Welcome to Paradise

[schoelle]

Any chance that we will get some Multiwinia wallpapers soon? I would love to have some nice background for my future research presentation

[MrGoldfish]

Where's the bikini pics?!!!!

[Mas Tnega]

Got one right here:

[allen]

wow at first glance, I just looked at the beach picture, and assumed this post was about Crysis. Guess not.

[Pox]

wow at first glance, I just looked at the beach picture, and assumed this post was about Crysis. Guess not.

Hehe...

At second glance, the image was clearly photoshopped and nowhere near as photorealistic as Crysis.

[palehorse864]

[pedantry]I'm fairly sure that's Life of Brian, post-UFO-sequence[/pedantry]

Multiwinia is looking awesome, as ever; I hope your holiday went as well as it sounds!

*Sigh* Fine, so he got the wrong movie. Lighten up on him. I didn't come here expecitng a kind of spanish inquisition!

[briceman2]

Bravo on the new old name! If you step back from your closeness to it, it really is a good name, even for people who know nothing of Darwinia. And it clearly encapsulates three key ideas. "Multi" obviously implies multi player, "win" implies competition, and "ia" adds a whimsical playfulness to the nonsense word. The tagline also works for people who don't know Darwinians, or the phrase's CompSci origins. Everyone knows the "survival of the fittest" meme. That form will be instantly recognized, but the "flattest" incongruency will provoke questions, which will lead to inspection. It's a nice cognitive tease, and probably has good marketing potential.

Since I was the one who brought the tagline to your attention ( http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introv ... test#22554 ) I'm going to ask a small favor. Maybe you could contact the original paper's authors and offer them (or their postdocs or students) free copies. And maybe you could add a footnote to the game packaging materials, to make them slightly educational if anyone should be interested in digital evolution. You might even get the authors to give you a synopsis for your materials?

The concept of "survival of the flattest" has actually blossomed since Wilke's 2001 letter to Nature. It has been picked up by biologists and geneticists in addition to several other computer research groups. Here's a few papers and links:

**Original paper abstract where tagline was first coined (fulltext by subscription only).
Evolution of digital organisms at high mutation rates leads to survival of the flattest
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 331a0.html

**The CalTech Press Release for the above paper.
http://mr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12167.html

**MSU's Devolab page on the topic.
http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/projects/flattest/

**Santa Fe Institute Working Paper (fulltext PDF freely available).
Simple Quasispecies Models for the Survival-of-the-Flattest Effect: The Role of Space
http://www.santafe.edu/research/publica ... /200711041

**A PLoS Pathgens paper verifying this concept exists in biology (fulltext PDF freely available).
The Fittest versus the Flattest: Experimental Confirmation of the Quasispecies Effect with Subviral Pathogens
http://pathogens.plosjournals.org/perls ... at.0020136

And the Synopsis from the PLoS paper:

Darwin's "survival of the fittest" suggests that faster replicators are
able to outcompete slower ones. However, when mutation,
unavoidably associated with genome replication, is incorporated
into the picture, the situation becomes a bit more complicated. At a
high mutation rate, being the faster replicator may not always be
the best option; in fact, being the more robust against the
pernicious effect of mutation may be a better option. If a tradeoff
exists between mutational robustness and replication rate -- for
example, because faster polymerases are more prone to mistakes
than slower ones -- then selection may favor an organism to
replicate faster or to be more robust, but not both at the same
time. At a low mutation rate, a faster replicator would displace a
robust one. However, beyond a critical mutation rate, the slower
replicator should outcompete the faster replicator. This phenomenon
is known as the "survival of the flattest". Here, the authors have
confirmed this prediction using a pair of subviral plant pathogens
(viroids) competing under normal and mutagenic conditions.

If you use another funky series of bootloaders for Multiwinia (which I think would be great!) one or more of them could demonstrate various principles of digital evolution. Survival of the flattest could be one bootlader demo, with appropriate attribution back to Wilke, et al.

Or you could call the "i" --> "la" textual substitution a mutation, and you'd remain within the bounds of the real concept. "Fittest" --> "flattest" and the flattest win out over the superficially "fittest". Perhap you could even bend this idea into some corner of the game itself. I can envision DGs grabbing the letter "i" and replacing it with the letters "la", as in the credits for Darwinia.

Last thought: you could make a game mode where DGs spontaneously mutate into enemy colors. A group of DGS would become temporarily distracted and disorganized while they fight off each new infection. The rate of mutation for each player would be variable and somehow tie into gameplay. The net result could be a game of survival of the flattest as originaly envisioned by Wilke. Only it would be funner.

Thanks!
-brice

[shinygerbil]

[All American Mobster]

Got one right here:

Bow-chicka-wow-wow-chicka-wow-wow



-$tanley

[briceman2]

Maybe you could contact the original paper's authors and offer them (or their postdocs or students) free copies.

...or you could arrange a competition against the authors or their students or something. A beat the professors at their own game kinda thing.

Last thought: you could make a game mode where DGs spontaneously mutate into enemy colors. A group of DGS would become temporarily distracted and disorganized while they fight off each new infection. The rate of mutation for each player would be variable and somehow tie into gameplay. The net result could be a game of survival of the flattest as originaly envisioned by Wilke. Only it would be funner.

...wouldn't it be cool to be able to cast "mutate" spells on your opponents? And ratchet it up until they're a randomized mess, awaiting your victory?

-brice

[shinygerbil]

Have you finally lost it? Talking to yourself?

[Mas Tnega]

When unwarranted self-importance met multiple personalities...

[shinygerbil]

.....Lash Tnega was born.