Posted by
Russell Standish on
Oct 09, 2008; 9:55am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Relaxed-selection-tp1301731p1311558.html
David Green proposed somewhat similar ideas back in around
2000. Someone else (I forget who now) mentioned it again in a slightly
different form within the last year in an Artificial Life article. I
tried running an experiment implementing this idea using Tierra, but
have found that I need to reimplement Tierra, as computers are now so
fast that Tierra's genebanker code overflows within a day or so of
runtime.
I hope to get around to this over the next year, hopefully before the
Budapest ECAL conference.
Cheers
On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 09:33:39PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> One of the things I am interested in is how nature
> creatures complex things. The latest New Scientist
> (from 27 Sep. 2008) has an article named "As if from
> nowhere" about the topic of "relaxed selection", a
> concept invented by Terry Deacon. Terry Deacon is
> an anthropology professor at Berkeley.
>
> According to Deacon, relaxed selection is a special
> form of natural selection, where the selection
> pressure and the competition is low (i.e. where
> natural selection itself is nearly absent), and the
> variety of traits which are able to survive and
> reproduce is high. When the selection pressures lift,
> genomes go wandering and new, unexpected traits may
> arise. I think if there is a "relaxed selection",
> then one can also speak of a "fierce selection":
> a natural selection with fierce competition when
> the climate is harsh and the food is sparse. Under
> this conditions only the best, well adapted individuals
> survive.
>
> Does natural selection occurs in different degrees?
> During "relaxed selection", the system enters an
> exploration phase: the chances of finding new
> configurations, traits and features are higher.
> The selection pressure for a species to remain
> in the corresponding niche is lower.
> During "fierce selection", the system enters an
> exploitation phase: chances of optimizing existing
> configurations, traits and features are higher.
> The selection pressure for a species to remain
> in the corresponding niche is higher.
>
> What do you think of "relaxed selection" ?
> Is Deacon onto something?
>
> -J.
>
>
>
>
>
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