Channon, Alastair. “Improving and still passing the ALife test: Component-normalised activity statistics classify evolution in Geb as unbounded.” Proceedings of Artificial Life VIII, Sydney, RK Standish, MA Bedau, and HA Abbass,(eds.), MIT Press: Cambridge, MA (2003): 173-181.
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Bedau’s (1998a) classification system for long-term evolutionary dynamics provides a test for open-ended evolution. Making this ALife test more rigorous, and passing it, are two of the most important open problems in the field. Previously (Channon 2001) I presented the result that ‘Geb’, a system designed to verify and extend theories behind the generation of evolutionary emergent systems (Channon & Damper 2000), has passed this test. However I also criticised the test, most significantly with regard to its normalisation method for artificial systems. This paper details a modified normalisation method, based on component activity normalisation, that overcomes these criticisms. It then presents the results of the revised test when applied to Geb, which indicate that this system does indeed exhibit open-ended evolution.