# Evolvability > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Adaptive Systems **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Evolvability is a system’s capacity to generate heritable variation that can support adaptive change. ## Nexus Context Genome architecture, modularity, mutation rate and ecological interaction can make some lineages more capable of future adaptation than others. Digital experiments can manipulate these variables directly. ## Evidence Boundary Evolvability is not a promise of improvement or open-endedness. Variation may be harmful, and selection acts on present consequences rather than future intent. ## Relationships [[wiki/Heritable Variation|Heritable Variation]], [[wiki/Mutational Robustness|Mutational Robustness]], [[wiki/Open-Ended Evolution|Open-Ended Evolution]], [[wiki/Evolvable AI|Evolvable AI]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Sources / Provenance - Kirschner and Gerhart, evolvability literature; Avida studies. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “The best evidence we have from anthropology is that our ancestors acquired this capacity some time between 75,000 and 200,000 years ago. (The evidence is in the form of manufactured artifacts that early humans left behind, which indicate such a level of abstract thinking and communication.) But how — and in terms of natural selection, why — did our ancestors acquire this capacity? All we know for sure is that it came at the end of a three-and-a-half-million year period in which the average brain size of our ancestors grew to roughly its present level, approximately nine times larger than is normal for a mammal of our body size and about twice that of a present-day ape.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Abstract Thought Emerged After Millions of Years of Brain Expansion by Keith Devlin|Abstract Thought Emerged After Millions of Years of Brain Expansion by Keith Devlin]] > “Rising computer power led to the first large break with the math-model approach in various species of artificial intelligence. Computer scientists programmed expert-system search trees directly from words. Some put uncertainty math models on the trees but the tree structure itself used words or text strings. The non-numerical structure let experts directly encode their expertise in verbal rules. That removed the old math models but still left the problem of literally doing only what the expert or modeler said to do. Adaptive fuzzy rule-based systems allowed experts to state rules in words while the fuzzy system itself remained numeric. Data could in principle overcome modeler bias by adapting the rule structure in new directions as the data poured in. That reduced expert or modeler input to little more than giving initial conditions and occasional updates to the inference structure. Still all these AI tree-based knowledge systems suffer from the curse of dimensionality in some form of combinatorial rule explosion.” > **— Bart Kosko**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Computer Power Broke AI Away from Mathematical Models by Bart Kosko|Computer Power Broke AI Away from Mathematical Models by Bart Kosko]] > “As an Italian with first-hand experience living in a country where, if you behave well, you are socially and legally sanctioned, this news was exciting, even inspiring … perhaps cooperation is not an inherent virtue of the human species. Perhaps, in many circumstances, we prefer to stay with those who share our selfishness and weaknesses and to avoid pro-social altruistic individuals. Perhaps it's not abnormal to live outside a circle of empathy.” > **— Gloria Origgi**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Cooperation May Not Be an Inherent Human Virtue by Gloria Origgi|Cooperation May Not Be an Inherent Human Virtue by Gloria Origgi]] > “We humans can, and do, make up our own purposes, but ultimately the universe has none. All the wonderfully complex, and beautifully designed things we see around us were built by the same purposeless process — evolution by natural selection. This includes everything from microbes and elephants to skyscrapers and computers, and even our own inner selves.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Builds Complex Design Without Purpose by Susan Blackmore|Evolution Builds Complex Design Without Purpose by Susan Blackmore]] > “Others may prefer to dispense with the idea of fields and explain the evolution of organization in some other way, perhaps using more general terms like "emergent systems properties". But whatever the details of the models, I believe that the natural selection of habits will play an essential part in any integrated theory of evolution, including not just biological evolution, but also physical, chemical, cosmic, social, mental and cultural evolution.” > **— Rupert Sheldrake**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution May Extend Beyond Biology by Rupert Sheldrake|Evolution May Extend Beyond Biology by Rupert Sheldrake]] > “I believe exaptation to be a concept of central importance not only for bodily organs, but also for the evolution of mind and brain (e.g. for the evolution of language). Much of what we use our brains for in modern times represents a change in function (e.g. piloting airplanes from basic visually-guided motor control, or mathematical thinking from some basic precursor concepts of number and geometry). These very new cognitive abilities (and many others, like reading) are clearly exaptations, with no further shaping by natural selection (yet). But debate rages about whether older but still-recent human capacities like linguistic syntax have yet been tailored by natural selection to their current role (proposed cognitive precursors for linguistic syntax include hierarchical social cognition as seen in primates, or hierarchical motor control as seen in many vertebrates).” > **— W. Tecumseh Fitch**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Exaptation Is Central to the Evolution of Mind and Brain by W. Tecumseh Fitch|Exaptation Is Central to the Evolution of Mind and Brain by W. Tecumseh Fitch]] > “Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia. What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Human-centered Ethics Ignore the Capacity to Suffer by Richard Dawkins|Human-centered Ethics Ignore the Capacity to Suffer by Richard Dawkins]] > “Many