From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jan 07 2001 - 22:35:06 MST
(Other answers also welcome. I consult the ExtroCollective!)
Eugene, do you know if anyone's ever found capitalistic algorithms
operating inside the apparent communism of an ant colony? I wanted to
make some point about "If selfishness is so efficient, why hasn't it
evolved in ant colonies", and then I realized that for all I knew, it
had. Then I became genuinely interested in how, if a "hedonistic ant"
algorithm had evolved in ant colonies, the pseudo-selfishness would differ
from real selfishness. You seem like the person most likely to know about
it...
Alternatively, is there anyone on the list who owns a copy of
_Sociobiology_ and is willing to flip through the chapter (chapters?) on
ants? SB is pretty old, but if there was any known information about
hedonist/capitalist algorithms in ant societies, Wilson would have been
almost certain to include it.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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