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Although it has contributed to remarkable improvements in some specific areas, attempts to develop a universal design theory are generally characterized by failure. This paper sketches arguments for a new approach to engineering design…
The mirror neuron theory that has enjoyed continued validations was developed with no particular attention to the phenomenon of the vision. Understandably the perception of vision has always been thought to happen, naturally, as that for…
Objections to Darwinian evolution are often based on the time required to carry out the necessary mutations. Seemingly, exponential numbers of mutations are needed. We show that such estimates ignore the effects of natural selection, and…
We study quantum Darwinism, the redundant recording of information about the preferred states of a decohering system by its environment, for an object illuminated by a blackbody. We calculate the quantum mutual information between the…
A central biological question is how natural organisms are so evolvable (capable of quickly adapting to new environments). A key driver of evolvability is the widespread modularity of biological networks--their organization as functional,…
Simon's classical random-copying model, introduced in 1955, has garnered much attention for its ability, in spite of an apparent simplicity, to produce characteristics similar to those observed across the spectrum of complex systems.…
Fat tailed statistics and power-laws are ubiquitous in many complex systems. Usually the appearance of of a few anomalously successful individuals (bio-species, investors, websites) is interpreted as reflecting some inherent "quality"…
Biological systems like long-lived clonal organisms, holobionts and clades challenge traditional evolutionary thinking since they adapt without populations or reproduction. This paper aims to provide an overarching theoretical framework…
According to the honing theory of creativity, creative thought works not on individually considered, discrete, predefined representations but on a contextually-elicited amalgam of items which exist in a state of potentiality and may not be…
We argue that the phenomenon of symmetry breaking in genetics can enhance the adaptability of a species to changes in the environment. In the case of a virus, the claim is that the codon bias in the neutralization epitope improves the…
Diversity is an important factor in evolutionary algorithms to prevent premature convergence towards a single local optimum. In order to maintain diversity throughout the process of evolution, various means exist in literature. We analyze…
Commonly recognized evolutionarily relevant effects of sexual reproduction include increased diversity, accelerated adaptation, and constrained accumulation of deleterious mutations, along with a secondary effect of species genotype…
In this work, we advocate for the importance of singular learning theory (SLT) as it pertains to the theory and practice of variational inference in Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). To begin, using SLT, we lay to rest some of the confusion…
We propose an explanatory and computational theory of transformative discoveries in science. The theory is derived from a recurring theme found in a diverse range of scientific change, scientific discovery, and knowledge diffusion theories…
There is overwhelming evidence that human intelligence is a product of Darwinian evolution. Investigating the consequences of self-modification, and more precisely, the consequences of utility function self-modification, leads to the…
For an artificial creative agent, an essential driver of the search for novelty is a value function which is often provided by the system designer or users. We argue that an important barrier for progress in creativity research is the…
Scientific theories of consciousness should be falsifiable and non-trivial. Recent research has given us formal tools to analyze these requirements of falsifiability and non-triviality for theories of consciousness. Surprisingly, many…
Hidden-variable models aim to reproduce the results of quantum theory and to satisfy our classical intuition. Their refutation is usually based on deriving predictions that are different from those of quantum mechanics. Here instead we…
Biological approximations, which are universal for diverse species, are well known. With no other experimental data, their invariance to transformations from one species to another yields exact conservation (with respect to biological…
The evolution and function of imitation have always been placed within the confines of animal learning and associated with its crucial role in cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Can imitation evolve as a form of phenotypic…