people find my optimism naive, if not delusional. Last semester, I taught a class called "War and Human Nature," and my students polled classmates on the following question: "Do you think humanity will ever stop fighting wars once and for all time?" Of the 205 respondents, 185 replied "No"; 20 said "Yes" or "Maybe. " Several of the "optimists" added comments like "Yes, war will end when the human race will end," and "Yes, because in the future the human species will unite to fight alien species. "” > **— John Horgan**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Civilization/In the Future the Human Species Will Unite to Fight Alien Species by John Horgan|In the Future the Human Species Will Unite to Fight Alien Species by John Horgan]] > “Resolution of religious conflict is impossible because there is no empirical test of the ghostly, and many theologians prey, intentionally or not, upon the fears, superstitions, irrationality, and herd tendencies that are our species' neurobehavioral endowment. Religious fundamentalism inflames conflict and prevents solution—the more extreme and irrational one's position, the stronger one's faith, and, when possessing absolute truth, compromise is not an option.” > **— Robert Provine**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Material Life Is All There Is by Robert Provine|Material Life Is All There Is by Robert Provine]] > “Mismatches, however, are typically more subtle and most commonly occur when climate change, dispersal or migration alters a species’ environment, including its diet, predators, and more. Natural selection occurs when heritable variations to these sorts of mismatches affect offspring survival and reproduction. For instance, when tropically adapted humans who evolved in Africa dispersed to temperate habitats such as Europe about 40,000 years ago, selection acted rapidly in these populations to favor shifts in body shape, skin pigmentation and immune systems that lessened any resulting mismatches.” > **— Daniel Lieberman**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Mismatch Drives Natural Selection by Daniel Lieberman|Mismatch Drives Natural Selection by Daniel Lieberman]] > “The idea sounds fatuous in the extreme…until you remember that objects as big and complex as whales, dinosaurs, and sumo wrestlers got built in a moderately analogous fashion: they began as minute, nanoscale structures that duplicated themselves, and whose successors then differentiated off into specialized organs and other components. Those growing ranks of biological marvels did all this repeatedly until, eventually, they had automatically assembled themselves into complex and functional macroscale entities. And the initial seed structures, the gametes, were not even designed, built, or programmed by scientists: they were just out there in the world, products of natural selection. But if nature can do that all by itself, then why can't machines be intelligently engineered to accomplish relevantly similar feats?” > **— Ed Regis**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Molecular Manufacturing Copies Evolution's Bottom-up Construction by Ed Regis|Molecular Manufacturing Copies Evolution's Bottom-up Construction by Ed Regis]] > “My Edge answer this year has to be evolution by natural selection. Not only does it explain how we all got here and how we are and behave as we do, it can even explain (at least to my fairly critical satisfaction) why many people refuse to accept it and why even more people believe in an all-powerful Deity. But since other Edge respondents are likely to have natural selection as their favorite deep, elegant, and beautiful explanation (it has all three attributes, in addition to wide ranging explanatory power), I'll have to hone in on one particular instance: the explanation of how humans acquired language—by which I mean grammatical structure.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Explains How We Got Here by Keith Devlin|Natural Selection Explains How We Got Here by Keith Devlin]] > “The three meanings are too disparate to bring together easily, but I'll try. The popular question 'Has there been enough time for evolution to take place?' can now confidently be answered in the affirmative. It should never have been put in the first place since, self-evidently, we are here. But what is more interesting is that the real question that faces us is almost the exact opposite. Why is evolution so slow, given that natural selection is so powerful? Far from there being too little time for evolution to play with, there seems to be too much.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Is Powerful Yet Evolution Can Be Slow by Richard Dawkins|Natural Selection Is Powerful Yet Evolution Can Be Slow by Richard Dawkins]] > “One is the world of the objective content of ideas, in particular of science as a body of knowledge, of actual and possible scientific theories, their truth or falsity, their refutability, tests passed or failed, valid and invalid arguments, objections met or unanswered, crucial evidence deployed, progress achieved. Darwinian science has high status in this world of objective knowledge as perhaps "the single best idea anyone has ever had". And, probably uniquely in the history of science, it is unlikely to be superseded; biology will be forever Darwinian—for natural selection, it seems, is the only mechanism that can achieve design without a designer. And the Darwinian understanding of human nature is a straightforward implication of that core insight. The first serious attempt at a science of ourselves … and, what's more, it's most likely right.” > **— Helena Cronin**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection May Be the Only Mechanism That Designs Without a Designer by Helena Cronin|Natural Selection May Be the Only Mechanism That Designs Without a Designer by Helena Cronin]] > “Natural selection sculpts human thought across generations and at geologic time scales. Fitness is its tool, and human nature, our shared endowment as members of a species, is among its key effects. Although the thought life of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of thought that transcend racial, cultural and occupational differences; similarly, although the face of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of physiognomy — two eyes above a nose above a mouth — that transcend individual differences.