Information theory, predictability, and the emergence of complex life

TL;DR

This paper proposes an information-theoretic model explaining how the potential for environmental prediction can drive the emergence of complex life forms despite the costs of cognitive development.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal formal model based on information theory and selection, linking environmental predictability to cognitive complexity in living systems.

Findings

Predictability potential can outweigh costs of complexity.

Complex agents emerge under certain environmental conditions.

Model demonstrates evolution of cognitive abilities through information processing.

Abstract

Despite the obvious advantage of simple life forms capable of fast replication, different levels of cognitive complexity have been achieved by living systems in terms of their potential to cope with environmental uncertainty. Against the inevitable cost associated to detecting environmental cues and responding to them in adaptive ways, we conjecture that the potential for predicting the environment can overcome the expenses associated to maintaining costly, complex structures. We present a minimal formal model grounded in information theory and selection, in which successive generations of agents are mapped into transmitters and receivers of a coded message. Our agents are guessing machines and their capacity to deal with environments of different complexity defines the conditions to sustain more complex agents.