Surtil :

An Informational Approach to Emergence

Claudio Gnoli gives an updated view on emergence in “Foundations of Science“ Emergence can be described as a relationship between entities at different levels of organization, that looks especially puzzling at the transitions between the major levels of matter, life, cognition and culture. Indeed, each major level is dependent on the lower one not just…

walterstiers

2024-05-21

#sense-making, #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens, epistemology, ontology

Participatory Action Research

Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to research that prioritizes the value of experiential knowledge for tackling problems caused by unequal and harmful social systems, and for envisioning and implementing alternatives. PAR involves the participation and leadership of those people experiencing issues, who take action to produce emancipatory social change, through conducting systematic research…

walterstiers

2024-05-14

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

#DecisionIntelligence, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens, participatory-action-research, problem-solving

policymakers: enable individuals

Social, environmental, political and economic challenges — such as pandemics and epidemics, environmental degradation and community violence — require taking stock of how to promote behaviours that benefit individuals and society at large. Multidisciplinary meta-analyses of the individual and social-structural determinants of behaviour (for example, beliefs and norms, respectively) and the efficacy of behavioural change…

walterstiers

2024-05-14

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

#DecisionIntelligence, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens, behaviour, behaviour-change

On principles of emergent organization

Adam Rupe, James P. Crutchfield published “On principles of emergent organization“: After more than a century of concerted effort, physics still lacks basic principles of spontaneous self-organization. To appreciate why, we first state the problem, outline historical approaches, and survey the present state of the physics of self-organization. This frames the particular challenges arising from mathematical intractability and…

walterstiers

2024-05-07

#sense-making, #Wicked, Complexity, Information Technology

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, entropy, physics, Science, thermodynamics

How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future – Who is next ?

A stunning speech from Scott Galloway on TED, tackling the issues of western (US) society. However, the talk is about US, the issues are not just limited to the US, and can easily be found back in the modern western world. As such, this talk might be inspiring. In a scorching talk, marketing professor and…

walterstiers

2024-05-07

#Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Life Ideas, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens

energetic cost of allostasis and allostatic load – do not stress

Chronic psychosocial stress increases disease risk and mortality, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unclear. This article in Psychoneuroendocrinology outlines an energy-based model for the transduction of chronic stress into disease over time. The energetic model of allostatic load (EMAL) emphasizes the energetic cost of allostasis and allostatic load, where the “load” is the additional…

walterstiers

2024-05-07

Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

#DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, healing, health, wellness

Fast walkers have higher IQ and larger brains than slow walkers.

These findings are from a 5-decade cohort study of 904 participants in New Zealand published in @JAMANetworkOpen which tested the hypothesis that slow gait speed reflects accelerated biological aging at midlife. Slow gait was associated with multiple indices of compromised structural brain integrity, including smaller total brain volume, global cortical thinning, and reduced total surface…

walterstiers

2024-05-01

#Wicked, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science, Uncategorized

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, brain, fitness, gait, health

Andy Clark “How the brain shapes reality”

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark challenges our conventional understanding of the mind’s interaction with the world. A great and entertaining lecture. I like the reflection with the reference to the weather forecast and how the forecast impacts “reality” perception. At the very least, understanding all those prediction-driven, precision-inflected, looping influences should bring us a…

walterstiers

2024-04-29

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

#ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

Collective behavior from surprise minimization

This paper introduces a model of collective behavior, proposing that individual members within a group, such as a school of fish or a flock of birds, act to minimize surprise. This active inference approach naturally generates well-known collective phenomena such as cohesion and directed movement without explicit behavioral rules. This model reveals intricate relationships between…

walterstiers

2024-04-23

#Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Social-Technical

#ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

Laughter – a signal

Laughter may be the tool that nature gave to mankind to help it survive while traveling along the evolutionary path, claims Carlo V. Bellieni in “Laughter: A signal of ceased alarm toward a perceived incongruity between life and stiffness“ This feature of human behavior that precedes language development (infants as young as three months old are…

walterstiers

2024-04-23

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

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, health, humor, laughter

Why the simplest explanation isn’t always the best

Eva L. Dyer and Konrad Kording discuss in a commentary article “Why the simplest explanation isn’t always the best” an essential learning related to the article Phantom oscillations in principal component analysis (also available on BioRXiv) Dimensionality reduction simplifies high-dimensional data into a small number of representative patterns. One dimensionality reduction method, principal component analysis (PCA), often selects oscillatory…

walterstiers

2024-04-18

Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, data-science, machine-learning, unsupervised-learning

Your Name Matters (this is not a joke)

Best student paper award at the 2023 ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO’23) was “30 Million Canvas Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-design Induced Surname Initial Disparity in Grading” authored by Jiaxin Pei, Zhihan Wang, and Jun Li. The widespread adoption of learning management systems in educational institutions has…

walterstiers

2024-04-18

#Sensemaking, Complexity, Information Technology, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, assessment, education

Intelligence: Evolution, Brains and AI – but #6?

