Ubiquity symposium: Evolutionary computation and the processes of life

Abstract

While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimization, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. The authors argue under reasonable assumptions, interesting conclusions can be drawn that are of relevance to behavioral evolution. The authors will focus on two important features of life---robustness and fitness---which, they will argue, are related to algorithmic probability and to the thermodynamics of computation, disciplines that may be capable of modeling key features of living organisms, and which can be used in formulating new algorithms of evolutionary computation.