Author: walterstiers

• There is hope (emoji) &(biodiversity)

  The open access article ” Biodiversity communication in the digital era through the Emoji tree of life” might be a candidate for the (Ig)Noble. At least, it expresses the hope for better communication, and highlights: Emojis enable direct expressions of ideas and emotions in digital communication, also contributing to discussions on biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, the…

  walterstiers

  2023-12-11

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #TheInformationLens

• Generating meaning – AI²: predicting wor(l)ds

  I would like to quote some of the great insights and statements from the opinion by G. Pezzulo, T. Parr, P. Cisek, A Clark, and K. Friston published in TICS: “Generating meaning: active inference and the scope and limits of passive AI“. Does ChatGPT ‘understand‘ what it talks about in the way we do, or…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-27

  #sense-making, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

• Science and Engineering

  The Complexification of Engineering consists in (a) that shift throughout which engineering becomes a science; thus it ceases to be a (mere) praxis or profession; (b) becoming a science, engineering can be considered as one of the sciences of complexity.In reality, the complexification of engineering is the process by which engineering can be studied, achieved,…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-24

  Complexity, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence

• Yes, it is an ART; but it leads tot non-decisions

  Anthony Judge 2021 blog on “The art of non-decision-making” identifies 14 aspects of the art of non-decision-making based on experiences serving in, and observing, a range of international organisations. 1. Definitional games: This is the process of defining categories in one way in one document or organizational unit, and then defining them in another way…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-23

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Policy, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Toekomstbeelden om op te bouwen

  In tijden waarin er veel verandert is het nodig om de flexibiliteit en hetaanpassingsvermogen van de samenleving en het landschap waarinwe leven te vergroten. Om problemen op te lossen die in recente decennia zijn veroorzaakt kunnen de oplossingen uit die tijd niet langer gebruikt worden, juist omdat ze aan de bron staan van de problemen…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-23

  #Sensemaking, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• “don’t hate the players, change the game” – The dark side of competition in AI

  Competition. It’s a fundamental part of human nature. […] When it’s done right, it can drive us to incredible feats in sports and innovation, […] healthy competition, because even though individual companies might come and go, in the long run, the game between them creates win-win outcomes where everyone benefits in the end. But sometimes…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-21

  #Sensemaking, AI, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #TheInformationLens

• Interoception and Active Inference for mental health

  Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a momentary mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relationship to the outside world. Active inference is based on the premise that afferent sensory input to the brain is constantly shaped and modified by…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-17

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Human society is currently undergoing a socio-cultural ETI

  An evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI) occurs when a previously independent organism becomes a lower level unit within a higher hierarchical level (for example, cells in an organism, ants in a colony). Based on archaeological and historical accounts from the last 12000 years, this article “Human societal development: is it an evolutionary transition in individuality?”…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-16

  #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #StakeholderEconomy

• The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell

  AI is all around us recognizing our faces in photos, transcribing our speech, constructing our news feeds, navigating our driving routes, answering our search queries, and much more. But rapidly improving AI is poised to play a much bigger role in all of our lives. In this lecture, AI expert Melanie Mitchell demystifies how current-day…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-16

  #Sensemaking, AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Adult play – favoring collective decision making

  Adult play and the evolution of tolerant and cooperative societies Play is generally considered an immature affair. However, adult play is present in several mammal species living in complex social systems. This article considers the hypothesis that adult social play is favored by natural selection in those species characterized by high level of social tolerance…

  walterstiers

  2023-11-07

  #stakeholder economy, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Innovation Games, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy

• Morphing our view on the world

  Map projections are a way of representing regions on the surface of a spherical object on a flat surface. For example, a continent on the Earth can be represented on a flat map. There are many map projections, but some are more prevalent in our work with scientific visualization data. Map projections are chosen based…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-31

  Information Technology, Science

• EXplore-versus-EXploit problems

  Trade-offs between producing costly movements for gathering information (‘explore’) and using previously acquired information to achieve a goal (‘exploit’) arise in a wide variety of problems, including foraging, reinforcement learning and sensorimotor control. Determining the optimal balance between exploration and exploitation is computationally intractable, necessitating heuristic solutions. In “Mode switching in organisms for solving explore-versus-exploit…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-31

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Conceptual Bootstrapping (human cognition)

