Myths and Legends of the Baldwin Effect

This position paper argues that the Baldwin effect is widely misunderstood by the evolutionary computation community. The misunderstandings appear to fall into two general categories. Firstly, it is commonly believed that the Baldwin effect is concerned with the synergy that results when there is an evolving population of learning individuals. This is only half of the story. The full story is more complicated and more interesting. The Baldwin effect is concerned with the costs and benefits of lifetime learning by individuals in an evolving population. Several researchers have focussed exclusively on the benefits, but there is much to be gained from attention to the costs. This paper explains the two sides of the story and enumerates ten of the costs and benefits of lifetime learning by individuals in an evolving population. Secondly, there is a cluster of misunderstandings about the relationship between the Baldwin effect and Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. The Baldwin effect is not Lamarckian. A Lamarckian algorithm is not better for most evolutionary computing problems than a Baldwinian algorithm. Finally, Lamarckian inheritance is not a better model of memetic (cultural) evolution than the Baldwin effect

Computer Simulation of Musical Evolution: A Lesson from Whales

Simulating musical creativity using computers needs more than the ability to devise elegant computational implementations of sophisticated algorithms. It requires, firstly, an understanding of what phenomena might be regarded as music; and, secondly, an understanding of the nature of such phenomena — including their evolutionary history, their recursive-hierarchic structure, and the mechanisms by which they are transmitted within cultural groups. To understand these issues it is fruitful to compare human music, and indeed human language, with analogous phenomena in other areas of the animal kingdom. Whale song, specifically that of the humpback (Megaptera novaeangeliae), possesses many structural and functional similarities to human music (as do certain types of birdsong). Using a memetic perspective, this paper compares the “musilanguage” of humpbacks with the music of humans, and aims to identify a number of shared characteristics. A consequence of nature and nurture, these commonalities appear to arise partly from certain constraints of perception and cognition (and thus they determine an aspect of the environment within which the “musemes” (musical memes) constituting whale vocalizations and human music is replicated), and partly from the social-emotive-embodied and sexual-selective nature of musemic transmission. The paper argues that Universal-Darwinian forces give rise to uniformities of structure in phenomena we might regard as “music”, irrespective of the animal group — certain primates, cetaceans or birds - within which it occurs. It considers the extent to which whale song might be regarded as creative, by invoking certain criteria used to assess this attribute in human music. On the basis of these various comparisons, the paper concludes by attempting to draw conclusions applicable to those engaged in designing evolutionary music simulation/generation algorithms

On Selfish Memes: culture as complex adaptive system

We present the formal definition of meme in the sense of the equivalence between memetics and the theory of cultural evolution. From the formal definition we find that culture can be seen analytically and persuade that memetic gives important role in the exploration of sociological theory, especially in the cultural studies. We show that we are not allowed to assume meme as smallest information unit in cultural evolution in general, but it is the smallest information we use on explaining cultural evolution. We construct a computational model and do simulation in advance presenting the selfish meme powerlaw distributed. The simulation result shows that the contagion of meme as well as cultural evolution is a complex adaptive system. Memetics is the system and art of importing genetics to social sciences

Mental evolution: a review of Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back

From Bacteria To Bach and Back is an ambitious book that attempts to integrate a theory about the evolution of the human mind with another theory about the evolution of human culture. It is advertised as a defense of memes, but conceptualizes memes more liberally than has been done before. It is also advertised as a defense of the proposal that natural selection operates on culture, but conceptualizes natural selection as a process in which nearly all interesting parameters are free to vary. This liberal conception of key concepts creates space for philosophical innovation, but occasionally makes the empirical content of the theory difficult to pin down. Nevertheless, the book is full of scientific insight, wit, and humor. It will undoubtedly become a cause of both controversy and inspiration for those interested in naturalistic theories of human culture

On Selfish Memes: culture as complex adaptive system

We present the formal definition of meme in the sense of the equivalence between memetics and the theory of cultural evolution. From the formal definition we find that culture can be seen analytically and persuade that memetic gives important role in the exploration of sociological theory, especially in the cultural studies. We show that we are not allowed to assume meme as smallest information unit in cultural evolution in general, but it is the smallest information we use on explaining cultural evolution. We construct a computational model and do simulation in advance presenting the selfish meme powerlaw distributed. The simulation result shows that the contagion of meme as well as cultural evolution is a complex adaptive system. Memetics is the system and art of importing genetics to social sciences.meme, memetics, memeplex, cultural evolution, cultural unit, complex system.