An Information Theoretic Decomposition of Fitness: Engineering the Communication Channels of Nature and Society

25 Pages Posted: 2 Apr 2015

See all articles by Martin Hilbert

Martin Hilbert

University of California, Davis

Date Written: March 15, 2015

Abstract

Formal analyses in biology, ecology and economics typically bypass the intuitive interpretation of ‘fitness’ as environmental ‘fit’ and hastily equate fitness with the resulting rate of reproduction, economic pay-off, etc. But evolutionary growth also has a direct interpretation as environmental ‘fit’, as it can be expressed in terms of Shannon’s mutual information. This presents evolutionary change as a communication channel between the population and its environment. Optimal growth quantifies the amount of structure in the updated population that unequivocally comes from the environment. Turning this finding around, fitness can be optimized by searching for non-confusable signals between both. Full channel capacity is achieved with specialized types for each environmental state (noiseless channel). Just like technological communication channels thrive on source knowledge, fitness can be increased with environmental knowledge. This establishes a formal link between evolution in biological and social populations, and long-standing engineering efforts in the optimization of communication channels.

Suggested Citation

Hilbert, Martin, An Information Theoretic Decomposition of Fitness: Engineering the Communication Channels of Nature and Society (March 15, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2588146 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2588146

Martin Hilbert (Contact Author)

University of California, Davis ( email )

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Davis, CA 95616
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.martinhilbert.net

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