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An empirical study of the co-evolution of utility and predictive ability

The evolution of cognition is a relatively under-explored issue in cognitive science and evolution theory. The development and influence of evolutionary psychology in recent decades has stimulated interest in it just recently, but the methods applied largely remain bound to ethological observation and the theory-based use of evolutionary principles. Here we illustrate a new empirical approach to answering a particular question that arises in the evolution of decision making. In particular, we show how agent-based evolutionary simulation can answer questions in the evolution of cognition by answering a question about the evolution of utility raised by evolutionary economics, namely how do utilities and prediction co-evolve?