BOB - Bag of Beliefs

BOB (Bag of Beliefs) is the first in a new series of artificial lifeforms, who takes the form of a chimeric branching serpent. BOB advances Cheng’s use of simulation to focus on an individual agent s capacity to deal with surprise: the subjective difference between expectations and perception. Over the course of its lifetime, BOB s body, mind, and personality evolve to better confront the continuous stream of life s surprises, and metabolize them into familiar routines. Crucially, BOB incorporates the tutoring influence of the viewer to help offset BOB s temptation to only satisfy its immediate impulses and childhood biases. As BOB dies many deaths – whether through failures of personality, bad parenting, random accident, or a life well lived – BOB may become synonymous with a reoccurring pattern of behavior, common across all BOB lifetimes, thereby manifesting the undying eternal characteristic of a god.