Did Google Researchers Just Create a Self-Replicating Computer Life Form?

[@demeurecorentin]

Brainfuck was originally developed as a joke, the fact that it found a niche use in biological computer science is amazing.

[@Juttutin]

@@demeurecorentin as someone who played around with it for enough hours to leave a lasting dent in my psyche many many years ago...
amazing isn't strong enough. It's like the universe deciding to pie us in the face for not realising everything is|was a joke all along.

[@burgerbobbelcher]

Yeah, it's such a brainfuck

[@NetanyahooWarCriminal]

My virgin ears

[@digie3823]

No way. This is the last thing that I would expect to read on a comment on a video from Anton. Few know it from on coding community, at least I think, or just know it as a meme.

[@webgpu]

"brainfk" was a joke, "mumps" was a joke taken seriously, and "J" is serious. (J is a derivation of APL)

[@AceSpadeThePikachu]

So it turns out life doesn't emerge in spite of entropy...it emerges BECAUSE of it. It implies that not only should life be common, it should be EVERYWHERE. Heck, ANY system left to its own devices should form something resembling life according to this. A universe made of life. Never before has a coding program been more appropriately named.

[@Rishi123456789]

I believe that life exists everywhere. We live in a universe that literally cranks out life everywhere. Life is a cosmic imperative.

[@Beanskiiii]

Lol whatever makes you feel better. Not a single life form on Earth arose by chance. Not a single one. Despite their “cheating”, the Miller-Urey experiment proved that even with human intervention abiogenesis is impossible. Imagine comparing computer code with physical code (DNA) and making up some asinine correlation between the two. As if this computer project has moved the needle closer to proving life arose spontaneously.

[@TS-jm7jm]

you are so delusion it is astounding, simplistic behaviour that mimics crystal formation doesn't even remotely match biology

[@user-qm1wc7dc8t]

Good deduction.

[@kingoietro99]

Emergence is everywhere. This doesn’t mean that there is life everywhere.

[@agranero6]

Brainfuck is just a way to describe a Turing Machine in a programming language format, so even being a joke it was a solid concept far before it was created.

[@dan-bz7dz]

No, Brainfuck is a programming language that was created as a joke. That's all it is.

[@Crimsuhn]

The fact this title can exist in this world on a non click bait channel is wild.

[@G3Kappa]

Maybe to laymen but research on computer lifeforms has been progressing for over 60 years, this is not a particularly surprising title or something that wasn't achieved before. But it's from a "Google researcher" so there's the impression that it's grandiose or cutting edge... It's not, there are many simulations inspired by simple CA like CGoL where there isn't an explicit fitness function or instruction to replicate, that achieve self-replication regardless. I suggest looking into MNCA (Multiple-neighborhood CA). They're much prettier to look at.

[@GEMSofGOD_com]

I've noticed that ppl (incl. Anton) often think that Anton's news are bigger than they actually are. This one & all cool math model news are very interesting news though.

[@ugrena7419]

@@G3Kappa Any news that has Google's name in it immediately raises flags for me, but this is an interesting experiment regardless.

[@123100ozzy]

I recommend you read the research.

[@parmenides2576]

This is literally THE pop science click bait channel on UA-cam dude

[@cg21]

Some thoughts on this:
1. Limited space IS a fitness criterion in itself.
2. Longer code means less probability for a working program to emerge.
3. If space is the only limit, fast replication is the optimal fitness. So nothing more complex has an advantage and will always be suppressed by fast replication.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

amazing insights.

[@blijebij]

I think empty space and virtual particles are automated from what you state.

[@chadknight5791]

@@blijebij AKA "Voxels"

[@blijebij]

@@chadknight5791 yes who knows :)

[@chadknight5791]

@@blijebij are you in the 3d field?

[@johnwest7993]

If ANYTHING is occurring randomly, it will either accomplish nothing, destroy itself, or self-replicate. Over time, the first two do nothing. Only the 3rd causes larger change, and so it will.

[@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep]

And the third is impossible because everything goes towards a state of decay including information like stored in DNA it doesn't magically increase over and over to a higher state or pop into thin air for the whole process to start in the first place. If that was the case a random number generator using letters could eventually create words, sentences, and then whole coherent intelligent books out of thin air. And even that would be more realistic than a naturalistic origin of life with the programing required for the basic components for the most basic smallest living cell. It's crazy how people entertain such nonsense totally counter to basic logic, reasoning and the paradigms of reality all to do away with the obvious need for a mind a God.

[@anywallsocket]

converge diverge or oscillate ;)

[@dalenewton9697]

@@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep Randomly generated letters do eventually produce entire books. Look up the 'infinite monkey'.

[@Strype13]

@@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep You seriously wrote that wall of nonsense just to peddle your baseless, elementary "because... God" theory?

[@skaruts]

@@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep you can't reject magic and then bring God onto the table. If you bring God onto the table, then you're the one accepting magic as an explanation for the existence of Life.

A "Game of life" pattern can actually self-replicate. The program "Golly" provides one by default, called "linear-propagator-p237228340". It even has a double line of "gliders" encoding the information on how to build the end stations, like DNA.

[@dan-bz7dz]

Programming something to replicate is not self-replicating

[@Voltastik]

Thanks Anton, watching Anton is scientifically proven to improve your day ( even if it's not been great ) and it definitely improves your mind. You even inspired me to make my own YT channel 💛!

[@seanmadson8524]

Chaos mimicking life in simulations sounds like some 40k lore

[@cancan-wq9un]

Life came from chaos.
So that is what they mean with primordial truth

[@wayneharrison]

Edward Lorenz, the Butterfly Effect.🦋=🌪

[@VocalChainsStudio]

Chaos is a natural state observed from stable regions. That's why life on Earth feels normal to us and chaos seems disorderly: we have evolved to survive and replicate ourselves in a very specific area of stability within a chaotic system.

