From Bayes to Darwin: evolutionary search as an exaptation from sampling-based Bayesian inference

Building on the algorithmic equivalence between finite population replicator dynamics and particle filtering based approximation of Bayesian inference, we design a computational model to demonstrate the emergence of Darwinian evolution over representational units when collectives of units are selected to infer statistics of high-dimensional combinatorial environments. The non-Darwinian starting point is two units undergoing a few cycles of noisy, selection-dependent information transmission, corresponding to a serial (one comparison per cycle), non-cumulative process without heredity. Selection for accurate Bayesian inference at the collective level induces an adaptive path to the emergence of Darwinian evolution within the collectives, capable of maintaining and iteratively improving upon complex combinatorial information. When collectives are themselves Darwinian, this mechanism amounts to a top-down (filial) transition in individuality. We suggest that such a selection mechanism can explain the hypothesized emergence of fast timescale Darwinian dynamics over a population of neural representations within animal and human brains, endowing them with combinatorial planning capabilities. Further possible physical implementations include prebiotic collectives of non-replicating molecules and reinforcement learning agents with parallel policy search.