Category: Biology of Information

• From reductionism to realism

  “From reductionism to realism: holistic mathematical modelling for complex biological systems” At its core, the physics paradigm adopts a reductionist approach, aiming to understand fundamental phenomena by decomposing them into simpler, elementary processes. While this strategy has been tremendously successful in physics, it has often fallen short in addressing fundamental questions in the biological sciences.…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-24

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• From Noise to Music:: Context

  “From Noise to Music: Reframing the Role of Context in Clinical Reasoning” Traditional perspectives on clinical reasoning (CR) have framed it as a content-specific process in which differences in the information stored in a clinician’s mind account for differences in CR performance. The finding that individual clinicians perform differently on cases with the same clinical content…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-21

  #sense-making, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, health, technology

• Affective State as a central component to environmental changes

  “Considering affective state as a central component of the response of animals to environmental changes” Current environmental changes are often considered as negatively impacting the affective state of animals. Yet, the interplay betweenenvironmental conditions and affective state should rather be viewed as a reciprocal and dynamic relationship, as variation in affective state likely determines how…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-17

  #sense-making, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Practical Wisdom

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #Neuroscience, #TheInformationLens, health, Science

• Music as a scientific metaphor for mind and brain

  “Music as a scientific metaphor for mind and brain” Metaphors have long played multiple roles in conceptualizing the mind and brain, guiding the development and refinement of theoretical models and empirical questions. Early analogies (comparing the brain to hydraulic systems, telephone exchanges, factories, or libraries) offered shortcuts to understanding aspects of cognition, memory, and brain…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-17

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Not just heard, but judged

  “Not just heard, but judged: a multidimensional perspective on auditory attention in everyday life” This review examines how listeners evaluate sounds in everyday contexts and how auditory attention research has approached this process. While experimental paradigms have yielded important insights into auditory processing, their constructs often rely on task-specific definitions that may not fully reflect…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-17

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Active Construction of Past Episodes

  “The active construction of past episodes” Episodic memories – declarative memories of past events, characterized by rich spatiotemporal context – play a central role in guiding perception and behaviour. Here, we advance a model that integrates episodic memories within the active inference framework. We describe how episodic memories are incorporated into the generative models used…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-16

  #sense-making, #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

• Wise Machines

  “Imagining and building wise machines: the centrality of AI metacognition” Although artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly smart, its wisdom has not kept pace. In this opinion article, we examine what is known about human wisdom and sketch a vision of its AI counterpart. We introduce human wisdom as strategies for solving intractable problems—those outside…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-13

  #Sensemaking, AI, Biology of Information, Information Technology, Practical Wisdom

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, technology

• A generic self-learning emotional framework for machines

  “A generic self-learning emotional framework for machines” In nature, intelligent living beings have developed emotions to modulate their behavior as a fundamental evolutionary advantage. However, researchers seeking to endow machines with this advantage lack a clear theory from cognitive neuroscience describing emotional elicitation from first principles, namely, from raw observations to specific affects. As a…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-13

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #Neuroscience, #TheInformationLens, consciousness, health, mental-health

• Linking fast and slow

  “Linking fast and slow: The case for generative models” A pervasive challenge in neuroscience is testing whether neuronal connectivity changes over time due to specific causes, such as stimuli, events, or clinical interventions. Recent hardware innovations and falling data storage costs enable longer, more naturalistic neuronal recordings. The implicit opportunity for understanding the self-organised brain…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-12

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, artificial-intelligence

• Robust Decision-Making Via Free Energy Minimization

  “Robust Decision-Making Via Free Energy Minimization” html, pdf, video, Nature Communications Despite their groundbreaking performance, state-of-the-art autonomous agents can misbehave when training and environmental conditions become inconsistent, with minor mismatches leading to undesirable behaviors or even catastrophic failures. Robustness towards these training/environment ambiguities is a core requirement for intelligent agents and its fulfillment is a…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-11

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, artificial-intelligence

• Exploration and Exploitation & Coping Strategy

  “Transition Dynamics Between Exploration and Exploitation Predicts Individual Differences in Coping Strategy” Adaptive decision-making requires balancing exploitation of known rewarding options with exploration of uncertain alternatives, a dilemma also known as the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. While this framework has been widely studied in reinforcement learning research, its relevance to coping, defined as the cognitive and behavioral…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-11

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Your brain on nature

  “Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure” The relationship between natural environments and human cognition has gathered increasing attention across disciplines, including neuroscience, environmental psychology, and public health. An expanding body of empirical evidence supports the notion that exposure to nature consistently promotes psychological and physiological well-being. However, our…

  walterstiers

  2026-03-10

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #Neuroscience, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, health, mental-health

• Narcissism: Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity

  “Narcissism Is Associated With Blunted Error-Related Brain Activity” Narcissism is associated with self-enhancement and social antagonism, yet its neural underpinnings, particularly in error processing, remain underexplored. Competing theoretical models, such as the mask model and the metacognitive model, offer conflicting hypotheses regarding how narcissism influences early neural responses to errors. We examine whether grandiose agentic…

  walterstiers

  2026-02-23

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Inferring to cooperate: Bayesian inferential strategies

  “Inferring to cooperate: Evolutionary games with Bayesian inferential strategies” Strategies for sustaining cooperation and preventing exploitation by selfish agents in repeated games have mostly been restricted to Markovian strategies where the response of an agent depends on the actions in the previous round. Such strategies are characterized by lack of learning.However, learning from accumulated evidence…

  walterstiers

  2026-02-16

  #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Active information sampling in health and disease

  “Active information sampling in health and disease” Active information gathering is a fundamental cognitive process that enables organisms to navigate uncertainty and make adaptive decisions. This review has synthesised current knowledge on the behavioural, neural, and computational mechanisms underlying information sampling across health and disease. Several key themes have emerged from this analysis. Firstly, information…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-27

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #Neuroscience, #TheInformationLens, mental-health

• Boredom and curiosity – information

  “Boredom and curiosity: the hunger and the appetite for information“ Boredom and curiosity are common everyday states that drive individuals to seek information. Due to their functional relatedness, it is not trivial to distinguish whether an action, for instance in the context of a behavioral experiment, is driven by boredom or curiosity. Are the two…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-27

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Delusion as embodied emotion

  “Delusion as embodied emotion: a qualitatively driven, multimethod study of first-episode psychosis in the UK” Delusions in psychosis involve complex and dynamic experiential, affective, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal alterations. Their pattern of emergence during the early stages of illness remains poorly understood and the origin of their thematic content unclear. Phenomenological accounts have emphasised alterations…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-14

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, consciousness, health, mental-health, philosophy, psychology

• Intuitive insight: Fast associative processes drive sound creative thinking

  “Intuitive insight: Fast associative processes drive sound creative thinking” Convergent thinking, the ability to find a single optimal solution to a well-defined problem, is considered a core component of creativity, and is often assumed to rely on controlled, deliberative processes. We tested this assumption using the Compound Remote Associates (CRA) test, where participants have to…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-09

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Practical Wisdom

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Switching, fast and slow

  “Switching, fast and slow: Deciphering the dynamics of memory search, its brain connectivity patterns, and its role in creativity “ Creative ideas emerge from the process of searching and combining concepts in memory, involving both associative and controlled mechanisms. How these processes unfold during memory search and relate to creativity remains unclear. We explored the neurocognitive…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-09

  #sense-making, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Science, Uncategorized

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning

  “The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning” Rewards play a crucial role in sculpting all motivated behavior. Traditionally, research on reinforcement learning has centered on how rewards guide learning and decision-making. Here, we examine the origins of rewards themselves. Specifically, we discuss that the critical signal sustaining reinforcement for food is generated internally and subliminally during…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-06

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Paradox of Predictability

  “The paradox of predictability provides a bridge between micro- and macroevolution” The relationship between the evolutionary dynamics observed in contemporary populations (microevolution) and evolution on timescales of millions of years (macroevolution) has been a topic of considerable debate. Historically, this debate centers on inconsistencies between microevolutionary processes and macroevolutionary patterns. Here, we characterize a striking…

  walterstiers

  2026-01-06

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• The coevolution of cognition and sociality

  “The coevolution of cognition and sociality“ Cognition serves to resolve uncertainty. Living in social groups is widely seen as a source of uncertainty driving cognitive evolution, but sociality can also mitigate sources of uncertainty, reducing the need for cognition.Moreover, social systems are not simply external selection pressures but rather arise from the decisions individuals make…

  walterstiers

  2025-12-26

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, AI, philosophy, psychology

• The Universe Learning Itself

  “The Universe Learning Itself: On the Evolution of Dynamics from theBig Bang to Machine Intelligence” We develop a unified, dynamical-systems narrative of the universe that traces a continuous chain of structure formation from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies and their artificial learning systems. Rather than treating cosmology, astrophysics, geophysics, biology, cognition, and machine…

  walterstiers

  2025-12-26

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, AI, consciousness, philosophy, Science, spirituality

• Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis

  “Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis”. For the vast majority of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, a range of natural environments defined the parameters within which selection shaped human biology. Although human-induced alterations to the terrestrial biosphere have been evident for over 10,000 years, the pace and scale of change has accelerated dramatically since…

  walterstiers

  2025-12-26

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, biology, evolution, health, philosophy, Science