Five projects to investigate the evolution of skills from an information-processing perspective

The questions, the methods, and the status of the research program.

The research is organized in projects: 1) a model of individual-based skills, 2) a model of evolution for individual-based skills, 3) a model for group-level skills, and 4) a model of evolution for group-level skills. These four projects have a starting position and layers of increasing complexity and capability. The fifth project deals with methodology, assumptions, and general questions that span the first 4 projects.

1. The first project addresses the question on how skills might work, how they come from DNA, go to the brain, and cause action. (TOC)

• Skills, starting with relatively simple models:
• Starting point: representing a skill as persistent information in the brain that can produce action in the form of rotation of limbs about joints. When causing action, the skill generates neural information flowing to muscles that control the rotation of limbs about joints. As part of causing action, the skill may integrate perceptual information to modify the action.
• Skills as action produced by neural information flowing to muscles that control the rotation of limbs about joints, including how they work and how perception is integrated.
• A standardized internal geometry, supporting skills components, reusability of skill information, and more flexible integration of perception.
• Compression, reusability of parts, and an 'inner language' for skills.
• Discovery and experimentation - curiosity

2. The second project addresses the question how a skill might evolve from one species to the next. (TOC)

• Evolution of individual-based skills:
• The evolution of skills is modeled as copying that information.
• A dual-channel model of the evolution of skills that includes mimicry.
• The evolution of skills by means of the 'inner language'.
• Within-individual evolution

3. The third project addresses the question on group-level skill-sets that account for gender-specific behaviours as well as for herd and pack behaviours.

• Group-level skill-sets (containing complementary and coordinated individual-based skills):
• Group-level skills is modeled as a complementary set of individual-based skills that are coordinated through information exchange between the individuals.
• Group-level skills that take advantage of mimicry.
• Group-level skills and individual-based communication skills
• Group-based learning skills???

4. The fourth project addresses the question about the incremental evolution of group-level sets of coordinated skills, with their associated information exchanges

• evolution of group-level skill-sets:
• The evolution of group-level skills is modeled through the evolution of the complementary set of individual-based skills, where individual fitness is increased by group-level benefits.
• The possibly that the evolution of group-level skills happens along a different channel than the evolution of the complementary set of individual-based skills.
• The evolution of group-level ???
• The evolution of group-level ???

5. The fifth project addresses the question about passing learned skills from one generation to the next. We propose that innate mimicry and apprenticeship can function analogously to evolution, i.e. copy and optimize learned skills.