Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change.

KN Laland — 2008-04-21T05:26:10-00:00

The Behavioral and brain sciences, Vol. 23, No. 1. (February 2000)

We propose a conceptual model that maps the causal pathways relating biological evolution to cultural change. It builds on conventional evolutionary theory by placing emphasis on the capacity of organisms to modify sources of natural selection in their environment (niche construction) and by broadening the evolutionary dynamic to incorporate ontogenetic and cultural processes. In this model, phenotypes have a much more active role in evolution than generally conceived. This sheds light on hominid evolution, on the evolution of culture, and on altruism and cooperation. Culture amplifies the capacity of human beings to modify sources of natural selection in their environments to the point where that capacity raises some new questions about the processes of human adaptation.

Synchronizing to the Environment: Information Theoretic Constraints on Agent Learning

James Crutchfield — 2007-08-27T02:07:25-00:00

(23 Mar 2001)

We show that the way in which the Shannon entropy of sequences produced by an information source converges to the source's entropy rate can be used to monitor how an intelligent agent builds and effectively uses a predictive model of its environment. We introduce natural measures of the environment's apparent memory and the amounts of information that must be (i) extracted from observations for an agent to synchronize to the environment and (ii) stored by an agent for optimal prediction. If structural properties are ignored, the missed regularities are converted to apparent randomness. Conversely, using representations that assume too much memory results in false predictability.

CiteULike: mattjb's Feldman

Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change.

Synchronizing to the Environment: Information Theoretic Constraints on Agent Learning