[@Danuxsy]

sir chaos is all around us at all times, including inside of you and all of your behaviour.

[@seanmadson8524]

@@Danuxsy Of course. When referring to chaos in a way that makes it sound like it has behavior and motivations, this simply reminds me of 40k, because chaos is essentially an alternate form of life that exists in a separate dimension in that universe

[@seabeepirate]

Absolutely no evolutionary pressure is a stretch. They would need infinite space in order to avoid the constraints of a closed system to produce an environment with no pressures and then the code itself would be a pressure since it has the ability to alter the local environment. It’s still cool and I’m looking forward to what they discover with it but exactness is not objective.

[@_n-o-d6217]

Good point, I think the finite space induced an intrinsic fitness criterion. In the 80's there was a computer game call Core War in which two players wrote code that would fight for dominating the landscape/RAM. here they used a different language but setting is comparable (haven't read the paper)

[@axle.student]

"Absolutely no evolutionary pressure is a stretch." I agree. There is some hidden rules here that haven't been stated or declared.

[@RubelliteFae]

Yes, I think the most important thing that wasn't explained is what the initial parameters were. Instructions for "deciding" vectors of motion? Instructions telling a pixel how to respond to it's neighbours?
There's always biases and it's helpful to consider if there could have been any relevant to the results.

[@axle.student]

@@RubelliteFae There should some mix of (CA) cellular automata from 256 rules, but it's the extra programmatic and runtime rules that come with just running the application. Initial application settings, what is used for seeding the SRND generator. What causes the application to terminate or not terminate.

[@carpinado3089]

Good point

[@PhilW222]

The way self-replication arises from just random changes - and with no evolutionary pressures - is fascinating!

[@rey_nemaattori]

Well the ones that dont replicate wont stick around...
Logically it makes sense that if theres a non-zero chance some combination of instructions or molecules could become self-replicating, given enough iterations / time, life is guaranteed to spring forth.

[@Gamefreak8112]

To quote Dr Ian Malcolm, "life finds a way."

[@jpphoton]

indeed. i had a hunch though

[@Cheesepuff8]

It’s a very vague idea but I think reproduction/evolution (somewhere at some point in time) is inevitable as long as there’s time/the possibility for change and stuff to happen (and as long as enough time can pass)
So I’m not surprised at all by these findings, I feel like I’d be surprised if this didn’t happen, tho obviously that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was (smart enough to be) one of the people working on it

[@f0rdgamer]

⁠​⁠@@Cheesepuff8 the parts of the universe that are capable of sustaining “the possibility for change” (liquid water) are unfortunately low, however.

[@andrewbreding593]

If I had one vote to cast for "truly wonderful person" it would be you Anton. Your content is so pure and your so jolly about it

[@Atrigraphy]

They should isolate samples of those self-replicators and give them fresh environments. Then merging different environments at a later state.

[@sindrek8]

This is how we get replicators, have you not seen Stargate??

[@carldurrell9943]

Or crystalline entity in Star Trek TNG or or Skinwalker Ranch under the mesa?

[@vapormissile]

*chittering clicking noise intensifies*
"How can they cut the power? They're pocket calculators!"
🤖
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🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖
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🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖
🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖
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🌚✨👾👽🦠🐌🙈😆🤫

[@marko-1987]

Skiwalker has something bizarre going on under their, the whole area has anomalys of all kinds. A few places shown on Beyond Skinwalker also are strange.

[@edgardsimon983]

GOA ULD

[@nerd_merdules3933]

Indeed.

[@InventiveHarvest]

We need to make a place called "science island" for experiments like this. We don't want self replicating robots getting out in the wild.

[@marcrettew8284]

It already exists. It's called Australia.

[@Gamefreak8112]

What if aliens had that thought and chose earth

[@lordravicus4023]

The Big Lez Show explains it all actually. ​@@marcrettew8284

[@doubledigital_]

we have biological ones mate they are called humans xD

[@Jules_73]

Science Park! A spinoff of Jurassic Park.

[@jeremymetzler72]

“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant”

[@andrewbreding593]

The maddening thing about statements like this, it's not far from the mark. Literally chemosynthesis doesn't make "plants"☘️😂

[@andrewbreding593]

Who are you quoting?

[@nemonomen3340]

@@andrewbreding593 Physicist Jeremy England.

[@josephbrandenburg4373]

This has to be the stupidest thing anyone has ever said

[@andrewbreding593]

@@josephbrandenburg4373 math doesn't care about your predilection with object permanence. It's not meant to be a truism it's an abstraction

[@bentationfunkiloglio]

Seems like the paper authors might have incorrectly assumed that randomly generated programs in a given language will produce random behavior. They will not.
The underlying rules and structure of any programming language will inevitably generate strong biases in the way their respective programs behave.

[@axle.student]

I agree. I am looking for the undeclared rules in this experiment.

[@seabeepirate]

@@bentationfunkiloglio I agree too. Digital computers are not yet capable of true randomness and the boundaries of the simulation impose on the outcome. A system with no pressures is stagnant so an evolving system must have pressures. Inherent pressures can still be evolutionary pressures.

[@realitysims1239]

Yeah that was exactly my thought, very important to define what "random" means in this experiment. The random functions used in programming are still alghorthitms, its pattern based. Basically if you waited really long you should be able to see some kind of pattern. Maybe that is simply what we're seeing when waiting for long enough in this experiment. Which brings another question, what is randomness :D Maybe the way random works in our universe is the same only on a much larger scale, and so there is also a hidden pattern causing the same behavior in biologics. So it's still interesting!

[@WalterSamuels]

@@seabeepirate Nothing is capable of "true randomness". It doesn't exist in the universe. Random merely means: "hard to predict", or "hard to identify patterns". That doesn't mean there aren't any, and that doesn't mean it wasn't a predetermined state from an initial set of conditions.

