The Costly Information Hypothesis
The costly information hypothesis is used to explore how adaptive biases relate to cultural evolution within the field of dual inheritance theory. The focus is on the evolutionary trade-offs in cost between individual learning, (e.g., operant conditioning) and social learning. If more accurate information that could be acquired through individual learning is too costly, evolution may favor learning mechanisms that, in turn, are biased towards less costly, (though potentially less accurate), information via social learning.
Read more about this topic: Adaptive Bias
Famous quotes containing the words costly, information and/or hypothesis:
“Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows!... eternal fountain of our feelings!—’tis here I trace thee—and this is thy divinity which stirs within me ...—all comes from thee, great—great SENSORIUM of the world!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved.... This hypothesis ... would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)