6 ms·

If your job is to attract an agent that is playing a careful balance between exploration and exploitation, while on tight computational budget, then you want to

If your job is to attract an agent that is playing a careful balance between exploration and exploitation, while on tight computational budget, then you want to attract them with some initial hooks (e.g. bright colors) and appease their computational risk assessment module with high compressibility (e.g. symmetries and self-similar patterns). https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4360 https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4360

changoplatanero 4y ago
The question in my mind is why is something that evolved to be beautiful to insects also beautiful to humans.
- mayankkaizen 4y ago
  You are probably thinking backward. I am not an expert in evolutionary biology but the beauty of flowers is something which has helped them survive. Flowers themselves didn't decide to be beautiful or they don't even know that they are beautiful. Remember that evolution is blind. It is just that their beauty was in the eyes of beholders and those beholders helped them survive.
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    Unless the post you are replying to has been heavily edited, I am at a loss to see how you could find in it either an assumption or implication that flowers themselves decided to be beautiful or that they know they are beautiful. One could challenge whether it is appropriate to say flowers are beautiful to insects, though clearly that is intended to be read as attractive, which, empirically, they are (nor do you seem to dispute the proposition that they evolved to be that way), and there's no prima facie reason for their scent and appearance to invoke pleasure in most humans.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  My (lack of?) understanding is that early humans and some of our later pre-human ancestors were big insect eaters. Finding flowers beautiful makes sense, but I was recently in the desert and I found that landscape beautiful. That feels more confusing?
  - Cockbrand 4y ago
    My similarly limited understanding tells me that there are a few aspects to this: - We've evolved to find our natural habitat (which is very variable) pleasing, as that's an evolutionary advantage compared to constantly feeling uneasy. - We are attracted to places that are different to the ones we live in, so we keep exploring and spreading. - There's also a learned component - even if we understand that a landscape isn't habitable for us (like the desert), we're conditioned to finding it beautiful, as this is the cultural consensus.
    - mannykannot 4y ago
      I feel there is something of a false dichotomy between being pleased and being uneasy, as I suspect that indifference would be equally effective. We, like many other animals, have mechanisms to become indifferent to those aspects of our environment which are commonplace and neither useful nor harmful to us. While some curiosity towards novelty is arguably beneficial, a lack of caution is demonstrably dangerous. If our aesthetic response to flowers was a direct consequence of evolutionary pressure, we would expect to find the flowers of plants having edible tubers or fruit to be especially attractive, and those of poisonous plants to be repulsive.
enw 4y ago
All these evolutionary arguments (e.g. “head of penis is shaped as such to clean out semen of competitors”) all sound conveniently convincing, but I’m curious if there’s any data validating them? It’s easy to shoehorn any number of plausible theories, but how do we know one evolutionary theory is the correct one?
- hsn915 4y ago
  It's all guesswork. There is no mechanism to validate any of it.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  > but how do we know one evolutionary theory is the correct one IMHO, the one that works is the one most likely to result in increased gene propagation even if the percentage is minuscule in the absence of orthogonal genes. The argument is not that X evolved to do Y, but rather X resulted in increased gene propagation as it happened to do Y. In the example above, the head of the penis is shaped as such because that shape enables semen displacement. In the same vein, males tend to lose an erection, and therefore the [flaccid] penis loses the displacement property, after excretion because that results in not displacing one's own semen.
- taneq 4y ago
  Clearly the arguments that sound less convincing have failed to survive and reproduce. The existence of evolutionary arguments is therefore proof of the correctness of the theory! ;)
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Except penises come in quite a variety of shapes across species. Distinguishing actual driving traits from those that just happened to ride along (i.e. men's nipples and other various vestiges, bright red colour of foxes where neither the foxes themselves, nor their predators or prey can see colour), is very hard.
  - perilunar 4y ago
    Memetic evolution of arguments about genetic evolution. Very meta.
mahathu 4y ago
"Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes" Author writes like he has a picture of himself on his bedside table and an old flickr account abandoned after realising he spent all this dedication and effort on deciphering some kind of ephemeral beauty in the world other people saw, but that was somehow always just out of reach for him.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Symmetry and self-similar patterns are everywhere in living things and that seems to stem from the way structure emerges from DNA. So IMHO it would be surprising if flowers were not following this ubiquitous pattern...
- geysersam 4y ago
  I think you're right about that. It's a fundamental aspect of how biological systems tend to be structured. Perhaps symmetry is even an indication that a particular structure is "cheap" in some sense. A less symmetric structure might require more information to store in the DNA, and therefore require longer evolution. If a symmetrical structure does the job as well as a more complicated structure, it's likely the simpler structure will prevail. In my experience people tend to find also non-biological symmetrical / self-similar structures striking. Something about this kind of simplicity triggers our sensory systems. It's probably more bug than feature. But it might be relevant that symmetry of biological systems often indicate health. Unhealthy biological systems are less structured, less symmetrical, and identifying sickness is evolutionary advantageous.
acituan 4y ago
We don't know if tight budgeted exploration/exploitation agents find flowers beautiful. As humans we've been so much in bioeconomical surplus that we've invested in exploration of meta-patterns, that allowed us exploitation despite the variability of the environment (temporal, multi-instance, multi-agent compressibility), and maybe beauty is a proxy for this function, and as such mostly only a human experience? Or maybe beauty is merely something that inspires replication and preservation, and being on the receiving end of this is a good adaptation from any living being's perspective? If compressibility was the only normativity, smoothest objects would be the most beautiful, a sine wave would be the most interesting symphony, but they are in fac the most banal, most unbeautiful things. Smooth object are highly compressible but also highly exhaustible, unlike organic objects. Any painter of a natural subject knows that organic structures are far from that kind of symmetry, and actually a painting loses verisimilitude if you are too symmetrical and formulaic.

