Re: A Touch of Thermo

Michael Olea wrote:
Glen M. Sizemore wrote:


Olea has a large repertoire concerning extensions of the notion of entropy
to the sorts of things studied by behavior analysis, but much of what he
says is somewhat beyond me. He is, however, a rather careful thinker, and
I don't doubt that he could make a contribution to the understanding of
behavior.



Corrado, G.S., Sugrue, L.P., Seung, H.S. and Newsome, W.T. (2005).
Linear-nonlinear-poisson models of primate choice dynamics. J. Experimental
Analysis of Behavior 84:581-617.

Nemenman's logic runs like this: given some plausible (and testable)
assumptions about the complexity structure of ambient contingencies in
natural environments, there is an ideal, an optimal strategy (learning
algorithm/hypothesis space) that, on average, maximizes fitness - what

would Bayes Do? The behavior of organisms, by hypothesis, comes close to
realizing this ideal (and if it does not, we have probably misconstrued the
optimization problem being solved). We can, given our assumptions, predict

what Bayes would do, and compare that to what organisms actually do. All of
this is independent of any theory of the underlying physiology. But, given
a match of the behavior of an organism to the behavior of a Bayseian agent
- an algorithm - there is now a principled approach to elucidating the
physiology that mediates it. And that is what Corrado et al. did.


Cordially,
Michael



This is a cogent, interesting post. Nemenman's logic makes me wonder about the gene pool, which is not optimized. A benevolent mutation is likely to get 'fixed' into the gene pool. But, this fixing is also a random process, so that some neutral and a few malevolent genes get fixed into the gene pool. Thus the gene pool has a strong tendency to improve, but I don't think it ever reaches optimality. I remember this next idea less clearly;(I don't think natural selection continues to search for optimality.) I think that different species occupy niches in an environment. I don't think this structure is optimized either, but exists in a range of satisfying stable configurations. For instance, if the environment changes and there is now another species better qualified to occupy another species niche, there is resistance to displacing the lesser qualified species with the better adapted species until a threshold of extra suitability to the environment is reached.

Incidentally, this principle also works for software, once a software reaches a dominant market share, it's very hard to dislodge it, even with a better product. For instance Linux, which is free, has fewer viruses and free software, is unlikely to ever displace the MS OS.

There is a wide variety in the gene pool which means individuals don't
all have the same potentials for reacting or adapting to environment
changes, their behaviors differ. This makes me wonder about there being an optimal strategy unless there is a very great deal known about the organism and its natural environment. It does occur to me that my
ideas may not be at the same level to which the paper by Corrado applies. I'll try to read it, if it's online or at the UCSC library.

Regards,
Stephen

.

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