Related papers: Conjugate Distribution Laws in Cultural Evolution …
We consider the evolution of populations under the joint action of mutation and differential reproduction, or selection. The population is modelled as a finite-type Markov branching process in continuous time, and the associated…
Models of conformity and anti-conformity have typically focused on cultural traits with nominal (unordered) variants, such as baby names, strategies (cooperate/defect), or the presence/absence of an innovation. There have been fewer studies…
We extend our study of a simple model of biological coevolution to its statistical properties. Staring with a complete description in terms of a master equation, we provide its relation to the deterministic evolution equations used in…
Human sociality depends upon the benefits of mutual aid and extensive communication. However mutual aid is made difficult by the problems of coordinating diverse norms and preferences, and communication is harried by substantial ambiguity…
This paper presents an experimental study to investigate the learning and decision making behavior of individuals in a human society. Social learning is used as the mathematical basis for modelling interaction of individuals that aim to…
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…
We investigate the distribution of flavonoids, a major category of plant secondary metabolites, across species. Flavonoids are known to show high species specificity, and were once considered as chemical markers for understanding adaptive…
We present a theory of cultural evolution based upon a renormalization group scheme. We consider rational but cognitively limited agents who optimize their decision making process by iteratively updating and refining the mental…
It is shown that, in certain circumstances, systems of cultural rules may be represented by doubly stochastic matrices denoted called possibility transforms, and by certain real valued possibility densities with inner product. Using such…
We use a generalised version of the individual-based Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology to study the relationship between ecosystem structure and evolutionary history. Our evolved model ecosystems typically exhibit interaction…
Information spread in social media depends on a number of factors, including how the site displays information, how users navigate it to find items of interest, users' tastes, and the `virality' of information, i.e., its propensity to be…
People make strategic decisions many times a day - during negotiations, when coordinating actions with others, or when choosing partners for cooperation. The resulting dynamics can be studied with learning theory and evolutionary game…
We consider a simple mathematical model of gradual Darwinian evolution in continuous time and continuous trait space, due to intraspecific competition for common resource in an asexually reproducing population in constant environment, while…
For a one-locus haploid infinite population with discrete generations, the celebrated Kingman's model describes the evolution of fitness distributions under the competition of selection and mutation, with a constant mutation probability.…
Dunnell's (1989) explanation for cultural elaboration proposed that elaboration could be a consequence of selection within uncertain environments. He developed the theory to the extent that it performed well explaining the distribution of…
Knowledge acquisition by consumers is a key process in the diffusion of innovations. However, in standard theories of the representative agent, agents do not learn and innovations are adopted instantaneously. Here, we show that in a…
Permutations of correlated sequences of random variables appear naturally in a variety of applications such as graph matching and asynchronous communications. In this paper, the asymptotic statistical behavior of such permuted sequences is…
Construction grammar posits that constructions, or form-meaning pairings, are acquired through experience with language (the distributional learning hypothesis). But how much information about constructions does this distribution actually…
In numerous contexts, individuals may decide whether they take actions to mitigate the spread of disease, or not. Mitigating the spread of disease requires an individual to change their routine behaviours to benefit others, resulting in a…
Natural data is often organized as a hierarchical composition of features. How many samples do generative models need in order to learn the composition rules, so as to produce a combinatorially large number of novel data? What signal in the…