Life Simulator

Environmental structure

Does a world that varies from place to place raise the complexity plateau the dominant replicator settles at? A structured world runs its mutation rate high in some cells and low in others, so a strategy that pays off in one place need not pay off in the next. The secondary prediction: a heterogeneous world keeps more lineages alive after emergence than a uniform one.

Substrate
soup
Status
finished
Epochs per run
20,000
Runs finished
210 / 210
Transition rate
11 of 210 finished runs flagged by the detector (5%), 11 confirmed by a replicator

Findings resting on this sweep: Does complexity keep rising? open

Transition epoch vs structure
uniform gradient patchwork 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 Structure Transition epoch uniform: emerged at epoch 6210 uniform: emerged at epoch 5030 uniform: emerged at epoch 7000 gradient: emerged at epoch 14850 gradient: emerged at epoch 14760 gradient: emerged at epoch 15600 gradient: emerged at epoch 10750 gradient: emerged at epoch 1780 gradient: emerged at epoch 7920 patchwork: emerged at epoch 4280 patchwork: emerged at epoch 17020 uniform: no emergence in 20000 epochs (27 of 30 runs) 27 gradient: no emergence in 20000 epochs (84 of 90 runs) 84 patchwork: no emergence in 20000 epochs (88 of 90 runs) 88

Filled dots are runs a replicator confirmed emerged in; the line joins the median per value. Hollow dots are crossings the detector flagged that nothing confirmed. Hollow markers at the top count the runs with no emergence in 20000 epochs, the flagged-only ones among them.

Arms of structure
Structure n Flagged Emerged Median epoch IQR Censored
uniform 30 3/30 10% 3/30 10% 6,210 5,620–6,605 27
gradient 90 6/90 7% 6/90 7% 12,755 8,628–14,828 84
patchwork 90 2/90 2% 2/90 2% 10,650 7,465–13,835 88

Flagged counts the crossings the transition detector reported; emerged counts the ones the replicator census or the copy rate confirmed. The median epoch and the IQR are of the confirmed emergences, the flagged median beside them in grey; a flagged crossing nothing confirmed is censored like a run that was never flagged.

Time to emergence vs structure
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 Epoch P(no emergence) uniform — 3 of 30 emerged gradient — 6 of 90 emerged patchwork — 2 of 90 emerged

Each line is the estimated share of runs in an arm with no self-replicator yet at that epoch. A run that never emerged is censored where it was last watched, so it holds the line up only for as long as it was actually observed.

Emergence hazard per arm of structure
Structure Runs Events Run-epochs at risk Hazard per 104 epochs (95% CI) Persisted
uniform 30 3 558,240 0.0537 (0.0111–0.157) 3 of 3
gradient 90 6 1,745,660 0.0344 (0.0126–0.0748) 5 of 6 1 relapsed
patchwork 90 2 1,781,300 0.0112 (0.00136–0.0406) 1 of 2 1 relapsed
All arms 210 11 4,085,200 0.0269 (0.0134–0.0482) 9 of 11 2 relapsed

Persisted counts the emergences whose world was still in the transitioned state at its last sample; the rest climbed back out of it and are counted as relapses.

Distinct lineages vs epoch, per arm of structure
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 Epoch Distinct lineages uniform gradient patchwork
  • uniform
  • gradient
  • patchwork
Share of the largest lineage vs epoch, per arm of structure
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 0.025 0.05 0.075 0.1 0.125 Epoch Share of the largest lineage uniform gradient patchwork
  • uniform
  • gradient
  • patchwork
Compressed length of the dominant tape (bytes) vs epoch, per arm of structure
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 20 40 60 80 Epoch Compressed length of the dominant tape (bytes) uniform gradient patchwork
  • uniform
  • gradient
  • patchwork
Instructions in the dominant tape vs epoch, per arm of structure
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 20 40 60 Epoch Instructions in the dominant tape uniform gradient patchwork
  • uniform
  • gradient
  • patchwork
Detector against replicator census, per arm
uniform gradient patchwork 0 1 2 3 Arm Runs uniform — flagged only: 1 of 30 sampled runs uniform — replicators only: 0 of 30 sampled runs uniform — both: 2 of 30 sampled runs gradient — flagged only: 3 of 90 sampled runs gradient — replicators only: 0 of 90 sampled runs gradient — both: 3 of 90 sampled runs patchwork — flagged only: 2 of 90 sampled runs patchwork — replicators only: 0 of 90 sampled runs patchwork — both: 0 of 90 sampled runs
  • Flagged only
  • Replicators only
  • Both

The two outer bars of an arm are its disagreements: runs the detector flagged with no replicator ever counted, and runs that counted one without being flagged.

Detector against replicator census, per arm — flagged runs held compress_ratio below 0.6, replicating runs counted at least one replicator at the locked top_k 16; the wider column re-reads the stored worlds of the same runs at top_k 64 and is blank for an arm no corpus pass has measured
Arm Sampled runs Flagged Replicators Replicators at top_k 64 Both Either but not both
uniform 30 3 2 2 1
gradient 90 6 3 3 3
patchwork 90 2 0 0 2

Replicators by the orientation-aware detector

The detector reads a random sample of 256 cells of a stored world and runs each cell's tape down a chain of 5 runs against fresh noise, each copy carried into the next run. After the last run the first half holds the fourth copy, back in the tape's own orientation even for a tape that writes its reverse; the cell passes where 3/4 of its positions match the original, each position read by the majority of 5 trials. The locked census counts only same-orientation copies among the 16 commonest tapes, so it reads zero in worlds of reverse copiers. Only the worlds a run kept are read — the first and the last, one about every 1000 epochs and the one nearest the transition — so every run is read at the same cadence, and a first replicator epoch here is no finer than that. Live samples are not used. A run is measured once the corpus pass has read every world it kept; until then it counts in none of the census columns, and the pass is re-run as runs finish. A world holds replicators where at least 50% of its sampled cells pass. This is a companion reading: it relocks neither the census nor the emergence rule (#245).

Detector, emergence rule and orientation-aware census, per arm, over finished runs — the census columns count measured runs only
Arm Finished runs Measured Flagged Emerged Replicator worlds Held to the end Replicators, not emerged Emerged, no replicators Median first replicator epoch (coarse)
uniform 30 30 3 3 2 2 0 1 ~7,000
gradient 90 90 6 6 4 3 0 2 ~14,000
patchwork 90 90 2 2 1 1 0 1 ~5,000

Download oriented census (CSV)

Runs

Download CSV Download transition report (CSV)

Seed Structure Status Priority Epochs done Transition epoch Census
1 uniform finished 25 20,000 5,030 confirmed 867 Run
2 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
3 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
4 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
5 uniform finished 25 20,000 7,000 confirmed 108 Run
6 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
7 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
8 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
9 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
10 uniform finished 25 20,000 — — Run
1 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
2 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
3 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
4 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
5 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
6 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
7 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
8 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
9 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run
10 gradient finished 25 20,000 — — Run