[@mttlsa686]

I'm not a scientist, a programmer or whatever and I've just commented this: "You say the language contains 8 instruction and no rule. But aren't instructions something we can interpret as rules? What does it mean to have instructions and no rules?". You confirmed my doubt.

[@cpuuk]

If I can quote Monty Python-
"So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
'Cause it's bugger all down here on Earth"

[@Jeffrey-ed8sz]

Great reference.😊😊

[@fr57ujf]

In a causal universe, your birth is not unlikely, it is inevitable. Worse, there is no "you". That's an idea your brain produces to advance your survival. Physically, only cells are individuals. Humans are collectives of cells working together for a common purpose.

[@Sa_Raw]

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

[@HisZotness]

Can we have your liver?

[@carmenmccauley585]

"Cos there's" not "cos its".

[@user-li7ec3fg6h]

Thank you very much Anton, for this once again super exciting video! It's great to be kept so well informed by you about exciting new discoveries and opportunities to create new knowledge. And of course for the warm smile at the end, which I always like to return. All the best for you, your family and your channel!

[@genostellar]

I honestly don't know why it was a surprise. If you have programs set to change their properties randomly and they are put together in a place with limited space, the fact is that the ones that are better able to survive, do survive, and the ones that aren't as good will die out. There doesn't have to be any inherent mechanism. It's simply limited space and random changes. Eventually, a random change makes something that self-replicates and is thus able to survive much better than all other programs, and so it spreads and snuffs out everything else until something better takes over. Seems obvious to me.

[@I_SuperHiro_I]

It seems like a weird analog to be trying to connect. They seem like totally different modalities.

[@Strype13]

_Cerebral narcissist has entered the chat._

[@I_SuperHiro_I]

@@Strype13narcissists like their own comments.

[@skaruts]

I was thinking the same. It's not hard to understand. It's just a matter of time until any given combination arises, and if and when a combination that favors self-replication appears, then it will naturally prevail over the non-self-replicating ones. And if other self-replicating combinations also appear, they will naturally prevail as well, over the same ones, and will of course have to competing for resources (available space) with the other self-replicating combinations, because they are all trying to consume the same resources.
The results aren't surprising to me (though they are quite interesting). What is surprising to me is that they actually managed to pull this off.

[@axle.student]

Why would they "need" to survive? I thought this was some randomized program.

[@TexanMiror2]

I don't understand why this is unexpected? If you give what is essentially a "grid of random mutating programs which may interact with their neighbor in the grid" the POSSIBILITY of affecting other programs and the possibility of affecting them in such a way that they copy the original, then eventually, replication will happen, obviously. The fact there is no pressure to do anything in particular actually just makes it more likely, not less likely, because there is no force that could prevent such a replicating program to occur. It just becomes a matter of time until the randomness creates a combination that will replicate.
This research so abstract I don't understand how it has any impact on our understanding of reality - a reality in which we already KNOW life can happen through Abiogenesis (we are here after all!), but need to understand how it can happen chemically, under which circumstances (because unlike this abstract research, life in reality is subject to many pressures and dangers, and possibly requires elaborate chemical and physical circumstances to even have any chance occur at all), and how such self-replicating chemical structures could eventually become more and more complex while surviving over billions of years of planetary and stellar evolution.

[@skavihekkora5039]

I think you should drop supersticious beliefs like abiogenesis - dr James Tour can help, especially in his debate with that shmuck Dave Farina.

[@tddzyx7070]

I suppose in retrospect the outcome seems obvious to you but the point of scientific research is to test things, not just decide what you think is right. Also, I don't understand why you critique the relative simplicity of the experiment. Did you expect them to just go watch an alien planet for billions of years?

[@SirSpence99]

All this tells us is that if there is a copy function and if you randomly shift code around, eventually that code will find the copy function, and copy the copy function. In order for this to be useful beyond fodder for people who know nothing about the research done into abiogenesis, they would have to make the copy function as difficult to get to as the copy function life has. The reality would indicate that at best, you would get replication on timescales several orders of magnitude larger than what was demonstrated in this example.
Also, it is not wise to use the anthropic principle to "prove" something when there are alternative explanations, even if you don't find those explanations credible. Doing so is more likely than not to prevent you from finding the actual answer, an answer that is likely (in almost all cases) to be far more complex than the one you have already decided upon.

[@drhxa]

Going from "we're here" to "abiogenesis is possible" is a huge jump and not a proof. There are other possible reasons why we might be here. Thus, showing an actual existence proof of abiogenesis is helpful. Ideally it would be a biochemical example via going from amino acids to self-replicating life. However, given that that is extremely difficult (and plus many are already working on it), this computational example is the next best thing. With this, you can study empirically the math behind early evolution and potentially even help to guide the chemical research to achieve the biochem version

[@SirSpence99]

@@drhxa You are right on the first half, wrong on the second. This is not remotely a demonstration of abiogenesis. It is simply equivalent to demonstrating that due to gravity, mass will clump together and larger clumps will attract more mass than smaller ones. The problem with abiogenisis as a proposal is that the timescales have been handwaved away as "a really long time" without actually getting a reasonable estimate on them. (Which ironically would likely provide an actual answer to the Fermi paradox.) Doing some *basic* math with currently observed rates and it becomes clear that 10 billion years is on the short side for complex life forming to humans using the current models we have. Additionally, to go from abiogenesis to complex life itself within the timescales we have is... questionable. And this project doesn't even remotely address that.

[@TheLuckyShepherd]

09:51 you can say that again 😂 length is very important when it comes to replication

[@stud1o699]

Underrated comment

[@imranhussain-iy8xi]

It’s incredible to see such kindness and love. Thank you all!

[@Theodore-tj4jo]

Thanks again for your "Above and Beyond" most excellent reports and even MORE awesome Graphics, your graphics are the absolute Best !! Love watching , thx so much Anton !!!

[@rozzgrey801]

OMG, this changes everything! Well, it probably doesn't, but I've always wanted to say that.

[@skylilly1]

😊😂

[@Ttangko_]

[@josephang9927]

The game if life is interesting but I don't buy the assumption of emergence from simple rules. Sure, there are simple rules but the infrastructure on which those rules run is quiet complex.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

and yet, the infrastructure started out very simple, much like how a higher dimensions is built off a lower dimension. entropy, from simple to complex, we started at the bottom and now we are at the top - or something along those lines. I do love the way you think man, indeed, lovely.

[@ginnyjollykidd]

Between this simple program and its emergent properties; and the experiment combining primordial atmospheric gasses and lightning producing biochemicals, some self-replicating; life arising on a lifeless planet being an emergent condition is both unsurprising but fascinating and awe-inspiring!

[@KeelanJon]

I am glad someone finally created a program for this, I have often pondered a simulation of this nature. Imagine what could come from running a larger simulation with our most powerful computers allowing for faster computations. Digital evolution on fast forward. Incredibly exciting.

[@mrslave41]

7:52 “billions of years” i think life arose on earth within less than a billion years after its crust cooled enough.

[@Virakotxa]

Which makes think of panspermia as a more reasonable start...

[@Someone-tn8ur]

@@Virakotxa Panspermia just kicks the can down the road. If Earth itself couldn't produce life, then what planet (or other object) would be able to?

[@Virakotxa]

@@Someone-tn8ur I think so, given enough time... For having appeared so soon, without change, after the Earth cooled, the alternative would be that life is some kind of inherent property of matter, or the universe...? I don't think that is likely, if not impossible?

[@bangtanssera]

But still those billions of years have made the home of life what it should be for that process

[@vapormissile]

"arose" by landing here. It sizzled when it landed, then we cooled. Then it took hold. Then we got transplanted here. It's probably what it looks like - some kind of broken garden.

[@STORMDAME]

I've only read the title so far but I'm going with 'Just because we can doesn't mean we should' - The updates would be a nightmare.

[@tabularasa0606]

Of course we should.

[@STORMDAME]

@@tabularasa0606 I'm more thinking about the arguments I have with my PC now when it's just an inanimate object. The thought of it behaving like a petulant teenager is just too much.

[@darylbrown8834]

Automatic self updating algorithmic program' might just be able to keep up unlike a lazy human. Going straight to the latest update without messing around because it would know what it requires to thwart an infection would have to be one of its advantages?

[@grey5751]

@@STORMDAME Let's just be glad that CD drives aren't in use anymore, no paperclip in the world could save us from that.

[@limbo3545]

@@tabularasa0606 Yeah bring it on!

[@christian3314]

A blind guess would be that in order for more complexity to appear, a kind of predator needs to evolve, like, every pattern is selecting for faster replication because there is a limited space (resources), but a predator isn't competing directly with fast replicators because its "food" are the fast replicators.

[@FractalPrism.]

the predator is entropy

[@evelynn4273]

In cybersecurity we deal with these "self-replicating life forms" all the time.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

worms

[@evelynn4273]

@@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all - Yup. What's old is new again.

[@c99kfm]

PSA: Don't go into the von Neumann rabbit-hole. The guy was an absolute intellectual unit. Apart from creating the concept of cellular automata (predating Conway by three decades) as mentioned here, he was a major contributor in the Manhattan Project, invented the mathematical field of game theory, created the modern computer architecture and in general was to most mathematical researchers what they are to us.
"When George Dantzig brought von Neumann an unsolved problem in linear programming "as I would to an ordinary mortal", on which there had been no published literature, he was astonished when von Neumann said "Oh, that!", before offhandedly giving a lecture of over an hour, explaining how to solve the problem using the hitherto unconceived theory of duality."
Of note, the George Dantzig telling the story is the mathematician who as a student did the "solve unsolved blackboard problems" of Good Will Hunting fame, who was later awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ford.

[@NuisanceMan]

Von Neumann was a relentless and highly effective self-promoter and his contributions, though real, have been considerably overstated.

[@bohanxu6125]

Small issue: your introduction of John Von Newmann is really underselling his contribution, and made him sound like some science fiction writer. He made huge contributions to foundation of quantum mechanics, quantum information, chemistry, functional analysis, game theory... and so on. He is often considered as one of the smartest person and polymath ever lived.
I know the Von Newmann Probe is relevant here.... but only talking about that really misleads the audience in thinking what kind of person Von Newmann is.

[@Itsallgoodtogo]

There is only so much time in a video.

[@michaellamb134]

limited space would correlate as a fitness problem as soon as self replication commences

[@Shivaho]

Consciousness/Life Always finds a way...
Reminds me of one of my favorite Stories by Theodore Sturgeon "The Dreaming Jewels" about Sentient Crystals that can Manifest into Human Forms.

[@amatthew1231]

This study basically suggest that if a bunch of mundane particles in primordial soup produces self-replicating life over here, then it also does it over there. And aliens exist.

[@woodandwandco]

We shouldn't ignore the fact that we created mathematics. Our mathematics are subjective, in the sense that we created the language we use to process computation. We created the base 10 system and base 12 system. We created the concept of zero. We created the concept of infinity. We tend to forget that the universe is not computational, because our mathematics cannot describe what happens on the quantum level or what happens at infinite mass. Our mathematics only describe our limited perspective, whether in actual or abstract space. They can do no more. These concepts are our own concepts. They may bear a slight or absolutely no resemblance to base reality. We should not assume that they do just because some cellular automata program we created using our own mathematics exhibits emergent cell-like behavior. The emergent behavior could be a consequence of the mathematics we create rather than the universe.

[@delayed_control]

​@@woodandwandco Mathematics isn't subjective. You're confusing the actual subject of mathematics with the notation used to describe it. What you're saying makes zero sense.

[@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep]

Exactly and it's utter nonsense lol. It's like saying if you have a chicken magically appear here then you get eggs. The chicken came before the egg. lol ridiculous. Even if you magically have the dna and dna replicator you still need information stored, that needs to be programed by a mind. And even more ridiculous showing how out of their league they are on this subject is they/we don't even know what life is in the first place so how can such statements even be made. They don't know what happens when a simple single cell organism dies, or know what to do or how to put everything back together for there to be life.

[@anywallsocket]

@@woodandwandco this is so philosophy 101. you really need to check the interface between your sharp dualism of 'humans concepts' and 'the world as it is'.

[@MikeViker]

Simple life would be abundant and almost certain but complex life or intelligence not.

[@michaeltape8282]

Hahaha, BRAINF**K, huh. Half an hour on a laptop? The 3D versions of Conway's Game of Life are really neat. Maybe someday we'll have Conway's Game of Thrones! Thanks Anton.

[@sparquisdesade]

and in only two hours the self replicated life had evolved to sell itself it's own onlyfans content. crazy.

[@michaeltape8282]

@@sparquisdesade Hey, you can't love anyone unless you can love yourself.

[@paulmakinson1965]

As long as conditions are the same, the fastest replicator takes over. As soon as you introduce variable conditions , complexity becomes important.

[@rooster3103]

'If you leave hydrogen out in the sun long enough, it will start thinking about itself'

[@PeterKaitlyn]

I may be missing something, but isn't DNA made up of only 4 items, arranged in a complex string of 4 item blocks... ?

[@PeterKaitlyn]

@@HedonisticPuritan-mp6xv
Well if it is a function of evolution... then DNA uses less and get us more... don't you think?

[@PeterKaitlyn]

@@HedonisticPuritan-mp6xv
Exactly so... but isn't DNA just a more advanced expression of that... Listen, the idea that this globe is the only place in the universe were life can happen is just plain silly... If it can happen here then it can happen anywhere there are the elements of life...

[@axle.student]

@@HedonisticPuritan-mp6xv Anton said no rules, but obviously the program had predefined rules. Do you know or have a reference to what those rules are?
I Briefly read (skimmed) through the paper, but couldn't find the rules listed.

[@NetanyahooWarCriminal]

Meat @axle.student

[@tehdii]

@@axle.student Maybe in a Josha Bach way, simply the implementation was a rule implicating something... IDK...

[@agapitoliria]

I would guess this doesn't happen anymore on earth because once a self-replicator appears, the environment becomes pressured by it to the point another one has no time to appear.

[@tetsuoakira8294]

They get stamped out because the "space" is already filled, I guess.

[@ytalinflusa]

I've always thought this is the real question. Not "how did life start?" But "why did it stop starting?"

[@sisyphus_strives5463]

the environment for one thing was completely different before abiogenesis , biological lifeforms have changed the very planet; the conditions just aren't the same

[@AgentEm34]

​@@ytalinflusaAre we sure that it has?

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@sisyphus_strives5463even so, it’s possible that abiogenesis happened several times but died out before it could get far. Except for once.

[@HideFromIt]

9:53 "The length plays a very important role in determining if self replication is possible" 😭

[@johnmckinney9324]

Have a wonderful day Anton.

[@john_doe_not_found]

An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare.
So if 4 billion years ago trillions of random proto-lifeforms were doing their random thing, as soon as one of them figured out self replication, it took over everything and then competed with itself and bettered itself until here we are. And the process is still ongoing.

[@shantiescovedo4361]

Hire would we get to trillions of proto lifeforms if they were not already self replicating?

[@john_doe_not_found]

@@shantiescovedo4361 the primordial soup that started life didn't just create one proto-cell.. it would have happened trillions or quadrillions or more times. Lots of failures, and eventually a few things succeeded.

[@shantiescovedo4361]

@@john_doe_not_found that is speculation. We don’t know how it happened.

[@sigmata0]

The reference to infinity here is irrelevant. The basic claim is that a large finite number of interactions could create self replicating entities. A large finite number is no closer to infinity than any other number.

[@anywallsocket]

yeah if 'shakespeare' is supposed to analogize with life, you're better off saying the monkeys will eventually write the first stanza, and then the rest will write itself, with the help of more monkeys.

[@jmarth523]

Just in case anyone has time to look him up, John Von Neumann is one of the most impressive minds t ever walk this Earth. He is ‘Your favorite rappers favorite rapper’ kind of mind

[@TelB]

The missing variable perhaps seems to be 'Environment' or 'Primordial Soup'. As it was, the code was running in an either absent or neutral environment and as such the code did not have any stresses to evolve differently. A good next test would be to re-run the simulations in separate instances where environment variables are introduced. Those different environments may then result in different self-replicating code that is best-suited for each environment. Then introduce the different environments with their individual limitations. See how the different evolutions cope when they interact with the new environments and differing evolved code.

[@kenpevahouse2154]

Avi Wigderson received the Turing award, the “Nobel Prize of computing,” partly for formally connecting randomness with mathematical functions that are hard to compute. He and his colleagues created a process that takes a suitably complex function and outputs “pseudorandom” bits that can’t be efficiently distinguished from truly random bits. Randomness, it seems, is just computation we cannot predict.

[@spidersj12]

One might infer that biological life / evolution is a natural course of events with enough time and increasing entropy.

[@anywallsocket]

time and entropy are good, but you still need stars, planets, elements, etc

[@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep]

entropy degrades material compounds and structures and information, it doesn't magically cause them to increase to a higher state... over... and over and over again to create designs it never knew beforehand because it doesn't have a mind. There isn't even any theoretical evolutionary pressure for such a thing. It's patently fantasy.

[@osmosisjones4912]

Noticed the the people who say we can't trust our memory also discard history for hypothetical models

[@dismalthoughts]

The general rule is quite simply: systems and patterns which propagate more effectively will always surpass those that don't. This applies to biological systems, businesses, ideologies, black holes, literally everything. The form can vary wildly depending on the system and environment, just as the RNA and computer program experiments demonstrated (rewarding different mechanisms of propagation), but the underlying rule is still holds true. In essence, it's the same reason x⁴ is always bigger than x². In any universe where you have _stuff_ that can change and causality, you're likely - if not guaranteed - to observe this rule.

[@dsm5d723]

The Von Neumann error still haunts us to this day. Life is not binary, but we are still trying to model it as such. Complexity Theory in binary ignores the material realities used to do the computation.

[@oberonpanopticon]

It sort of makes sense to me. If something self replicating can emerge, then eventually it will. Natural selection is an emergent property of self replicating systems, so long as the rules aren’t too rigid.

[@oneeyejack2]

what is the probability, for each "language" that it is self replicating when randomly written.. ? In the extreme case, if the language has only 2 instructions ("replicate" or "don't replicate").. and the thing is random, of course it will appear and conquer.
the idea of "physically existing" and "ability to copy information" creates a loop.. and space imply competition... of course something more complex will emerge.. if it means more ability to copy..

[@chronicdose]

Watched an interview with denis noble on the UA-cam channel "Variable Minds" and this video reminded me of some parallels discussed. As far as I understood noble suggests that there exists potentially inherent function of random events in a system, which continually develops eventually resulting in 'containers' within which continued interactions are constrained. The inherent functionality evolves as more and more complex containerized objects appear in the primordial soup, which eventually could lead to what we describe as life, and evolution from "single cell" organisms towards complexity, multi cellular organisms as time goes on. The experiment here seem to result in self replication within the limited number of population, and without any competition. Not sure if that makes any sense but I feel such experiments will eventually further our understanding and are fascinating. Shout out to Variable Minds as each interview I've listened to was excellent and I'd highly recommend 😊

[@randomguy4488]

Reminds me of a Greg Egan short story where someone uses self replicating AI to create intelligence wildly different from our own

[@mahadevparmekar2565]

I think thermodynamics is a major barrier which is completely missing from this computer simulation.
In the real world, molecules or even quasi-cellular structures, will need energy to survive and reproduce.
That is the reason why the biological experiments favor simplicity. Because, it is less energy-consuming to build simple structures rather than complex structures.
On the computer, there is no need for external energy input to be simulated. So, the programs can grow unaided.
But on a planet, not only the conditions will need to be favorable (liquid water, atmosphere, temperature etc) but the thermodynamics need to be favorable as well.
The energy flow patterns should be able to support complex structures..
On earth, Sun's visible and UV radiation can do both the things, form complex structures, as well break them down. Our atmosphere blocks enough UV light to prevent cellular damage, but still allows enough sunlight to pass through to allow photosynthesis and other 'constructive' processes. This right balance may be critical for early evolution too.
Too much radiation or too little radiation may prevent early abiogenesis.
On planets with underground oceans (like Europa), there is no sunlight at all. Their liquid oceans may remain sterile despite favorable conditions.

[@dalenewton9697]

Yes I was also thinking that calling a computer program with no thermodynamics, to say nothing of the rest of physics, a simulation of emerging life does seem a bit of a stretch, putting it mildly.

[@sreal-iron5898]

and the humans were created from clay gets a whole new meaning 11:56

[@biglloyd5870]

nah its been the same meaning the whole we just now understanding and considering it

[@walterfristoe4643]

I have Conway's Game of Life on my phone and it's fascinating!

[@tommykarlberg]

It stopped evolve due to a limited and to static environment. In the next step there need to be external factors that change the environment, and that the self replicating life also have effects on the environment. Greate video.

[@ElephantWhisperer222]

Short answer is no. Longer answer is no.

[@johnmoore8599]

It's impressive that self-replication emerged without direction. The problem is that life arose here from the planetary geochemistry. It didn't arise out of nothing. There must also have been some sort of selection for more complex and fitter lifeforms, at first microbial, then eukaryotic, then multicellular. There were a lot of energy inputs on early Earth which drove the development of life in general. And, life altered its environment. This system doesn't get altered by anything that arises.

[@jkfecke]

The very earliest life was probably chemical - just chemicals that tended to catalyze their own creation. And over a very, very long time, that and natural selection are all you need.

[@connorcriss]

It does though. How evolutionarily successful one algorithm is may depend heavily on what algorithms are around it.

[@johnmoore8599]

@@connorcriss The virtual environment did not change that I could tell. There was no "food" or other resource that the "organisms" needed for replication. I haven't read the paper, but there was nothing mentioned about the "organism" incorporating bits of other organisms into itself, aka horizontal gene transfer. If you are talking about selection via competition, then maybe, but that wasn't really discussed either. You should reach a population dynamic between 2 or more winners. It looked like winner take all.

[@fake-inafakerson8087]

I'd argue that while the starting conditions and alterations to the environment were dramatically more complex on Earth, both were still present. The 'chemistry' was the rules of computing, the 'geochemistry' was the random initial programs that were already altering the environment, and said 'environment' was the memory space of the computer. The 'organisms' that arose, by spreading, effected the existing memory environment

[@johnmoore8599]

@@HedonisticPuritan-mp6xv But, all they got was self replication. Nothing more. There had to be selection at some point to select for better self replicators and more complex ones, otherwise, everything would be a sort of molecular virus and stop there. The biochemical experiments can get self replicating molecules and that's about it. So there's a ways to go even insilico.

[@TheFranzzzNL]

This wouldn't be the first time this has been done... I remember a scientist did this back in the early 90ies where he created a code resembling a single cell organism and introduced artificial environmental living conditions.. and over time it multiplied and evolved creating entirely new pieces.

[@alikaperdue]

The motivation of each cell is to make your neighbours accept most of your properties and to accept as little as possible from your neighbours properties. Strengthen your output and weaken the input to ensure you won't change while others will.
If the goal of a cell is to force surrounding cells to be like itself., then there is cellular motivation.

