GitHub Repository: 300-Line Implementation of Computational Life Research on Self-Replicating Programs
By
tosh
A good honest bake. Not flashy, but you'll finish the whole bagel.
Summary
This article describes a GitHub repository containing a 300-line code reproduction of computational life research, where self-replicating programs emerge from simple interactions. The implementation features a 240x135 grid of Brainfuck-like programs that interact by concatenating instruction tapes, running for limited steps, then splitting apart. The programs can loop and mutate themselves, demonstrating how well-formed, self-replicating programs can emerge from basic computational interactions as described in the referenced paper.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledA simple (300 lines of code) reproduction of Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction
A 240x135 grid of 64 instruction-length Brainfuck-like programs are randomly initialized
Every iteration, neighboring programs are randomly paired, have their instruction tapes concattenated together, and are run for a maximum of $2^{13}$ steps
The instructions are such that they can loop and mutate the instruction tapes (programs) themselves
As found in the paper, self-replicating programs emerge from simple interaction
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