The Game Theory of Life

An anonymous reader writes In what appears to be the first study of its kind, computer scientists report that an algorithm discovered more than 50 years ago in game theory and now widely used in machine learning is mathematically identical to the equations used to describe the distribution of genes within a population of organisms. Researchers may be able to use the algorithm, which is surprisingly simple and powerful, to better understand how natural selection works and how populations maintain their genetic diversity.

Comments

Two things

[kruach aum]

1. If the machine learning algorithm has been found to be mathematically identical to the genetic spread algorithm, how would biologists be able to use it to better understand natural selection and genetic diversity? What can they learn from the first algorithm that they couldn't learn from the one they already had? If the two algorithms are mathematically identical, aren't they both just different names for the same mathematical structure? Learning a cat is called neko in Japanese doesn't tell you anything about cats you didn't already know -- it just tells you something about the Japanese language.

2. Are algorithms discovered, or created? If anything is discovered, the underlying mathematical structure more than one algorithm can point to seems to be a better candidate than the algorithms themselves. Fossils are discovered; algorithms are made up.

Re:Two things

[Tom]

are mathematics (of which algorythms are a small part) discovered or created ? No one has a clear answer to that question.

Really? Maybe it's because the answer is so simple, no one serious has bothered tackling it.

Mathematics is a language. As such, it is created.

The things that mathematics describes are where it gets interesting. Much like in other languages, you have tangible things (easily verified as existing independent of the language), intangible things (dreams, emotions, forces) that are generally accepted as existing independent of language. And then you have two classes of things that are not entirely independent.

You have categories or groups. "Animal" is not an intangible thing, because it doesn't describe anything that actually exists, it is a term for a collection of things that exist. The term itself is semantics, but most categories have an objective component that exists independent of language.

The final category is pure language constructs. Rhymes, sentences, grammar, poems, etc. - while you can argue that they are linked to some biological or neurological element of human nature, a rhyme or a poem is very much a language construct and does neither describe a thing nor a group of things, it's a self-referential language construct.

And if you look closely, you find the same in mathematics.

Re:Two things

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Except esperanto. I'm pretty sure someone sat down and invented that one.