Emergent Open-Endedness from Contagion of the Fittest

Abstract

In this paper, we study emergent irreducible information in populations of randomly generated computable systems that are networked and follow a "Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible" contagion model of imitation of the fittest neighbor. We show that there is a lower bound for the stationary prevalence (or average density of "infected" nodes) that triggers an unlimited increase of the expected local emergent algorithmic complexity (or information) of a node as the population size grows. We call this phenomenon expected (local) emergent open-endedness. In addition, we show that static networks with a power-law degree distribution following the Barabási-Albert model satisfy this lower bound and, thus, display expected (local) emergent open-endedness.

This is the extended version of the paper. It is an application of the results in arXiv:1708.09149 to dynamic networks with a Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible contagion model