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BALANCE OF NATURE. "Darwin nevertheless saw the ecological roles of the diversity of species as parts of an almost superorganismic nature, and his main contribution to the idea of a balance of nature was his constant emphasis on competition and other mortality factors that kept all species' populations in check." https://lnkd.in/d8aX399 View in LinkedIn

NOT MACHINE LEARNING. "But, in fact, all of the phenomena relevant to our evolutionary questions can be produced by intention-less algorithms with simple incremental improvement mechanisms." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

MACHINE LEARNING. "It is common to think of learning systems as sophisticated machines (or intelligent organisms) with goal-directed intentions designed for the purpose of producing smart behaviours—which would make their abilities irrelevant to understanding evolutionary processes." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

REINFORCED LEARNING. "A learning system is a system that improves its performance at some task with experience. A simple kind of learning (often likened to natural selection) is reinforcement learning. This utilises a reward function to reinforce good behaviour or good outputs (or punish bad outputs) when they occur." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

BORROWING FROM LEARNING SYSTEMS. "We make this argument by recognising that analogous behaviours are possible, and are well-understood, in another domain—and because the underlying principles are mathematically equivalent, specific results and insights from one domain can be transferred to the other. This is a domain where the idea of a system that changes itself over time is not controversial—namely, learning systems." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION may be seen as an intelligent learning machine capable of anticipating the unknown. What lessons can we learn from this analogy? Is it so very far fetched? View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this meditation on the pervasive popular theme 'nature red in tooth and claw.' For your consideration, a new synthesis of the thinking of great scientists is proposed, which is radically contrary to the Victorian view of nature and commerce and even society itself. We have learned a lot since Darwin. And we have an immense amount more to learn. But this may be an adjustment worth thinking about. View in LinkedIn

EXAMPLE 2: SPECIES. "Species that co-occur in high-density are wired together by the evolution of ecological relationships that cause them to be co-selected in future." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

EXAMPLE 1: GENES. "Genes that are selected together are wired together via the evolution of gene-regulatory interactions that cause them to co-vary (be co-expressed) in future." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-015-9358-z View in LinkedIn

CODE ENABLED. "The genetic code allowed for the full division of labor between genes and enzymes; the genetic and catalytic alphabets thus became distinct. The presence of a genetic code is an enabling constraint: because protein enzymes do not have to reproduce, they can explore a larger functionality space." https://lnkd.in/dCn67bq View in LinkedIn