Related papers: EVOC: A Computer Model of the Evolution of Culture
Evolutionary Computation is a group of biologically inspired algorithms used to solve complex optimisation problems. It can be split into Evolutionary Algorithms, which take inspiration from genetic inheritance, and Swarm Intelligence…
This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity…
Organisms result from adaptive processes interacting across different time scales. One such interaction is that between development and evolution. Models have shown that development sweeps over several traits in a single agent, sometimes…
The process of evolutionary emergence of purposeful adaptive behavior is investigated by means of computer simulations. The model proposed implies that there is an evolving population of simple agents, which have two natural needs: energy…
Formal modelling provides a toolkit for understanding cultural dynamics, from individual decisions to recurring patterns of change. This chapter explains what models are and why they matter. Using a precise, shared language, they aid…
Recently, the Deep Learning community has become interested in evolutionary optimization (EO) as a means to address hard optimization problems, e.g. meta-learning through long inner loop unrolls or optimizing non-differentiable operators.…
Evolution is one of the major omnipresent powers in the universe that has been studied for about two centuries. Recent scientific and technical developments make it possible to make the transition from passively understanding to actively…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…
How do people acquire rich, flexible knowledge about their environment from others despite limited cognitive capacity? Humans are often thought to rely on computationally costly mentalizing, such as inferring others' beliefs. In contrast,…
Epidemiological models are an important tool in coping with epidemics, as they offer a forecast, even if often simplistic, of the behavior of the disease in the population. This allows responsible health agencies to organize themselves and…
Incorporating decision-making dynamics during an outbreak poses a challenge for epidemiology, faced by several modeling approaches siloed by different disciplines. We propose an epi-economic model where high-frequency choices of individuals…
Humans stand alone in terms of their potential to collectively and cumulatively change their culture in an open-ended manner. This open-endedness provides societies with the ability to continually expand their resources and to increase…
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to evolve programs and multi-agent systems, yet most existing approaches rely on overwrite-based mutations that maintain only a single candidate at a time. Such methods discard useful…
Brain-body co-evolution enables animals to develop complex behaviors in their environments. Inspired by this biological synergy, embodied co-design (ECD) has emerged as a transformative paradigm for creating intelligent agents-from virtual…
The structure of ecological networks, in particular food webs, determines their ability to evolve further, i.e. evolvability. The knowledge about how food web evolvability is determined by the structures of diverse ecological networks can…
Whether a population of decision-making individuals will reach a state of satisfactory decisions is a fundamental problem in studying collective behaviors. In the framework of evolutionary game theory and by means of potential functions,…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
We present detailed numerical results for a modified form of the so-called Minority Game, which provides a simplified model of a competitive market. Each agent has a limited set of strategies, and competes to be in a minority. An…
The dynamics of urban systems can be understood from an evolutionary perspective, in some sense extending biological and cultural evolution. Models for systems of cities implementing elementary evolutionary processes remain however to be…
Culture involves the origination and transmission of ideas, but the conditions in which culture can emerge and evolve are unclear. We constructed and studied a highly simplified neural-network model of these processes. In this model ideas…