IISc Open Day Event

We talked about how complexity emerges without a plan by means of simple adaptations to existing environments that stack over time. We played a game where people were asked to add one feature to a ‘blob’ creature to make it better adapted for a given environment. Further people would make modifications to previously modified blobs, adding one feature at a time – there clearly is no plan because different people are adding features. But just by focusing on the current environment and using the existing modifications as reference, you get more complex features. Features that were once important are repurposed into something new. You also see convergent evolution where the same feature arises from different precursors.