Did Von Neumann Not Believe in Evolution?

over at the Panda’s Thumb
Jeffrey Shallit pointed me to a youtube video, in which David Berlinski makes the following remarkable claim: “… von Neumann, one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century, just laughed at Darwinian theory. He hooted at it.”
Thankfully, Douglas L. Theobald goes to some length to clear Von Neumann’s [...]

Evolutionary Dynamics

A review of a new book, “Evolutionary Dynamics” by Martin A. Nowak
Martin Nowak is certainly not alone when he argues, in Evolutionary Dynamics, that evolution is the single most significant idea in biology. But almost all major mathematical syntheses of evolution have been confined to population genetics–the study of gene frequency changes in populations. By [...]

Busy-ness! And a love for Maple…

The quarter is off to a running start! I wish I could post more here, but… Whew!  Hopefully this post will make up for my absence!
So here’s a little potpourri for you:

Free Will, God, and Newcomb’s Problem: Part 2

In the last post on Newcomb’s problem and Free Will, we went over a 2 person game to be played with God. The key problem we were facing was whether or not Free will can coexist with an all knowing being that has powerful predictive capabilities. That is, if God always knows what [...]

Quantum Game Theory: Lansburg’s Paper

for those that may not know anything about Quantum Game Theory but are interested, here’s the major paper by Steve Landsburg on the subject. It’s a good primer. Though, we’re still going through the proofs to determine if it all holds true, it opens the doors of possibility.
EDIT:  The above link is the [...]

The Existence of Free Will: Newcomb’s Problem

William Newcomb, a physicist at the Livermore Radiation Lab in California, in 1960 posed a problem, about which the great Philosopher Robert Nozick said, “it is a beautiful problem. I wish it were mine.”It’s a problem that highlights the trouble with the idea of Free Will. To illustrate it, I am using the [...]

The Acceleration of Human Evolution

John Hawks has recently come out with a powerful paper about the Acceleration of Human Evolution. In a recent Blog Post he goes into it.
It is quite simple; the rate of mutations in a population is a linear product of the rate per genome and the population size.
Not all mutations are advantageous, and not [...]

The Lyceum Mathematikoi Test Post

This is a test post.  This post is only a test.  Do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars mod n.