comments

[Rick Fleischer]

1) The outcome of this challenge has no effect on the panspermia
debate: the universe is a quarantined system. If complexity can't
increase in a quarantined system, then we, apparently, do not exist.
2) Brig, your statement, "The model does what it is programmed to do,
and that's all." sounds a bit like the ai paradox: as soon as a
program can do something that only intelligent beings could do, and
the algorithm is understood, it no longer seems to require
intelligence. All software models do what they are programmed to do.
In a sense, the physics of our universe has done what it was
programmed to do.
3) On the order of ten to the 35th to ten to the 40th single-celled
creatures lived during the time required to evolve to simple multi-
celled organisms. In the 3 months that your challenge runs, a PC will
execute on the order of ten to the 18th instructions. Any solution
that demonstrates the effect you seek within the proposed time frame
will, almost inevitably, seem contrived.
4) Research institutions around the world are spending millions of
dollars, paying some of the smartest people on the planet to
demonstrate the effect you seek. $20K might not quite do it.
--Rick