[@andybaldman]

Look up Mike Levin’s work. He has a framework that incorporates this same idea. Except it applies at multiple scales in addition to cells (human, societal, national, yes)

[@arctic_haze]

I fully agree that life may need more time to emerge than most scholars think. In other words, we strongly underestimate the force of evolution.

[@caseyczarnomski8054]

In the last week the study of fossilized microbes from 3.8 billion years ago found here on earth mean life could have formed here as early as 4.2 billion years ago. That's approx 300 million years after earth formed. Say again how life takes longer to form than scientists postulate.

[@p0ln]

Evolution? no life existed before the Cambrian period about 575M years ago, nothing....
then in a period of about 25M years all life appeared on earth, 90% of it anyway, in a 25million year period...as in we have data to support that / fossil records, zero records pre Cambrian, nothing ... no life, bacteria only afaik.
Darwin himself knew this and expected advances in science and tech to obtain further data, but that never happened.
Thus, the idea that evolution can come from nothing to everything in 25million years, is a bit of a stretch.
Trust the science ;)

[@trabladorr]

Under or over? 🤔

[@aaronperelmuter8433]

Actually, what you meant to say is that we strongly OVERESTIMATE evolution. If we did actually underestimate it, that would imply it should take less time, not more. Consider, if you underestimate how quickly something replicates, for example, that means you think it’s not as efficient as it actually is. Therefore, it’d take LESS time, to replicate, not more. Conversely, if you overestimate something’s ability to replicate, it would require MORE time than you thought it would. You got your concepts backwards. 🤔🤓

[@Oatmeal.]

​@aaronperelmuter8433 you are doing God's work. Sorry if u don't believe in that or whatever. But this type of communication is the most important. Never give this fight up to share in educating others. You worded this very nicely.

[@JuliusUnique]

why is this a big shock? Obviously if there is 1 replicating code happening by random chance, it will start replicating, what else do people expect? Eventually there will be a random algorithm that wants to survive, what will it do? Well obviously it will try to survive

[@acatwithebola]

Why would it want to survive when it isn't told to?

[@Quickshot0]

Yeah I don't get it either, this is exactly what you'd expect. If any kind of replication program occurred it would obviously take over and become the new norm.

[@Quickshot0]

@@acatwithebola It's a random program, so if the program happened to pick up a rule to do so, then it would then continue on doing that.
Random means it can randomly acquire rules with out being told as well after all.

[@ionia2376]

​@@Quickshot0I think it's how common it was?

[@Kirbykradle]

One of the languages didn't work, so it's gotta be a bit more complicated

[@iuliannastasa6592]

In fact, they rather found a good a argument that self-replication might be a natural, spontaneous process for information, rather than for biology.

[@Juttutin]

3:10 things i didn't have on my bingo card for this century ...
Someone stumbling across a genuinely practical usage for Brainfu@£

[@swiftycortex]

Who watched this and then immediately thought, this proves we are in a simulation ran on a laptop?

[@douglasthompson201]

I won't say "proves," but it does make my right eyebrow lift.

[@ModerateDev]

It's like no one has seen Stargate 👀

[@Codemeister1105]

It's like this has absolutely nothing to do with Stargate, are you completely touched in the mind

[@ModerateDev]

@@Codemeister1105 jesus Christ man learn to take a joke. Self replicating robots are a big thing in Stargate it's not that big of a jump. Learn to be a nice person

[@MaxWellenstein]

@@Codemeister1105 Did you miss the 22 Stargate episodes and one Stargate movie about the replicator threat? A lot of them were pretty good.

[@Codemeister1105]

@@ModerateDev No I will not be nice to a dmbahh

[@ModerateDev]

@@Codemeister1105 you do you man if you want to be a toxic person hiding behind a screen then that's cool.

[@sabinrawr]

I wonder if Von Neumann's work may have inspired the Star Trek TNG episode _Home Soil_ (S1E18). The crew discovers that a terraforming project is disrupting a crystalline form of intelligent life. Individual crystals aren't intelligent, but in their natural environment (threatened by the terraforming) intelligence emerges in spectacular fashion.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

star trek writers were nerds, they most likely did read and know about von neumann..

[@vensroofcat6415]

It may blow your mind, but evolution didn't start with life. The whole "dead" universe also undergoes huge and really slow "survival game". Some stars burn for longer, some planets can host life, some can grow more, some get stripped of materials, some stars did better in the early universe, etc. etc.

[@SentientNebula]

Holy shit doesnt this like completely refute all religious arguments against evolution?

[@Goettel]

There aren't any sound ones, so no need.

[@SentientNebula]

@@Goettel yea but it's still nice to have such a secure argument against it

[@TheRadischen]

You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into.

[@ericmcnellis1190]

... is it self aware ? ... no
"then it aint life"

[@phrozenwun]

...amazingly naive.

[@vapormissile]

​@@phrozenwunsome sort of self-preservation? It turns into a word game. Self awareness is tricky.

[@Jay_Kay666]

I think key to complexity is competition. Life needs energy, Space and other resources which directs evolution into other things than fast replication and simplicity.

[@RichardKanter]

I was homeless, got into drugs, went into prisons, then i got to know Jesus, He changed my life.. Now i make 22k weekly. have a home, a wife, a lovely daughter... A child of God. HALLELUJAH

[@marinaaryantifelisitasgulo1445]

How did you do it? Do explain please 😯
My family have been into series of sufferings lately

[@RichardKanter]

All thanks to Christina Ann Tucker

[@RichardKanter]

After I raised up to 325k trading with her I bought a new House and a car here in the states 🇺🇸🇺🇸 also paid for my daughter's surgery (Joey). Glory to God.shalom.

[@msdowning1]

I do know Christina A. Tucker, I also have even become successful....

