Artificial Life

Can you simulate life? Sure. ~ In this video I talk about the field of artificial life while exploring a variety of programs that simulate evolution and life-like behaviors. We take a tour from genetic algorithms to evolution simulations to emergent alife. I try to bring some useful concepts and categories to the conversation, like Darwinian replicators and implicit vs explicit design. I highlight the work of many, many people in the field, and give a brief history of the journey towards open-ended evolution. Special thanks to Akarsh Kumar and Bert Chan for helping with the Lenia implementation! ~SUPPORT ME~ Learn to code faster with Scrimba! (saves you 20% and supports me): https://scrimba.com/?via=EmergentGarden Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emergentgarden Twitter: https://twitter.com/max_romana Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emergentgarden.bsky.social I'll fill this out more later...... ~PROGRAMS~ Lenia: https://evolvecode.io/alife/lenia.html Evoloops: https://evolvecode.io/alife/evoloop.html Particle Life: https://sandbox-science.com/particle-life Bibites: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2736860/The_Bibites_Digital_Life/ Life Engine: https://thelifeengine.net/ Convolutional CA: https://neuralpatterns.io/ Game of Life: https://evolvecode.io/alife/gol.html Multi-neighborhood CA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYa-o-_eE0Y Alien Project: https://www.alien-project.org/index.html Germs Genetic Algorithm: https://evolvecode.io/alife/aquarium.html Subnautica: https://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/Subnautica/ Synthetic Selection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNXzOuc9UWo Neural CA: https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/ Particle Lenia: https://znah.net/lenia/ ~VIDEOS~ Self Replication 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMV4yRFlXSQ Self Replication 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBXO_6Jn1fs DNA Animations 1: https://youtu.be/IvJrDsRuWxQ DNA Animations 2: https://youtu.be/7Hk9jct2ozY Flow Lenia: https://youtu.be/bAJIETmC-6o Chemical Gardens: https://youtu.be/z4SiKBfFRbE Cambrian Animations: https://www.youtube.com/@Paleozoo Microscopic Footage: https://www.youtube.com/@journeytomicro Cosmos Evolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk Red Tailed Hawk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiDjCSwhcLY Crystals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyVz6h2wrEA ~READINGS~ Artificial Life, Chris Langton: http://www.probehead.com/log/texts/Langton_al.pdf Lenia: https://chakazul.github.io/Lenia/JavaScript/Lenia.html Source of Lenia Species: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17799 Theory of Self-Replicating Automata, von Neumann: https://cba.mit.edu/events/03.11.ASE/docs/VonNeumann.pdf Influential Paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12489504/ "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins "A River Out of Eden", Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Dan Dennett "Complexity: A Guided Tour", Melanie Mitchell Robert Sapolsky Emergence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZuWbX-CyE Wolfram Quote: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/media/study-complexity/ ~MUSIC~ https://www.youtube.com/@acolyte-compositions "Fortress Europe" Dan Bodan ~TIMESTAMPS~ ~*===*~ It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. - Darwin, Origin of Species, last paragraph ~*===*~