Am Do, 18. Aug 2022, um 17:08, schrieb Jason Resch: > > > On Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 6:46 AM Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> Am Mi, 17. Aug 2022, um 21:52, schrieb Brent Meeker: >> > On 8/17/2022 8:29 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> And since you, like me, are a strong believer in Darwinism, we don't >> >> even have to go into the metaphysical. You might also want to consider >> >> that there is no reason for evolution to provide us with direct access >> >> to reality. It might also be the case that some illusion is a better >> >> adaptation. Donald Hoffman goes as far as claiming that the most >> >> likely situation is that we evolved to perceive such an illusion. Are >> >> you familiar with his ideas? >> > >> > The "illusion" must have some relation to reality in order to provide >> > better adaptation. But in that case why call it "illusion"? Is it an >> > illusion that we don't perceive RF or gamma rays? Are dogs >> > hallucinating when they smell things we don't? >> >> It could be that actively preventing us from perceiving some aspect of >> reality increases our biological fitness, but at the same time ultimately >> prevents us from fully understanding reality. It could be some fundamental >> cognitive distortion. >> >> A long time ago I was programming an artificial life simulation. It was this >> typical thing, a simulated environment with agents foraging for food. The >> agents underwent an evolutionary process. To test the evolutionary process, >> I decided to make the view range of the agents a genetic parameter without >> constraints. I was fully expecting this value to quickly go to infinity. To >> my surprise, when I checked the simulation the next morning, the view range >> had stabilized at a relatively short value. The reason was this: agents with >> infinite vision range went for big piles of food that were far away. They >> all chose the same pile, and when they converged there was not enough food >> for everyone, and they had spent too much energy going the distance. Of >> course they could have evolved some more sophisticated strategies, but since >> the vision range was a genetic parameter, it was simply easier for evolution >> to provide global coordination by limiting the vision range, and then it got >> stuck at this local optimum. I still think about this to this day, and >> wonder if such a phenomenon has biological plausibility. > > That is truly fascinating. > > It brings to mind a situation where I was experimenting with alife, and after > many generations they evolved swarming/social behavior, despite their > inability to detect each other, all had converged to only travel in the same > direction and never turn around to get food behind or too far to the side of > them. > > Individually this strategy seemed bad, but it benefitted the group overall. > Since everytime any piece of food was eaten another would appear randomly. So > by sweeping across the screen in the same direction, efficiency was maximized > for the individual, and all ended up eating more as a result. Or maybe there > was some other reason for it. It fascinated me nonetheless.
That is very nice, and I think that it matches the conventional explanations for swarming behavior in nature (also protection against predators). I guess we need some sort of everything list Alife hacakthon :) Russell is very quiet, but I know that he also likes this stuff. In fact, I believe that I found this list in the 2000s because of some alife-related reference. How would have thought that I would still be here in 2022, reading all about paganism and Trump-stuff :) Telmo > Jason > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUgWnm-Xo5R5Rjt1%2Bd57yTkKcCPvauCx9i1hH%3Dpbae96VA%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUgWnm-Xo5R5Rjt1%2Bd57yTkKcCPvauCx9i1hH%3Dpbae96VA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/6282160f-b896-45b2-b894-617a09d169f4%40www.fastmail.com.
