IGUSLibrary

Project Description
IGUS: Information Gathering and Utilising System. An IGUS has two parts: The first part is a worldview which is an evolving functional representation of the physical world and the second part is a goal that evolves and seeks an answer within the worldview. Both the worldview and the goal are turing machines which evolve using genetic algorithms. You program the goal parameters and provide the interface to the 'real' world, and IGUSLibrary will do the rest - although you'll probably need access to a super-computer :-)

IGUSLibrary is a 'proof of concept' project, it is written in Ruby, and is currently in Alpha.

References and Inspiration
James B. Hartle source article 'The Physics of Now' that got me started: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0403001
Gell-Mann's IGUS mentioned here: http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/workingpapers/97-09-079.pdf
Max Tegmark 'The Mathematical Universe': http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646
Wikipedia article on Genetic Algorithms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
Wikipedia article on Turing Machines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine
And this Java demo really got me thinking: