Artificial life properties of directed interaction combinators vs. chemlambda

TL;DR

This paper compares directed interaction combinators and chemlambda to evaluate their potential for artificial life behaviors like replication, metabolism, and death, highlighting that conflicting graph rewrites enhance these properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that graph rewrite systems with conflicting rules exhibit better artificial life properties, challenging the traditional preference for conflict-free systems in decentralized computing.

Findings

Conflicting graph rewrites improve artificial life behaviors.

Directed interaction combinators show promising artificial life properties.

Contradicts the usual preference for non-conflicting systems in graph rewriting.

Abstract

We provide a framework for experimentation at https://mbuliga.github.io/quinegraphs/ic-vs-chem.html#icvschem with two artificial chemistries: directed interaction combinators (dirIC, defined in section 2) and chemlambda. We are interested if these chemistries allow for artificial life behaviour: replication, metabolism and death. The main conclusion of these experiments is that graph rewrites systems which allow conflicting rewrites are better than those which don't, as concerns their artificial life properties. This is in contradiction with the search for good graph rewrite systems for decentralized computing, where non-conflicting graph rewrite systems are historically preferred. This continues the artificial chemistry experiments with chemlambda, lambda calculus or interaction combinators, available from the entry page at https://chemlambda.github.io/index.html and described in arXiv:2003.14332.