bruce edmonds, centre for policy modelling evolutionary units and adaptive intelligence bruce...

Bruce Edmonds,Centre for Policy Modelling

Evolutionary Units and Adaptive Intelligence

Bruce EdmondsCentre for Policy Modelling

Manchester Metropolitan Universityhttp://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce


Different Evolutionary Processes

• Evolution of organisms (with brains)

• Evolutionary processes within brains (neural Darwinism, multiple drafts, neural networks etc.)

• Memetic evolution between brains

• Evolution of cultures and societies


Some Confusions

• A brain is not a computer and a computer is not a brain

• External evolutionary processes are the builder - this is different from internal processes which may be the blocks

• Internal ‘self-organisation’ and externally driven evolution are very different


Change due to Internal Interaction

• Social embedding

• Recursive internal grounding of interaction

• Meaning of interactions comes from emergent ‘culture’

• Individuals increase personal advantage/computational load

• Whole system can drop in global fitness


Change due to External Evolution

• Division of labour and competition

• External grounding of interactions

• Meaning of interactions comes from external adaptivity

• Individuals may have lower personal advantage and higher computational loads

• Whole system seeks maximal fitness


What size might be necessary to support global brains?

• 1,000,000,000,000 cells in a human of which about 1 in 1,000 is a neurone

• Each cell is complex with 20,000 genes• 1,000s of cultures composed of 1,000s of

members• In environment of 1,000,000,000 species• Necessary environment 1 (planet earth) out

of ??? candidate planets


Different Analogies

Atom

Molecule

Gene

Organelle

Cell

Organism

Society

Collection of Societies

Hyperlink Web PageWebsiteCollection of

WebsitesMethod of

Organising Interactions (e.g. P2P systems)

Whole InternetPerson


Facilitating the Emergence of a Global Brain

• Reliable replication of large units

• Replication of instructions for processes

• Exterior selective forces

• Population of these units

• Embedding in a real and complex environment

• Autopoesis of large units

bruce edmonds, centre for policy modelling evolutionary units and adaptive intelligence bruce...

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