Communicative Bottlenecks Lead to Maximal Information Transfer

This paper presents new analytic and numerical analysis of signalling games that give rise to informational bottlenecks—that is to say, signalling games with more state/act pairs than available signals to communicate information about the world. I show via simulation that agents learning to coordinate tend to favour partitions of nature which provide maximal information transfer. This is true despite the fact that nothing from an initial analysis of the stability properties of the underlying signalling game suggests that this should be the case. As a first pass to explain this, I note that the underlying structure of our model favours maximal information transfer in regard to the simple combinatorial properties of how the agents might partition nature into kinds. However, I suggest that this does not perfectly capture the empirical results; thus, several open questions remain

Using Logic to Evolve More Logic: Composing Logical Operators via Self-Assembly

I consider how complex logical operations might self-assemble in a signalling-game context via composition of simpler underlying dispositions. On the one hand, agents may take advantage of pre-evolved dispositions; on the other hand, they may co-evolve dispositions as they simultaneously learn to combine them to display more complex behaviour. In either case, the evolution of complex logical operations can be more efficient than evolving such capacities from scratch. Showing how complex phenomena like these might evolve provides an additional path to the possibility of evolving more or less rich notions of compositionality. This helps provide another facet of the evolutionary story of how sufficiently rich, human-level cognitive or linguistic capacities may arise from simpler precursors

Reflexivity, Functional Reference, and Modularity: Alternative Targets for Language Origins

Researchers in language origins typically try to explain how compositional communication might evolve to bridge the gap between animal communication and natural language. However, as an explanatory target, compositionality has been shown to be problematic for a gradualist approach to the evolution of language. In this paper, I suggest that reflexivity provides an apt and plausible alternative target which does not succumb to the problems that compositionality faces. I further explain how proto-reflexivity, which depends upon functional reference, gives rise to complex communication systems via modular composition

Power by Association

We use tools from evolutionary game theory to examine how power might influence the cultural evolution of inequitable norms between discernible groups (such as gender or racial groups) in a population of otherwise identical individuals. Similar extant models always assume that power is homogeneous across a social group. As such, these models fail to capture situations where individuals who are not themselves disempowered nonetheless end up disadvantaged in bargaining scenarios by dint of their social group membership. Thus, we assume that there is heterogeneity in the groups in that some individuals are more powerful than others. Our model shows that even when most individuals in two discernible sub-groups are relevantly identical, powerful individuals can affect the social outcomes for their entire group; this results in power by association for their in-group and a bargaining disadvantage for their out-group. In addition, we observe scenarios like those described where individuals who are more powerful will get less in a bargaining scenario because a convention has emerged disadvantaging their social group

Power by Association

We use tools from evolutionary game theory to examine how power might influence the cultural evolution of inequitable norms between discernible groups (such as gender or racial groups) in a population of otherwise identical individuals. Similar extant models always assume that power is homogeneous across a social group. As such, these models fail to capture situations where individuals who are not themselves disempowered nonetheless end up disadvantaged in bargaining scenarios by dint of their social group membership. Thus, we assume that there is heterogeneity in the groups in that some individuals are more powerful than others. Our model shows that even when most individuals in two discernible sub-groups are relevantly identical, powerful individuals can affect the social outcomes for their entire group; this results in power by association for their in-group and a bargaining disadvantage for their out-group. In addition, we observe scenarios like those described where individuals who are more powerful will get less in a bargaining scenario because a convention has emerged disadvantaging their social group

Epistemology and the Structure of Language

We are concerned here with how structural properties of language may come to reflect features of the world in which it evolves. As a concrete example, we will consider how a simple term language might evolve to support the principle of indifference over state descriptions in that language. The point is not that one is justified in applying the principle of indifference to state descriptions in natural language. Instead, it is that one should expect a language that has evolved in the context of facilitating successful action to reflect probabilistic features of the world in which it evolved

Epistemology and the Structure of Language

We are concerned here with how structural properties of language may come to reflect features of the world in which it evolves. As a concrete example, we will consider how a simple term language might evolve to support the principle of indifference over state descriptions in that language. The point is not that one is justified in applying the principle of indifference to state descriptions in natural language. Instead, it is that one should expect a language that has evolved in the context of facilitating successful action to reflect probabilistic features of the world in which it evolved