Computational experiment demonstrates spontaneous emergence of six cognitive faculties in simulated organisms, indicating intelligence can arise purely from statistical and selection pressures.
We present an experimental verification of autonomous cognitive emergence in artificial life ecosystems governed strictly by the UHGP (Unified Hyperoperation Generalization Plan) statistical flow law. The environment is constructed with zero linguistic priors, zero cognitive module hard-coding, and zero manual activation—only continuous–discrete thermodynamic gradients and survival selection pressures. Across 200 generations of unconstrained struggle, organisms spontaneously self-activate six distinct higher-order cognitive faculties: System 1 intuitive jet extrapolation, episodic topological memory, proto-linguistic acoustic signaling, System 2 counterfactual simulation, Machiavellian tactical deception, and verification skepticism. We provide quantitative evolutionary penetration curves, five landmark chronological events, semantic consensus dynamics, and the game-theoretic convergence towards cognitive Nash equilibrium. All results are fully reproducible with the accompanying Python script (replicate_emergence.py), requiring only NumPy and standard library.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Juncai Zhou (2026) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: