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Lamarck's Revenge: Inheritance of Learned Traits Can Make Robot Evolution Better (arxiv.org)
2 points by PaulHoule on Oct 2, 2023 | hide | past | pdf | 2 comments on HN

In plain words: Simulated robots evolve bodies and brains and can learn; one version lets offspring inherit brain changes their parents learned, the usual version passes on only unchanged genes. Inheriting made bodies better at learning good brains, since newborns start with brains matched to their bodies.

Abstract

Evolutionary robot systems offer two principal advantages: an advanced way of developing robots through evolutionary optimization and a special research platform to conduct what-if experiments regarding questions about evolution. Our study sits at the intersection of these. We investigate the question ``What if the 18th-century biologist Lamarck was not completely wrong and individual traits learned during a lifetime could be passed on to offspring through inheritance?'' We research this issue through simulations with an evolutionary robot framework where morphologies (bodies) and controllers (brains) of robots are evolvable and robots also can improve their controllers through learning during their lifetime. Within this framework, we compare a Lamarckian system, where learned bits of the brain are inheritable, with a Darwinian system, where they are not. Analyzing simulations based on these systems, we obtain new insights about Lamarckian evolution dynamics and the interaction between evolution and learning. Specifically, we show that Lamarckism amplifies the emergence of `morphological intelligence', the ability of a given robot body to acquire a good brain by learning, and identify the source of this success: `newborn' robots have a higher fitness because their inherited brains match their bodies better than those in a Darwinian system.

Jie Luo, Karine Miras, Jakub Tomczak, Agoston E. Eiben
arXiv:2309.13099 · cs.RO, cs.AI · submitted Sep 22, 2023
abstract · pdf · html · preprint-nature scientific report. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2303.12594

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Lamarckian inheritance is not "wrong". Learned traits are now known to be passed on via methylated DNA sections.
Yep, I've been interested lately in the story of how a lot of behavioral issues are passed on through both DNA sequence and methylation and how methylation, in addition to cultural transmission, is part of the story of trauma being passed on through generations.

For a long time the attachment theorists and social workers and remnants of the Freudians had convinced me that my parents must have done something wrong to explain the trouble I had in school and I looked desperately for some evidence that my mom had taught me how to be anxious but now I know that's "blaming the victim".