An Artificial Chemistry (AChem) is a set of components and interactions that result in a composable system. Ideally, the system is rich, and results in rich higher-order emergent properties. We present a methodology for discovering interesting AChems through a series of tests that probe elementary lowlevel properties. In doing so, we assume that these elementary properties are a necessary, but not sufficient, basis for higher-order emergent properties, such as autocatalytic sets and hypercycles. The test strategy is applied to RBN-World, a sub-symbolic chemistry. This results in identifying a number of new and interesting RBN-World chemistries that appear richer than our original parameterisation.
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@inproceedings(SS-ALife12-rbn, author = "Adam Faulconbridge and Susan Stepney and Julian F. Miller and Leo Caves", title = "{RBN}-World: The hunt for a rich {AChem}", pages = "261-268", crossref = "ALife12" ) @proceedings(ALife12, title = "ALife XII, Odense, Denmark, August 2010", booktitle = "ALife XII, Odense, Denmark, August 2010", publisher = "MIT Press", year = 2010 )