Von Neumann ecosystems

[madd0ct0r]

A Von Neumann device is a probe (or similar) that collects eneregy and materials to self replicate. Thats it. Applied ideas range from self replicating minefields to giant space stations but in its simplest term, gather energy, materials and make a duplicate, its basically a plant.

Which got me thinking. Unless the replication controls are literally perfect, deviations will creep into shapes, materials or base software. We'd see mutants and therefore competition and evolution.

Machines that use less material or gather more energy for the same material would reproduce faster. Machines that poison or cloud or crowd out the others around them reproduce faster. Machines that cannibilize existing machines for ready collected and proccessed material reproduce faster.

And so we have an ecosystem. Thoughts?

[Broomstick]

The Code of the Lifemaker is a novel more or less based on what you describe.

[Simon_Jester]

A Von Neumann device is a probe (or similar) that collects eneregy and materials to self replicate. Thats it. Applied ideas range from self replicating minefields to giant space stations but in its simplest term, gather energy, materials and make a duplicate, its basically a plant.

Which got me thinking. Unless the replication controls are literally perfect, deviations will creep into shapes, materials or base software. We'd see mutants and therefore competition and evolution.

Machines that use less material or gather more energy for the same material would reproduce faster. Machines that poison or cloud or crowd out the others around them reproduce faster. Machines that cannibilize existing machines for ready collected and proccessed material reproduce faster.

And so we have an ecosystem. Thoughts?

The biggest issue is that von Neumann machines are more likely to be able to engage in exponential population growth for longer spans of time than living things, because machines tend to be harder to poison than biological organisms. They are therefore more able to overpopulate in the absence of predators.

An 'ecology' full of machine life will tend to see whichever robot species 'breed' the fastest wind up totally dominating the system well before other 'species' have time to evolve and adapt.

[cosmicalstorm]

Hogans book is good as is most of his work. I guess some parts of it is dated but I think he was way ahead of his time. Therefore I second the Code of the Lifemaker.

Here's an excerpt from the intro to give you an idea.

When the population had attained a critical size, a mixed
workforce detached itself from the main center of activity and migrated a
few miles away to build a second factory, a replica of the first, using
materials supplied initially from Factory One. When Factory Two became
self-sustaining, Factory One, its primary task accomplished, switched to
mass-production mode, producing goods and materials for eventual shipment
to the alien home planet.
While Factory Two was repeating the process by commencing work on Factory
Three, the labor detail from Factory One picked up its tools and moved on
to begin Factory Four. By the time Factory Four was up and running,
Factories Five through Eight were already taking shape, Factory Two was in
mass-production mode, and Factory Three was building the first of a fleet
of cargo vessels to carry home the products being stockpiled. This
self-replicating pattern would spread rapidly to transform the entire
surface of Zeus IV into a totally automated manufacturing complex dedicated
to supplying the distant alien civilization from local resources.
From within the searcher's control computers, the Supervisor program gazed
out at the scene through its data input channels and saw that its work was
good. After a thorough overhaul and systems checkout, the searcher ship
reembarked its primary workforce and launched itself into space to seek
more worlds on which to repeat the cycle.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Lifemaker-J ... 0743435265

[Simon_Jester]

Though personally I favor the story Mom and the Kids, by David Drake, which is the sort of humor only Drake could write, and which is very much about fun with von Neumann machines.

[Vain]

Though personally I favor the story Mom and the Kids, by David Drake, which is the sort of humor only Drake could write, and which is very much about fun with von Neumann machines.

Hot damn. That's one of my favorite short stories. I'm surprised and gratified to find it mentioned somewhere.

[Simon_Jester]

David Drake has been one of my main "detox" authors for the past five years of my life, which have been rather stressful. When I feel like my mental environment is just too toxic for words, I read David Drake novels, and for some reason the poison drains away.

I like to think the author would find that gratifying; maybe I should write him a letter to that effect.

[SolarpunkFan]

The Spin trilogy by Robert Charles Wilson also deals with this idea. The second book in the trilogy is pretty weak in my opinion, sadly it must be read if you want to understand the third book.

David Drake has been one of my main "detox" authors for the past five years of my life, which have been rather stressful. When I feel like my mental environment is just too toxic for words, I read David Drake novels, and for some reason the poison drains away.

I like to think the author would find that gratifying; maybe I should write him a letter to that effect.

I'll have to take a look at his novels. And I think he would like to hear that you enjoy them.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The Charonians from The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere are basically the cyborg* version of this idea. The hypothesis of the protagonists is that they are the result of someone who tried the genetic-data seedship idea, where an unmanned starship upon reaching a habitable planet manufactures and raises people to colonize it using stored genetic data. Who would eventually advance until they could produce a new such ship and the cycle would continue.

Except that the creators of the seedship apparently designed it to adapt the colonists to better live on the new planet, and it interpreted that as "adapting" the manufactured colonists into being extensions of itself and its purpose (which was to create colonies that would build seedships). And apparently for millions of years its descendants did what it was designed to do in a twisted way; creating new "colonies" that made more seedships. And as time went by they advanced and mutated into something very powerful and different than what they were at the beginning, but still vaguely based on that original purpose.

An interesting consequences of all this is that in many ways their actions don't appear to make much sense and are terribly inefficient in many ways. An example being how they spend literally astronomical amounts of energy wormholing life-bearing planets across interstellar distances and maintaining them in artificial "solar systems" just to periodically breed new batches of Charonians despite being a mostly space-based species. Or sending out expeditions to do the same, one of which basically ate the dinosaurs.

This is because they are driven by heavily altered versions of ancient instincts and programming instead of rational calculation. They aren't stupid, exactly; but as one character put it they can be very intelligent when it comes to thinking about how to do something, but have almost no ability to think about whether to do something. That ancient programming says their purpose is to reproduce on planets, so they do exactly that. The fact that it makes little sense not only doesn't matter, they aren't even capable of considering the question.


*Sort of. They are so thoroughly integrated that there's no distinction between organic tissue and machine, with even individual cells having technological organelles inside them.