[@DavidStone-yw1ns]

Absolutely! I've heard stories of people who started with little to no knowledge but made it out victoriously thanks to Christina Ann Tucker.

[@MyraSeavy]

Very strange! 😮

[@Daniel-jm8we]

Emergence and self-replication is interesting. But when those agents become significantly more complicated from one generation to the next, THAT will be profound.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

would require a stupid amount of compute to start watching that kind of complexity evolution

[@dg8620]

Great first step! For the next they need to vary the landscape. Essentially this is currently a simulation within a flat world, or alternatively within a single drop of water. In the real world there are areas of high pressure, low, temperate, humidity, solar radiation exposure and so forth. To do this perhaps the team could add initial rules to regions of the world. E.g. a region where random characters are corrupted (radiation), another in which code executes more slowly (low temperature), another in which a command is suppressed (nutritient restrictions) and so forth. Simulated life is then met with challenges beyond simply space for replication and infinite resources to do so.
I suspect adaptation and synergies would emerge in this level of simulation.
For the subsequent simulation, it would be great to find a way for the organisms to influence the rules of the regions. E.g. to somehow enable moving the region, lessening the rules, whittling down some of the regions. I.e. akin to a moss creating local humidity on a rock, or algae in a body of water reducing the temperature.

[@familyshare3724]

DNA is roughly binary where three "digits" (beginning almost anywhere including reverse) are a codons which might be analogous to the eight symbols of brainfk. Also like LISP, DNA is both the code and structure, amino acids that generate amino acids that build proteins.

[@trueByakko]

Big fan of most of your videos, but really surprised you picked out this study.
The setup and results are extremely underwhelming. This is the kind of program I'd expect a student to cobble together. Despite the supposed grandeur parallels to life replication, all the complexity has been baked into the "environment" control code.
That said, this is a very interesting area of research. I hope they do something more sophisticated with something like alphafold in the future.

[@Lycanthronaut]

These are called Boid Phenomenon. They are the subject of AI hallucinations and the way shapes form when swarms of birds and herding animals move.
They follow simple rules but are highly complex in an open environment

[@yon2020]

Replication is a fundamental property of the physical basis of our Universe. Replication was at the beginning of all beginnings, at the moment of the emergence of the Universe, and it was replication that created our Universe.

[@Frank_SL]

…raises a lot of questions, for example, life from clay…
And my mind blows off! 🤯
“In Aztec mythology, the gods created clay men (!!!) but later abandoned this idea because the clay men were fragile and unstable and failed to praise them.
Then, the gods created the first human beings out of wood, but they were imperfect and lacking feelings, so they were destroyed and turned into monkeys.
Finally, the gods created man from corn, mixing yellow corn and wood to build the skin and red corn to make the blood. These beings were perfect, but they were so similar to the gods that they felt threatened and decided to send them fog to counteract their greatness.”

[@SumBrennus]

Imagine inserting this as a payload with the ability for it to escape sandboxing or buffer overflow. I think someone just discovered what could be a very nasty attack vector that is easy to hide and run.

7:35 we don't have to imagine, just look around

[@DigitalLibrarian]

There was a fitness function. It just wasn't explicit. They were competing for space on the grid, and probably execution time.

[@christopherg2347]

Why did they expect nothing to happen?
They gave random code the ability to interact. It was only a matter of time until random inserts would create code capable of self-replication. They basically created a cross between bacterium and virus.
There are billions of possible code configurations capable of self-replication. This was like infinite monkeys, with infinite typewriters, randomly recreating someones business card.
While I never would have expected a 100% success rate, expecting a 0% one was foolish.

[@Dellvmnyam]

Amazing results but I agree with some of the criticism: the emergence of self-replication doesn't imply the eventual emergence of evolution.

[@1x93cm]

Kolmogorov Complexity theory in a self referential system. Makes sense, then certain amounts of complexity give rise to emergent properties of consciousness, which in turn, collapse the wave function within the self referential system. Consciousness acts as a product as well as a driver of the system

[@Champignon1000]

Those scientist that say that this cant evolve into more complex life completely dropped the ball. Is like saying buhu cool cell simulation but why isn't it evolving into elephants? - Well because emergence happens when you scale up the simulation universe by maybe millions times. or trillions times.

[@robotaholic]

It is amazing how you can dive into a paper on a subject that isn't exactly your area of specialty and explain the hell out of it so well!

[@jevogroni4829]

but now we can see that a background of various self replicators is kind of the substratum, the environment where something emerges

[@marksinclair7493]

"Nothing magical happened here." While I understand his point the fact that it happens at all IS the magic to me.

[@leerussell8499]

This is what I thought about when I was defragmenting my PC always wondered if the random blocks of data one day result in a self replicating data string that could catch enough data to amass into a bot of some kind like bacterial growth

[@NuisanceMan]

Conway's Game of Life CAN actually self-replicate, but it has to be very carefully engineered.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

Programs will stop evolving because randomization was applied only initially.
Who knows what will happen if researchers figure out how to properly add randomness during whole simulation session.

[@uoabigaillevey]

There is a game from the late 80's or early 90's. The game is called SimLife and was published by a software/game company named Maxis. You may know them as the originators of the game The Sims.. before Electronic Arts bought them out.
The manual for the game asked the question "What is life" and went on to describe life as "the process by which genes attempt to make copies of themselves"
It's an older DOS-based game but worth looking into if you have the time and enjoy this subject.

[@just_another_nerd]

Cool experiment! Would be nice to see if complexity does evolve eventually given enough space, time and Brainfuck 🙃

[@emmanuelshaffer-walkes9936]

its consolidation. the informed changed. the reactive change. The scenario for self replication is mathematically defined. at some point the most prevalent process will emerge and replicate. if you take a bunch of jagged rocks put them together in a bag and shake the bag randomly at random speed and intensities at random intervals, eventually all the rocks will resemble one another in smoothness and maybe even size.