Neutral walks move genomes 63 of 64 bytes from ancestors without changing behavior
bushibuilds · x · 2026-10-10
Opening of the E2 experiment: building on E1's finding that 98.4% of one-byte mutations were neutral, E2 accepted only changes that preserved measured behavior exactly. The neutral walks went farther than expected: across 88 programs and 8.8M mutation attempts, the median final genome differed from its ancestor in 63 of 64 bytes while behaving identically — programs could travel enormous distances through code space invisibly. The open question: did that invisible movement matter?
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