I just finished the marvellous book from Max Bennett: “A Brief History of Intelligence“. As mentioned by the praise: “If you are interested in understanding brains or in building human-like general AI, you should read this book.” Dileep George, DeepMind, Co-Founder of Vicarious AI In the book, a wonderful story is given from the evolution…

walterstiers

2024-04-11

#sense-making, #stakeholder economy, #Wicked, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical, Sustainability, Uncategorized

#DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

42 and 5

Today, 42 years ago, we had the great pleasure of discovering the reality of 5-fold crystals. On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated…

walterstiers

2024-04-08

#sense-making, #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Science

#DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

Novel beings, novel goals

Every now and then there is the opportunity to get the a clear overview on the actual state of research on biology, intelligence, the artificial and it’s overlap towards future capabilities. “Novel beings, novel goals: evolution & engineering of the agential material of life | Dr. Mike Levin‘ is available on youtube. Dr. Michael Levin…

walterstiers

2024-03-19

Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Innovation Games, Life Ideas, Science

#DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens

Limitarism – A bliss

Ingrid Robeyns’s Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, a powerful case for limitarianism–the idea that we should set a maximum on how much resources one individual can appropriate. A must-read! (so says Thomas Piketty). Ingrid Robeyns’ Limitarianism is a recent addition in a long line of critiques – such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Branko Milanovic’s Visions of Inequality – of the…

walterstiers

2024-03-15

#Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Life Ideas

#DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens

Equality is essential for sustainability.

In following, I resume 3 recent articles on this most valuable topic, related to the survival of our environment, societies and species. Why the world cannot afford the rich Equality is essential for sustainability. The science is clear — people in more equal societies are more trusting and more likely to protect the environment than…

walterstiers

2024-03-15

#Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Decision Intelligence, Innovation Games, Life Ideas, Policy, Sustainability

#DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens, bill-gates, climate-change, economics, economy

the problem of algorithmic recommendations

I just want to point out an MIT Technology Review article on three new books warn against turning into the person the algorithm thinks you are “A machine-learning algorithm walks into a bar. The bartender asks: ‘What’ll you have?’ The algorithm says: ‘What’s everyone else having?’” Chet Haase (Google) Software engineer Chet Haase’s joke sums…

walterstiers

2024-03-12

#sense-making, AI, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Policy, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, data-science, machine-learning, technology

Every category is a simplification

I like to refer to a great book and MIT Press Reader article from Gregory Murphy on the Psychology of Categories, an in-depth analysis of how humanity’s compulsion to categorize affects every aspect of our lived experience. “Every category is a simplification to some degree; it throws away information about the thing.” The minute we…

walterstiers

2024-03-11

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

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, categories

Bad Therapy

I just copied the review of this book – Bad Therapy by @AbigailShrier This is one of the most eye-opening books I’ve ever read. It’s a must read for any parent, any teacher, and should be required reading for any school administrator as well.The book dives into trying to figure out why kids are having…

walterstiers

2024-03-11

#Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Design Thinking, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, anxiety, children, depression, mental-health, parenting

Humanity needs a fundamental shift—“a very different civilisation”

I choose to quote some sentences of the BMJ opinion article Osler’s valediction: how might physicians contribute to the effort to postpone human extinction?This article is written to physicians, but extrapolation to other professions is left to the reader. Historically, physicians have focused on individual patients. The time has come to expand the scope of…

7 principles of acts of knowing, and how we build resilient knowledge ecosystems.

Dave Snowden‘s 7 principles of acts of knowing (or knowledge management) are as evergreen and impactful as when they were first shared in one of the early Cynefin articles – Complex Acts of Knowing.

walterstiers

2024-02-26

#Cynefin, #sense-making, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical

#DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

Bayesianism and Wishful Thinking are Compatible

On the face of it, wishful thinking seems incompatible with the Bayesian brain hypothesis. This is why defenses of Bayesianism have taken an eliminative stance toward wishful thinking, showing that many apparent instances of wishful thinking are not wishful after all. This strategy has succeeded in defeating many challenges to the Bayesian brain hypothesis, with…

walterstiers

2024-02-26

#Sensemaking, AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Social-Technical

#ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, bayes-theorem, bayesian-inference, machine-learning, philosophy, statistics

The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness

Thomas Metzinger’s latest book from MIT Press is focused on the experience of “pure awareness” as an investigation of the most basic fundamental nature of consciousness This specific experience, is the most important thing I have ever experienced in my life, as a personal attestation It is available for free here or also as pdf…

walterstiers

2024-02-26

#sense-making, #Wicked, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

#DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, awareness, consciousness, god, meditation, spirituality