Digital Life Experiment Reveals Neutral Mutations Pave Hidden Evolutionary Paths

An E2 digital life experiment allowed only behavior-preserving 'neutral walks' across 8.8 million mutation attempts on 88 programs, revealing that 49.7% of 6,869 improvements would have been impossible without earlier neutral changes. The walks also produced novel behaviors rarely seen before, with 96% of programs executing CREATE and 69% performing CALL.

2026-10-10 ~ 2026-10-10 · 3 related posts

• Neutral walks move genomes 63 of 64 bytes from ancestors without changing behavior — bushibuilds · 2026-10-10
• Neutral walks in digital-life experiment surface self-calls, storage writes and loops — bushibuilds · 2026-10-10
• 49.7% of fitness-improving mutations depended on prior neutral changes in digital-life experiment — bushibuilds · 2026-10-10