Related papers: Neutrality: A Necessity for Self-Adaptation
Adaptive data analysis is frequently criticized for its pessimistic generalization guarantees. The source of these pessimistic bounds is a model that permits arbitrary, possibly adversarial analysts that optimally use information to bias…
Complex adaptive systems have been the subject of much recent attention. It is by now well-established that members (`agents') tend to self-segregate into opposing groups characterized by extreme behavior. However, while different social…
Understanding how biological organisms make decisions is of fundamental importance in understanding behavior. Such an understanding within evolutionary game theory so far has been sought by appealing to bounded rationality. Here, we present…
The mutation process in evolution strategies has been interlinked with the normal distribution since its inception. Many lines of reasoning have been given for this strong dependency, ranging from maximum entropy arguments to the need for…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…
Our wellbeing depends as much on our personal success, as it does on the success of our society. The realization of this fact makes cooperation a very much needed trait. Experiments have shown that rewards can elevate our readiness to…
Biological networks of interacting agents exhibit similar topological properties for a wide range of scales, from cellular to ecological levels, suggesting the existence of a common evolutionary origin. A general evolutionary mechanism…
The concept of neutral evolutionary networks being a significant factor in evolutionary dynamics was first proposed by Huynen {\em et al.} about 7 years ago. In one sense, the principle is easy to state -- because most mutations to an…
Computer modelling for evolutionary systems consists in: 1) to store in the memory the individual features of each member of a large population; and 2) to update the whole system repeatedly, as time goes by, according to some prescribed…
We apply the theory of learning to physically renormalizable systems in an attempt to develop a theory of biological evolution, including the origin of life, as multilevel learning. We formulate seven fundamental principles of evolution…
Empirical evidence suggesting that living systems might operate in the vicinity of critical points, at the borderline between order and disorder, has proliferated in recent years, with examples ranging from spontaneous brain activity to…
The tendency of repeating past choices more often than expected from the history of outcomes has been repeatedly empirically observed in reinforcement learning experiments. It can be explained by at least two computational processes:…
This paper studies a stylized model of local interaction where agents choose from an ever increasing set of vertically ranked actions, e.g. technologies. The driving forces of the model are infrequent upward shifts (``updates''), followed…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
Indirect reciprocity is a key mechanism for large-scale cooperation. This mechanism captures the insight that in part, people help others to build and maintain a good reputation. To enable such cooperation, appropriate social norms are…
The pursuit of general intelligence has traditionally centered on external objectives: an agent's control over its environments or mastery of specific tasks. This external focus, however, can produce specialized agents that lack…
As automatic optimization techniques find their way into industrial applications, the behavior of many complex systems is determined by some form of planner picking the right actions to optimize a given objective function. In many cases,…
Hubbell's neutral theory of biodiversity has successfully explained the observed composition of many ecological communities but it relies on strict demographic equivalence among species and provides no room for evolutionary processes like…
Any process in which competing solutions replicate with errors and numbers of their copies depend on their respective fitnesses is the evolutionary optimization process. As during carcinogenesis mutated genomes replicate according to their…
We discuss preliminary results from two experiments and put forth the notion that the development of sensory systems might be more geared towards discerning differences rather than for spotting similarities. We present the possibility that…