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Sculpts Human Thought Across Generations by Donald D. Hoffman|Natural Selection Sculpts Human Thought Across Generations by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “If spacetime is not fundamental, then our perception of visual space, and of objects in that space, is not a high-fidelity reconstruction of fundamental reality. What, then, is it? From the theory of evolution we can conclude that our sensory systems have been shaped by natural selection to inform us about the fitness contingencies relevant to us in our niche. We have assumed that this meant that our senses inform us of fitness-relevant aspects of fundamental reality. Apparently, they do not. They simply inform us about fitness, not fundamental reality.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Tunes Perception for Fitness Not Reality by Donald D. Hoffman|Natural Selection Tunes Perception for Fitness Not Reality by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “As the 21st Century proceeds, tasks facing our species will become increasingly complex. Many problems that in an earlier era might have been easily addressed by a single person will now require a sophisticated set of abilities contributed by different people. The individual contributions must be deeply complementary; the whole must be more than the sum of its parts.” > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn and Robin S. Rosenberg**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Civilization/No Single Mind Can Solve the Problems Facing Our Species by Stephen M. Kosslyn and Robin S. Rosenberg|No Single Mind Can Solve the Problems Facing Our Species by Stephen M. Kosslyn and Robin S. Rosenberg]] > “Just as evolution can create infinite species by expressing a common process in specific environments, so too can the mind create infinite mental species. One can no sooner count emotions or moral concerns than snowflakes or colors. To be sure, there are descriptive similarities and differences across instances, but any groupings are arbitrary and rest heavily on the intuition of researchers. This is why scientists can never agree on the fundamental number of anything; one scientist may divide a mental experience into 3, another 4, and another 5.” > **— Kurt Gray**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/One Evolutionary Process Can Generate Infinite Species by Kurt Gray|One Evolutionary Process Can Generate Infinite Species by Kurt Gray]] > “My response to the inquiry about questions that are no longer asked is to reframe it and suggest instead a common class of missing questions, those associated with obsolete and inappropriate metaphors. Metaphor is a powerful cognitive tool, which, like all models, clarifies thinking when appropriate, but constrains it when inappropriate. Science is full of them. My professional specialties of neuroscience and biopsychology has mind/brain metaphors ranging from Locke's ancient blank slate (tabula rasa), to the more technologically advanced switchboard, and the metaphor de jour, the computer. None do justice to the brain as a soggy lump of wetware, but linger as cognitive/linguistic models. Natural selection in the realm of metaphors is slow and imperfect. Witness the reference to DNA as a "blueprint" for an organism, when Dawkins' "recipe" metaphor more accurately reflects DNA's incoding of instructions for organismic assembly.” > **— Robert Provine**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Computer Metaphor Cannot Explain the Brain by Robert Provine|The Computer Metaphor Cannot Explain the Brain by Robert Provine]] > “Laptop QCs will make us rethink neuroscience. A few decades ago we peered inside brains and saw complex telephone switch boards. Now we peer inside brains and see complex classical computations, both serial and parallel. What will see once we have thoroughly absorbed the mind set of quantum computation? Some say we will still find only classical computations, because the brain and its neurons are too massive for quantum effects to survive. But evolution by natural selection leads to surprising adaptations, and there might in fact be selective pressures toward quantum computations.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Laptop Quantum Computer by Donald D. Hoffman|The Laptop Quantum Computer by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “The truth is that we simply don't know enough about the potential biotechnology, nanotechonology, or future iterations of artificial intelligence to calculate what their risks are, compelling arguments have been made that in principle any of the three could lead to human extinction. These risks may prove manageable, but I don't think we can manage them if we don't take them seriously. In the long run, biotech, nanotech and AI are probably significantly more likely to help the species, by increasing productivity and limiting disease, than they are to destroy it. But we need to invest more in figuring out exactly what the risks are, and to better prepare for then. Right now, the US spends more than $2.5 billion dollars a year studying climate change, but (by my informal reckoning) less than 1% of that total studying the risk of biotech, nanotech, and AI.” > **— Gary Marcus**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Existential Risk/We Cannot Calculate the Risks of Future AI by Gary Marcus|We Cannot Calculate the Risks of Future AI by Gary Marcus]] > “One of life's most profound questions has been thought to be unanswerable. That question is, "Why is life so full of suffering?" Impatience with centuries of theological and philosophical speculation has led many to give up on the big question, and to ask instead only how brain mechanisms work, and why people differ in their experiences of suffering. But the larger question has an answer, an evolutionary answer. The capacities for suffering — pain, hunger, cough, anxiety, sadness, boredom and all the res — have been shaped by natural selection. They seem to be problems because they are so painful and because they are aroused only in adverse circumstances, but they are, in fact, solutions.” > **— Randolph Nesse**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Why Is Life So Full of Suffering by Randolph Nesse|Why Is Life So Full of Suffering by Randolph Nesse]]