Agenda

12 Nov 2021 15:00

How does nature anticipate the future? | CANCELLED

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We regret to inform you that today's lecture by Prof. Virgo on "How does nature anticipate the future?" is cancelled.
Sorry for the inconvenience, we will get back to you as soon as possible with a new date. 

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"How does nature anticipate the future?"

​Nathaniel Virgo
Associate Professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo and a fellow of the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT)

12th November 2021, 3 PM CET

Abstract

Living systems often seem to anticipate the future in some way. At the individual level, organisms progress through their life cycles in anticipation of a future generation; and complex organisms make specific plans to achieve goals that lie in their future. At the same time evolution can anticipate the future, with mutation rates and other evolutionary mechanisms being tuned to facilitate the evolutionary process itself. In this talk I will explore what it could mean for a physical system (whether living, nonliving or manmade) to anticipate the future, how anticipation of the future emerges at the evolutionary level, and how this relates to cognition at the individual level.
Specifically, I will talk about my work on lineage selection, an evolutionary phenomenon whereby the evolutionary process can itself be subject to selection, and I will discuss how this relates to a paradigm known as "Planning as inference" in robotic control. These represent steps toward a general theory of planning and future-anticipation in both living and manmade systems.

Bio sketch

Nathaniel Virgo is an Associate Professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo, and a fellow of the European Centre for Living Technology ECLT).
He has a background in both computer science and mathematical ecology and his research has focused on artificial life and the origin of life, with an emphasis on understanding the emergence of complex, self-producing systems.

Lingua

L'evento si terrà in inglese

Organizzatore

ECLT European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT)

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