Evolutionary Systems Thinking -- From Equilibrium Models to Open-Ended Adaptive Dynamics
New paper proposes a minimal framework where stability alone drives selection, enabling open-ended system evolution.
Researcher Dan Adler's paper introduces Stability-Driven Assembly (SDA), a non-equilibrium framework for evolutionary systems thinking. SDA generates endogenous selection without genes or predefined fitness functions by having longer-lived patterns bias future interactions. This creates feedback between population composition and dynamics, yielding fitness-proportional sampling as an emergent property. The work demonstrates why equilibrium-constrained models cannot exhibit open-ended evolution and outlines implications for economics and AI-enabled modeling.
Why It Matters
Provides a new foundation for modeling complex, adaptive systems in economics, policy, and AI, moving beyond static equilibrium assumptions.