changoplatanero 4y ago

The question in my mind is why is something that evolved to be beautiful to insects also beautiful to humans.

mayankkaizen 4y ago
You are probably thinking backward. I am not an expert in evolutionary biology but the beauty of flowers is something which has helped them survive. Flowers themselves didn't decide to be beautiful or they don't even know that they are beautiful. Remember that evolution is blind. It is just that their beauty was in the eyes of beholders and those beholders helped them survive.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  Unless the post you are replying to has been heavily edited, I am at a loss to see how you could find in it either an assumption or implication that flowers themselves decided to be beautiful or that they know they are beautiful. One could challenge whether it is appropriate to say flowers are beautiful to insects, though clearly that is intended to be read as attractive, which, empirically, they are (nor do you seem to dispute the proposition that they evolved to be that way), and there's no prima facie reason for their scent and appearance to invoke pleasure in most humans.
jrumbut 4y ago
My (lack of?) understanding is that early humans and some of our later pre-human ancestors were big insect eaters. Finding flowers beautiful makes sense, but I was recently in the desert and I found that landscape beautiful. That feels more confusing?
- Cockbrand 4y ago
  My similarly limited understanding tells me that there are a few aspects to this: - We've evolved to find our natural habitat (which is very variable) pleasing, as that's an evolutionary advantage compared to constantly feeling uneasy. - We are attracted to places that are different to the ones we live in, so we keep exploring and spreading. - There's also a learned component - even if we understand that a landscape isn't habitable for us (like the desert), we're conditioned to finding it beautiful, as this is the cultural consensus.
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    I feel there is something of a false dichotomy between being pleased and being uneasy, as I suspect that indifference would be equally effective. We, like many other animals, have mechanisms to become indifferent to those aspects of our environment which are commonplace and neither useful nor harmful to us. While some curiosity towards novelty is arguably beneficial, a lack of caution is demonstrably dangerous. If our aesthetic response to flowers was a direct consequence of evolutionary pressure, we would expect to find the flowers of plants having edible tubers or fruit to be especially attractive, and those of poisonous plants to be repulsive.

enw 4y ago

All these evolutionary arguments (e.g. “head of penis is shaped as such to clean out semen of competitors”) all sound conveniently convincing, but I’m curious if there’s any data validating them? It’s easy to shoehorn any number of plausible theories, but how do we know one evolutionary theory is the correct one?

hsn915 4y ago
It's all guesswork. There is no mechanism to validate any of it.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
> but how do we know one evolutionary theory is the correct one IMHO, the one that works is the one most likely to result in increased gene propagation even if the percentage is minuscule in the absence of orthogonal genes. The argument is not that X evolved to do Y, but rather X resulted in increased gene propagation as it happened to do Y. In the example above, the head of the penis is shaped as such because that shape enables semen displacement. In the same vein, males tend to lose an erection, and therefore the [flaccid] penis loses the displacement property, after excretion because that results in not displacing one's own semen.
taneq 4y ago
Clearly the arguments that sound less convincing have failed to survive and reproduce. The existence of evolutionary arguments is therefore proof of the correctness of the theory! ;)
- jojobas 4y ago
  Except penises come in quite a variety of shapes across species. Distinguishing actual driving traits from those that just happened to ride along (i.e. men's nipples and other various vestiges, bright red colour of foxes where neither the foxes themselves, nor their predators or prey can see colour), is very hard.
- perilunar 4y ago
  Memetic evolution of arguments about genetic evolution. Very meta.

mahathu 4y ago

"Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes" Author writes like he has a picture of himself on his bedside table and an old flickr account abandoned after realising he spent all this dedication and effort on deciphering some kind of ephemeral beauty in the world other people saw, but that was somehow always just out of reach for him.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Symmetry and self-similar patterns are everywhere in living things and that seems to stem from the way structure emerges from DNA. So IMHO it would be surprising if flowers were not following this ubiquitous pattern...

geysersam 4y ago
I think you're right about that. It's a fundamental aspect of how biological systems tend to be structured. Perhaps symmetry is even an indication that a particular structure is "cheap" in some sense. A less symmetric structure might require more information to store in the DNA, and therefore require longer evolution. If a symmetrical structure does the job as well as a more complicated structure, it's likely the simpler structure will prevail. In my experience people tend to find also non-biological symmetrical / self-similar structures striking. Something about this kind of simplicity triggers our sensory systems. It's probably more bug than feature. But it might be relevant that symmetry of biological systems often indicate health. Unhealthy biological systems are less structured, less symmetrical, and identifying sickness is evolutionary advantageous.

acituan 4y ago

We don't know if tight budgeted exploration/exploitation agents find flowers beautiful. As humans we've been so much in bioeconomical surplus that we've invested in exploration of meta-patterns, that allowed us exploitation despite the variability of the environment (temporal, multi-instance, multi-agent compressibility), and maybe beauty is a proxy for this function, and as such mostly only a human experience? Or maybe beauty is merely something that inspires replication and preservation, and being on the receiving end of this is a good adaptation from any living being's perspective? If compressibility was the only normativity, smoothest objects would be the most beautiful, a sine wave would be the most interesting symphony, but they are in fac the most banal, most unbeautiful things. Smooth object are highly compressible but also highly exhaustible, unlike organic objects. Any painter of a natural subject knows that organic structures are far from that kind of symmetry, and actually a painting loses verisimilitude if you are too symmetrical and formulaic.