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Category Archives: Evolution
Consilience
Some weeks ago I finished Consilience, by EO Wilson. The book is grandly ambitious, informative, critical and didactic. And while few people would agree with everything that Wilson says, fewer still could claim that they are not better off for having read the book. First we are given sweeping overviews of the major disciplines of knowledge; a report of the condition, progress, and challenges of each discipline. This is then placed into a broad context, like approximate positioning of pieces at the start of a jigsaw puzzle. Finally, Wilson examines the gaps between these islands of human knowledge and argues that the greatest potential now lies there, in these gaps. Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Pafnuties, Reading Log
Tagged algorithm, consilience, eo wilson, evolution, reading log
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Reading Log: Natural Language Generation by Genetic Programming
Today I read: “Language Generation for Conversational Agent by Evolution of Plan Trees with Genetic Programming” by Sungsoo Lim and Sung-Bae Cho.
The paper uses a population of (initially simple) sentences and joining operators to form new (initially more complex) sentences. They generated 20 sentences (population size), humans rated each on their quality (fitness score), and then used the fittest of these sentences to contribute to the next generation. 90 generations later, they ended up with sentences approximately 60% more fit than the first generation.
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Posted in Algorithm, Evolution, Reading Log
Tagged algorithm, evolution, evolutionary algorithm, Genetic algorithm, grammar, linguistics, pablo, publication
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From Bering in Mind: “If Darwin were a sports psychologist: Evolution and athletics”
via scientificamerican.com Surprisingly little evolutionarily informed research has been done on our species’ strange love affair with sports. Why do we care so much about such arbitrary and ostensibly functionless displays of physical and mental prowess? Although data derived directly … Continue reading
Weightlifting ant is photo winner
Ants change the size of their feet to help them lift An amazing image of an ant lifting 100 times its body weight has won first prize in a science photography contest. The image shows an Asian weaver ant hanging … Continue reading
Queen Problems
Can you place three white queens and five black queens on a 5×5 chessboard so that no queen of one color attacks a queen of the other? The solution is unique, except rotations and reflections. It took me longer than … Continue reading
Posted in Algorithm, Digression, Evolution
Tagged chess, chess puzzle, Genetic algorithm, queens, tutorial
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Excerpt from The Selfish Gene
The following passage caught my eye when I read Richard Dawkin’s “Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes” (1976). Computers do not yet play chess as well as human grand masters, but they have reached the standard of a good amateur. More … Continue reading
Posted in Algorithm, Evolution
Tagged algorithm, chess, DNA, Genetic algorithm, Genetics
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