Both evolution and the brain are massively parallel discovery processes. But what is the difference between the two?
As a model to understand evolution, let's take the super organism known as bacteria and its adversarial viruses. This process involves horizontal gene transfer and endosymbiosis. Often overlooked by many models of evolution that confine themselves only to mutation.
In an abstract sense, the 3 mechanisms of evolution to drive innovation involves: chance (i.e. mutation), local information propagation (i.e. HGT), information reuse (i.e. Endosymbiosis). What are the equivalences for this in brains?
Brains also employ these same 3 mechanisms. Chance in that neurons, like immune cells, are generated with randomness, local information propagation in that neurons have connectivity with other neurons and information reuse in the sense of Hebbian learning.
Creativity processes are only useful if they are subject to a selective process. Evolution has natural selection that drives the fitness of species. Brains select for the fitness of behavior that realizes goals.
Another process that we should explore is the effect of cultural evolution. We can analyze this from the perspective of language use and evolution.
Language evolution also involves 3 mechanisms to drive innovation: chance (language ambiguity), local information propagation (word of mouth), information reuse (memes).
The human brain is unique in the animal kingdom in that it is able to leverage two kinds of discovery processes. Brains and language.
Humans are linguistic bodies and as a consequence is influenced tremendously by language. The study of human minds makes sense only by acknowledging innate cognition and cultural evolution.
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