SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY IN LIVING SYSTEMS - COMMENT

Citation
Mej. Newman et al., SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY IN LIVING SYSTEMS - COMMENT, Physics letters. A, 228(3), 1997, pp. 202-204
Citations number
8
Categorie Soggetti
Physics
Journal title
ISSN journal
03759601
Volume
228
Issue
3
Year of publication
1997
Pages
202 - 204
Database
ISI
SICI code
0375-9601(1997)228:3<202:SCILS->2.0.ZU;2-S
Abstract
Following extensive numerical experiments, Adami [Phys. Lett. A 203 (1 995) 29; Artificial Life 1 (1995) 429] has suggested that the evolutio n 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 specie s in the simulations, which appears to follow a power law. We argue th at, 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 po wer-law lifetime distribution. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.