4 papers
Agent-based imitation dynamics can yield efficiently compressed population-level vocabularies
Nathaniel Imel, Richard Futrell, Michael Franke +1
Natural languages have been argued to evolve under pressure to efficiently compress meanings into words by optimizing the Information Bottleneck (IB) complexity-accuracy tradeoff.…
Evolution and compression in LLMs: On the emergence of human-aligned categorization
Nathaniel Imel, Noga Zaslavsky
Converging evidence suggests that human systems of semantic categories achieve near-optimal compression via the Information Bottleneck (IB) complexity-accuracy tradeoff. Large lang…
On convexity and efficiency in semantic systems
Nathaniel Imel, Noga Zaslavasky
There are two widely held characterizations of human semantic category systems: (1) they form convex partitions of conceptual spaces, and (2) they are efficient for communication.…
Density, asymmetry and citation dynamics in scientific literature
Nathaniel Imel, Zachary Hafen
Scientific behavior is often characterized by a tension between building upon established knowledge and introducing novel ideas. Here, we investigate whether this tension is reflec…