric speciation: build walls in the simulation, and watch different species evolve on the two sides of the wall. But for the arms race to happen, the two species need to come back together at some point. My (still unverified) hunch is: at that point one of the species will take over the other, and we'll be back where we started, stuck with a single species. To get stable species that stay separate and live together, I need something better than allopatric speciation.

Now that's where it gets interesting. It seems that you can get long-term Sympatric Speciation in an artificial life environment if you have two things: Assortative Mating and an environment that supports Ecological Niches. To get Assortative Mating, you also need Sexual Reproduction.

Currently, Narjillos doesn't have Ecological Niches: everybody is trying to do the same thing (reach for food). To get Niches, I need to have more complex and specialized models for bodies, and I need the creatures to interact with each other–for example by eating each other. I might also need a Self-Regulating Ecosystem of some kind, even if I don't know yet which shape that could take.

Narjillos doesn't even have Sexual Reproduction yet. That's another challenge. If I want Assortative Mating, then Sexual Reproduction is the only way through.

So, to recap, my goals are:

• Sexual Reproduction, and then Assortative Mating.
• Ecological Niches, maybe by way of a Self-Regulating Ecosystem.
• All of the above together should result in Speciation.
• Speciation might be the springboard to my ultimate goal: an Asymmetric Arms Race.

That being said, all the above plan is just that–a plan. So it will probably change as I keep working on the project, pivot it, or abandon it. The only short-term goal of Narjillos is the same it was when I started: for me to work on a personal project that's different than anything I could do for work, and to have a lot of fun. This program has served me very well in this respect.