Modeling of Emergent Ecology for Simulating Adaptive Behavior of Universal Computer Programs

To further our understanding of mechanisms that exhibit life-like behavior, attention should be given to the emergent dynamics by which a new action or agent, as the representation of that action, is brought forth. The problem is how to model the intuitive notion of the emergence of an action, without involving arbitrariness in the modeling process. In considering how to implement such a notion onto a computer, it could be interpreted as the generation of a new algorithm, or the generation of a new code establishing a mapping between a symbol and an information. This paper proposes an ecological model, named PROTEAN, consisting of Turing machines as a platform on which to simulate the emergent dynamics of computational procedures. Although the system is not provided with any particular mechanism for self-reproduction, the constituents of the ecosystem adapt themselves to improve their utilization of the environment for survival. This paper demonstrates and discusses how adaptive behaviors of algorithms may be achieved with PROTEAN through computer simulations.