  To tackle a hard problem, it is often wise to reuse and recombine existing knowledge. Such an ability to bootstrap enables us to grow rich mental concepts despite limited cognitive resources. This article presents a computational model of conceptual bootstrapping. This model uses a dynamic conceptual repertoire that can cache and later reuse elements of…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-31

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• How adults understand what young children say

  When babies first begin to talk, their vocabulary is very limited. Often one of the first sounds they generate is “da,” which may refer to dad, a dog, a dot, or nothing at all. How does an adult listener make sense of this limited verbal repertoire? A new study “How adults understand what young children…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-30

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Cognitive distortions in recent decades

  Cognitive distortions are thinking patterns that are strongly associated with internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety. Historical traces of in millions of books published over the course of the last two centuries in English, Spanish, and German show a pronounced “hockey stick” pattern: Over the past two decades the textual analogs of cognitive distortions…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-30

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Puzzled …? – Consider the Bayesian brain hypothesis!

  Dysfunctional breathing disorder(s) (DBD) is an umbrella term for a set of poorly distinguishable clinical conditions including the most emblematic and anciently known hyperventilation syndrome. DBD affects in a variable proportion (between 5 and 35%) both adults and children, with a highly negative impact on health-related quality of life. DBD is consensually considered as a…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-30

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ActiveInference, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• ART CONNECTS ALL THE DOTS : Ride your upside Horse – Harvey Seifter

  Herbert Seifter is known for his experiences with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as a proof of management and leadership excellence of being the world first conductor-less Orchestra. Here I would like to refer to a recent TED talk , where he extends the idea:. … so I learned a ton of things during my time…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-18

  #Sensemaking, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas

  #TheInformationLens

• The Escape from Poverty

  Breaking the Vicious Cycles Perpetuating Disadvantage The perpetuation of poverty across generations damages lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and academic disciplines, along with lived experiences, this book examines why poverty is continued across generations and what needs to be done to eradicate it. This book – available for download – draws on…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-18

  #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #ProblemSolvingMind

• Bayesian models of perception and action (free e-book)

  Bayesian models of perception and action An introduction By Wei Ji Ma, Konrad Kording, and Daniel Goldreich An accessible introduction to constructing and interpreting Bayesian models of perceptual decision-making and action. Many forms of perception and action can be mathematically modeled as probabilistic — or Bayesian — inference, a method used to draw conclusions from…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-09

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• A touch of intellectual humility

  Being open to the limitations of their knowledge can help researchers tofoster interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations. Intellectual humility involves “the owning of one’s cognitive limitations, a healthy recognition of one’s intellectual debts to others, and low concern for intellectual domination and certain kinds of social status”. That translates to recognizing the limitations of one’s beliefs…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-04

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• a call for transformative, inclusive, and integrative approaches for learning and relearning in the Anthropocene

  “The students will have an understanding and empathy that they will hold in their minds and hearts due to the spiritual and cultural teachings they are learning through the land. They will have a new lens.” Joy Joseph-McCullough, Squamish Nation Fuelled by the intersecting challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and profound social, economic,…

  walterstiers

  2023-10-03

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #EconomicBehavior, #TheInformationLens

• Stikstof – is het echt de landbouw?

  Net een erg leuk, inzichtelijk en compact boek gevonden over het Nederlandse Stikstof verhaal, waar ook Vlaanderen nog veel uit kan leren, en misschien zelfs kan handelen. Thomas Oudman heeft recent “Uit de Shit – Een pleidooi voor meer boeren en minder vee” gepubliceerd. Zijn betoog: Het kán: de stikstofcrisis oplossen en boeren perspectief geven.…

  walterstiers

  2023-09-12

  #sense-making, #stakeholder economy, #Wicked, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Policy, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens

• Evolution of cognitive biases

  Peter S. Park published a very interesting research on decisions and inference: “The evolution of cognitive biases in human learning”. Some text snippets I like to share: Cognitive biases like underinference, the hard-easy effect, and recurrently non-monotonic confidence are evolutionarily puzzling when viewed as persistent flaws in how people learn from environmental feedback. To explain…

  walterstiers

  2023-09-04

  #sense-making, #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• TAP – The Adjecent Possible

  From the astonishing evolutionary advances of the Cambrian explosion to our present-day computing revolution, the trend of dramatic growth after periods of stability can be explained through the theory of the “adjacent possible,” says theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman. Tracing the arc of human history through the tools and technologies we’ve invented, he explains the impact…

  walterstiers

  2023-08-29

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical, Sustainability

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens