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We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…
What does it mean to create a new concept, rather than retrieve a familiar one? Repeatedly sampling a generative model at the same prompt produces variations with similar styles and typical content. We propose that creativity is the…
Evolutionary game theory assumes that players replicate a highly scored player's strategy through genetic inheritance. However, when learning occurs culturally, it is often difficult to recognize someone's strategy just by observing the…
Adaptation to changing environments is a hallmark of biological systems. Diversity in traits is necessary for adaptation and can influence the survival of a population faced with novelty. In habitats that remain stable over many…
It has been hypothesized that one of the main reasons evolution has been able to produce such impressive adaptations is because it has improved its own ability to evolve -- "the evolution of evolvability". Rupert Riedl, for example, an…
Our understanding of evolution is shaped strongly by how we conceive of its fundamental causes. In the original Modern Synthesis, evolution was defined as a process of shifting the frequencies of available alleles at many loci affecting a…
Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs,…
Evolution is a fundamental process that shapes the biological world we inhabit, and reinforcement learning is a powerful tool used in artificial intelligence to develop intelligent agents that learn from their environment. In recent years,…
We introduce and study a learning theory which is roughly automatic, that is, it does not require but a minimum of initial programming, and is based on the potential computational phenomenon of self-reference, (i.e. the potential ability of…
Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…
In complex environments, there are costs to both ignorance and perception. An organism needs to track fitness-relevant information about its world, but the more information it tracks, the more resources it must devote to memory and…
There are both benefits and drawbacks to cultural diversity. It can lead to friction and exacerbate differences. However, as with biological diversity, cultural diversity is valuable in times of upheaval; if a previously effective solution…
A central goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the origins and distribution of diversity across life. Beyond species or genetic diversity, we also observe diversity in the circuits (genetic or otherwise) underlying complex functional…
Biological intelligence is remarkable in its ability to produce complex behaviour in many diverse situations through data efficient, generalisable and transferable skill acquisition. It is believed that learning "good" sensory…
Darwinian evolution requires (i) heritable records, (ii) repeatable copying with variation, and (iii) routine irreversibility. Categorical quantum mechanics (CQM) makes precise why ``copy'' and ``delete'' are not generic quantum operations:…
Quantum Darwinism extends the traditional formalism of decoherence to explain the emergence of classicality in a quantum universe. A classical description emerges when the environment tends to redundantly acquire information about the…
The theory of natural selection has two forms. Deductive theory describes how populations change over time. One starts with an initial population and some rules for change. From those assumptions, one calculates the future state of the…
With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to be able to distinguish between natural and artificial…
An increasing number of dissident voices claim that the standard neo-Darwinian view of genes as 'leaders' and phenotypes as 'followers' during the process of adaptive evolution should be turned on its head. This idea is older than the…
Abductive reasoning, reasoning for inferring explanations for observations, is often mentioned in scientific, design-related and artistic contexts, but its understanding varies across these domains. This paper reviews how abductive…