Re: Behaviorism vs. evolutionary psychology

JGCASEY <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

JC:
And how is that different from trial and error which
quickly falls victim to the combinational explosion?

Trial and error with memory of success doesn't fall victim to combinational
explosions as long as there is path which can be taken one step at a time.

I am suggesting that not just anything can evolve even if
it could form complex structures (say by human design) simply
because the parts are not capable of building themselves up
in working stages by chance alone in a sufficiently short time
span or the even if they form a configuration that they might
not have what it takes to hold that configuration.

That might be true.

And the whole area of studying how different substrates effect their
ability to evolve I think would be an area someone may like to study. But
I don't see it as the great mystery you seem to see it as.

There's on a few very trivial requirements for a substrate to evolve.

JC:
Take reinforcement learning and the combinational explosion.
In theory trial and error should, given enough time, bring
about any pattern to be selected. But in fact the Universe
will not be around long enough for that to happen. Somehow
there are constraints in these systems that mean that they
can, within a reasonable time limit, produce the right
patterns to actually be selected.

It's not so complex John. All you need to solve the combinational
explosion problem is memory - aka the substrate must be able to form a
structure and hold the structure. It's called descent with modification.
It's a well known and well understood part of the puzzle of evolution.
This is what allows evolution to take one step at a time slowly changing
the structure. For complex structures to grow in a reasonable time, there
must also be a path evolution can take from simple structures to complex
structures where each advance creates a stronger structure (stronger in
terms of whatever fitness function the system is using).

But for evolution, survival of the structure in the universe is the only
fitness function. And if you have a system of building blocks that can
create a near infinite number of structures, is it really so hard to
believe that at all states of evolution, there will always be slight
modifications possible to the current structure to make it's odds of
survival a bit stronger?

JC:
Essentially yes I am talking about the fundamental constraints
of physics, but not so much why they exist but rather understanding
how they are involved in making evolution possible. I am suggesting
they play an essential part in reducing the number of possible
mutations to be selected from.

That there was sufficient time and that molecules have the right
stuff to evolve into more complex forms via chance and natural
selection is a matter of observation not one of understanding at
this stage what is it about molecules that make this possible.

Mutation and natural selection are not in themselves sufficient to
explain evolution for that would assume anything can evolve providing
it can mutate and there is some selective force.

Yes, it's very obvious that some substrates won't evolve as well as others.
And it seems reasonable that someone would try to study this and find ways
to quantify, or at least document with some language, the power of a
substrate to evolve.

But you talk as if it's all a mystery now when it's not really much of a
mystery at all.

Take Dawkin's biomorphs.

I've never heard of them.

But we can look at how the universe works and come rather quickly to a
basic understand of what's needed to make a good substrate for evolution.

Like I said before, it must be able to form structures.

And there must be mutation. But admitting there is mutation implies it
forms structure (or else the concept of mutation makes no sense) so
mutation implies the ability to form structure.

And there must be a selection force. But in fact, mutation normally
implies a selection force because the act of mutation will typically
destroy an old structure to create a new one. And in that act, we find all
the selection force we need - the selection force to survive (to prevent
being mutated). If one structure becomes less likely to be mutated, it's
become stronger, and will survive longer.

So the first thing we need for evolution is a substrate with selective
mutation - that is, a system of mutation that tends to change some parts
while leaving other parts unchanged.

And there's another important issue I can think of off the top of my head.
The changes to the structure created by the mutations must have the power
to effect future mutations. That is, structures in effect, has the power
(directly or indirectly) to mutate each other. And example of what won't
work, is the game of life where cells are randomly changed but that the
algorithm for picking what cell gets changed next is not a function of the
current structure. In other words, in that type of system, no structure
has a greater power to survive than any other structure. But even in the
Conway's game of life, structures effect each other because of how the
rules work, so it meets the requirement of past mutations affecting future
mutations.

Other obvious advantages is to have a substrate where duplication of
structure is possible, and where different structures are stronger, or
weaker, at defending against being used for duplication.

A key element in this game is the conservation of raw material. If one
structure duplicates itself by forcing other raw material to change it's
structure to match it's own, then the first structure in effect has run the
game of survival and the raw material used to make the clone has lost the
game of survival because it's old structure was lost (died).

Conway's game of life is a simple starting point for exploring the power of
substrates to evolve. If you really want to understand what is required
over and above the type of things I talked about here, study simple
artificial systems like Conway's game of life and see what you need to
change to make it evolve into more complex and interesting structures.

The obvious thing I believe we find wrong with the game of life is that
it's far too hard to form stable structures. Basically, nothing but very
simple structures are stable and the few larger structures that manage to
create stability do it by having long cycles of repetition that happen to
loop back on itself. But the larger the structure, the less likely it is
to be stable in life, and that's an obvious negative incentive for the
substrate creating increasing larger stable structures.

The opposite of that would be structures where it was too easy to create
large stable structures - so something that grew quickly like a reproducing
crystal pattern and which was so strong that no other structure in the
system could break it, would cause the universe to fully lock into that one
structure.

So it seems to me, that we need a substrate that can create long term
stability, but at the same time, the universe as a whole must never be
allowed to stabilize.

I think if you were to play with this ideas, it would not be hard to create
many simple (game of life like simple) substrates that show the power to
constantly evolve into increasingly stronger structures.

I really don't see it as being the great mystery you seem to see it as.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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