Re: Fibonacci

Matt,

i hope you don't mind me copying this to the fluidiom mailing list,
because i think it's relevant to the people subscribed there.

funnily enough (and you might not guess this) your echoing thoughts
about this genetic system is the first time for me that it starts to
feel like it makes sense.  it feels right to have some kind of a code
that we read linearly, and i still like the fibonacci thing, but how
to actually act on what is read still seems like it's off in the mist
and i still can't see it.

there's one point where i'm thinking very differently than the way you
seem to be.  you say the new bars get the same genes as the parent
bar, except for a mutation.  i imagine the bars more as being cells of
a body, and therefore they all have to get exactly the same genetic
code.   once the adult has emerged and has won in competition with
others does the code get transferred to new tensegrities that have yet
to grow, and then indeed with a mutation.  in fact some kind of
recombination wouldn't be hard to realize either with this
binary-based code.

so how about this:  suppose a new bar grows (probably best done as a
collaboration between two existing bars so its position and
orientation can be fairly unambiguous: perpendicular to both, nearby)
and inherits the body's genome.  i guess it should start "reading" the
genome from the beginning, despite the fact that its neighbors are
further along, or should it continue reading, or even go halfway back
to the beginning or something?

also, would some kind of differentiation make sense?  not really liver
cells and skin cells, but at least something that determines the
overall tensegrity structure globally.

anybody else on the mailing list, please feel free to jump in.  like
Matt says, this is getting interesting!

i'm going to start building parts of this, but as you can see it's not
really clear what's going to be necessary.  the more input the better
the chance that it will really work.

-Gerald

PS. i'm always thinking of a tensegrity kind of giving birth to a
little blob which then grows into an adult gradually.  :)  much of
this can be animated in the OpenGL somehow, i bet.

On Nov 25, 2007 6:06 PM, Matt Dick <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well... going back to the actual genome, the "words" in some cases
> cause proteins to grow and bend in a certain way, which builds the
> necessary structures for the normal course of living.  So perhaps the
> short, common words need to inform the bars to do the normal thing, as
> you say.  The common words say "grow a little", but they always say
> that, every "turn".  Less common words say things like "grow a medium
> amount" or "shrink a little" or something else I haven't thought of.
> Really rare words say "grow another bar" perhaps?  I think the genes
> need to be read every turn and acted on every turn.  The new bars get
> the same genes as the parent bar, with a small chance at a mutation.
> I like the way the fibonacci sequence controls the impact of mutations
> naturally.
>
> I guess none of this is telling you anything you haven't already
> hashed through, I'm just working through it, "out loud" so to speak.
>
> Thanks, this is getting interesting.
>
> Mat
>
>
> On Nov 25, 2007 9:53 AM, Gerald de Jong <[email protected]> wrote:
> > i'm unsure as well, Matt.  the frequent words will have to say
> > something not very important like "grow a little".
> >
> > there still has to be a way to piece it together.  one thing we know
> > is that we have to have some kind of gene that gets read, and the
> > words that come out have to somehow cause the building and growth of a
> > tensegrity.  it's like there's a bridge to be crossed.  also, the
> > active elements are the bars, so they are somehow receiving the
> > information that we're reading from the genes.  so what is it that
> > they are told, and what do they do?
> >
> > it's fun to think about, but i can't say i've figured it out yet.
> >
> >
> > On Nov 20, 2007 7:00 AM, Matt Dick <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > I'm unsure exactly how each bar or joint would be populated with a
> > > number.  Does each element get a new number periodically?  Assuming
> > > each item just has a new number every so often, it will need to read
> > > that "instruction" and take some action.  The vast majority of words
> > > would have to mean "do nothing", yes?  I'm just unsure how you're
> > > planning on using the number, I guess.
> > >
> > > Matt
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gerald de Jong
> > [email protected]
> > http://www.groovyactors.org
> > http://www.darwinathome.org
> >
>



-- 
Gerald de Jong
[email protected]
http://www.groovyactors.org
http://www.darwinathome.org

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