next up previous contents
Next: Results Up: Cosmos Experiments 2: Exploring Previous: Results

Reading Neighbouring Code

Programs in Cosmos cannot generally read the code of neighbouring programs. In contrast, programs in Ray's Tierra system do have this ability, and this is why parasites and other sorts of ecological interactions emerge fairly easily in it. A mechanism was built into Cosmos to simulate the reading of neighbouring code using the program's general communications input and output apparatus, as described in Chapter 4 (Sections 4.3.7 and 4.6.1). However, the mechanism is still more complicated than in Tierra, and would require somewhat more evolutionary innovation in order to be utilised effectively. A set of experiments was conducted in order to test the mechanism and see whether parasites could evolve in Cosmos. The non-default parameter setting is shown in Table 6.11.

Table 6.11: Non-default Parameter Value for Readable Neighbouring Code Experiments.
Parameter Value
neighbouring_genomes_readable yes


Tim Taylor