the optimal strategy to survival
maybe isn’t the best advice anymore ”good artists borrow, great artists steal”
Going into the study, the researchers thought the optimal strategy would be some kind of mixture of copying and innovating, Laland says, both of which have drawbacks. An unknown berry might turn out to be a great food source for the person who first discovers it, or the berry might be poisonous. On the other hand, copying others might be safer, but not if the information is outdated or wrong. To the researchers’ surprise, the best method relied almost exclusively on copying.
There is a caveat to the winning program’s success, though. It works only when there are other agents around to copy. “They’re effectively kind of parasitic,” Laland says. “You can think of social learners as information scroungers — they’re stealing the information produced by others.”
how about this then?
“good artists borrow, great artists steal (and innovate)
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links for 2010-04-09
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“what will happen now? If past is prologue, the answer is “nothing.” The dead miners families will get a little insurance money, a few months will go by and only the people of Montcoal will remember the tragedy. Until, the inevitable next one. The coal industry owns West Virginia, every graceful mountaintop, every steep hollar, every politician of both parties in the state house and in Washington. The next time a governor wants something like, say, an annual football game between the two state universities, Marshall and West Virginia, he will go to his friends in the coal industry who will cough up some money for the “Friends of Coal Bowl.” I use that as an example because Joe Manchin already did that. The only West Virginia governor who actually tried to stand up to the coal industry–a guy named William C. Marland–fell off the face of the earth after his term in office and was rediscovered 30 years later driving a cab in Chicago.”
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“Going into the study, the researchers thought the optimal strategy would be some kind of mixture of copying and innovating, Laland says, both of which have drawbacks. An unknown berry might turn out to be a great food source for the person who first discovers it, or the berry might be poisonous. On the other hand, copying others might be safer, but not if the information is outdated or wrong. To the researchers’ surprise, the best method relied almost exclusively on copying.”
