Ard Louis

Abstract:

For a broad class of input-output maps, arguments based on the coding theorem from algorithmic information theory (AIT) predict that simple (low Kolmogorov complexity) outputs are exponentially more likely to occur upon uniform random sampling of inputs than complex outputs are. Here, we derive probability bounds that are based on the complexities of the inputs as well as the outputs, rather than just on the complexities of the outputs. The more that outputs deviate from the coding theorem bound, the lower the complexity of their inputs. Since the number of low complexity inputs is limited, this behaviour leads to an effective lower bound on the probability. Our new bounds are tested for an RNA sequence to structure map, a finite state transducer and a perceptron. The success of these new methods opens avenues for AIT to be more widely used.

Abstract:

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020. Boolean threshold networks (BTNs) are a class of mathematical models used to describe complex dynamics on networks. They have been used to study gene regulation, but also to model the brain, and are similar to artificial neural networks used in machine learning applications. In this paper we study BTNs from the perspective of genotype-phenotype maps, by treating the network’s set of nodes and connections as its genotype, and dynamic behaviour of the model as its phenotype. We show that these systems exhibit (1) Redundancy, that is many genotypes map to the same phenotypes; (2) Bias, the number of genotypes per phenotypes varies over many orders of magnitude; (3) Simplicity bias, simpler phenotypes are exponentially more likely to occur than complex ones; (4) Large robustness, many phenotypes are surprisingly robust to random perturbations in the parameters, and (5) this robustness correlates positively with the evolvability, the ability of the system to find other phenotypes by point mutations of the parameters. These properties should be relevant for the wide range of systems that can be modelled by BTNs.