arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to William A. Tozier.
In the spirit of the many recent simple models of evolution inspired by statistical physics, we put forward a simple model of the evolution of such models. Like its objects of study, it is (one supposes) in principle testable and capable of making predictions, and gives qualitative insights into a hitherto mysterious process.
Following extensive numerical experiments, it has been suggested that the evolution of competing computer programs in artificial life simulations shows signs of being a self-organized critical process. The primary evidence for this claim comes from the distribution of the lifetimes of species in the simulations, which appears to follow a power law. We argue that, for a number of reasons, it is unlikely that the system is in fact at a critical point and suggest an alternative explanation for the power-law lifetime distribution.