Anima Ex Machina | Hector Zenil's blog

Compression-based investigation of the dynamical properties of cellular automata

Hector Zenil — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:59:47 +0000

A method for studying the qualitative dynamical properties of abstract computing machines based on the approximation of their program-size complexity using a general lossless compression algorithm is presented. It is shown that the compression-based approach classifies cellular automata (CA) into clusters according to their heuristic behavior, with these clusters showing a correspondence with Wolfram's main classes of CA behavior. A Gray code-based numbering scheme for initial conditions and a compression based method to estimate a characteristic exponent to detect phase transitions and measure the resiliency or sensitivity of a system to its initial conditions is also proposed, constituting a compression-based framework for investigating the dynamical properties of cellular automata and other systems.

Evaluating the complexity of a living organism by its algorithmic complexity

Hector Zenil — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:51:36 +0000

One of the greatest scientific achievements of the last century was the understanding of life in terms of information. We know today that the information for synthesizing the molecules that allow organisms to survive and replicate is encoded in the DNA. In the cell, DNA is copied to messenger RNA, and triplet codons in the [...]

Just One Universal Algorithm Workshop

Hector Zenil — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:30:15 +0000

C A L L F O R P A P E R S A N D P A R T I C I P A T I O N J O U A L 2 0 0 9 W O R K S H O P **** Just One Universal Algorithm **** Experiments with [...]

Physics-like computation, Wolfram’s PCE and Church’s thesis

Hector Zenil — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:32:31 +0000

The lack of correspondence between the abstract and the physical world seems sometimes to suggest that there are profound incompatibilities between what can be thought and what actually happens in the real world. One can ask, for example, how often one faces undecidable problems. However, the question of undecidability has been considered to be better [...]

The Shortest Universal Turing Machine Implementation Contest

Hector Zenil — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:52:23 +0000

======================================== The Shortest Universal Turing Machine Implementation Contest ANNOUNCEMENT 23 Dec – 2008 http://www.mathrix.org/experimentalAIT/TuringMachine.html ======================================== Contest Overview ============ In the spirit of the busy beaver competition though related to program-size complexity, we are pleased to announce the “Shortest Universal [...]