Category: Biology of Information

• A Drive to Survive

  “A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life“ How the purposive behavior of living systems outstrips the constraints of the free energy principle. Since 2005, Karl Friston’s proposal that the principle of free energy minimization underpins the purposive behavior of living agents has evolved through thousands of publications. This principle’s central…

  walterstiers

  2025-02-22

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Information Technology, Life Ideas

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Humans rationally balance abstract world models

  This work adds to a growing body of research showing that the brain arbitrates between approximate decision strategies. The current study extends these ideas from simple habits into usage of more sophisticated approximate predictive models, and demonstrates that individuals dynamically adapt these in response to the predictability of their environment. How do people model the…

  walterstiers

  2025-02-10

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science

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

• Defining intelligence: Bridging the gap

  “Defining intelligence: Bridging the gap between human and artificial perspectives“ Proposes unified definitions for human and artificial intelligence. Distinguishes between artificial achievement/expertise and artificial intelligence. Advocates for AI metrics to ensure good quality AI system evaluations. Describes artificial general intelligence (AGI) mirroring human general intelligence. Evidence currently favours presence of artificial achievement over intelligence. Achieving…

  walterstiers

  2025-02-09

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, agi, AI, artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, technology

• Explanation in Biology

  The most recent publication from the series “Philisophy of Biology” is “Explanation in Biology“, available for free download at the site. The book introduces and elaborates scientific explanations in biology and the life sciences. Explanations are viewed as a “primary” objective of science – theyoffer deep understanding and knowledge of the world, as opposed to…

  walterstiers

  2025-01-22

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Practical Wisdom, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, biology, food, health, immunology

• ostracism across contexts

  “Psychosocial and behavioural consequences of ostracism across contexts“ Ostracism (being ignored and excluded) thwarts basic psychological needs fundamental for human survival. As a painful experience, ostracism has various mental health, cognitive and behavioural consequences. In this Review, we outline the main psychosocial and behavioural consequences of ostracism and consider how these consequences might be unique…

  walterstiers

  2025-01-07

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• The unbearable slowness of being …

  The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s? This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at ∼109 bits/s. The stark contrast between these numbers remains unexplained and touches…

  walterstiers

  2025-01-02

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

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

• Contextualizing predictive minds

  “Contextualizing predictive minds” discusses how the structure of human memory seems to be optimized for efficient prediction, planning, and behavior. We propose that these capacities rely on a tripartite structure of memory that includes concepts, events, and contexts—three layers that constitute the mental world model. We suggest that the mechanism that critically increases adaptivity and…

  walterstiers

  2024-12-17

  #sense-making, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Policy, Social-Technical

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, psychology

• Bayesian Models of Cognition 

  “Bayesian Models of Cognition Reverse Engineering the Mind” is a new MIT-press Open Access book available for online reading. The definitive introduction to Bayesian cognitive science, written by pioneers of the field. How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? How do our minds get so much from so little? Bayesian models of cognition provide…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-19

  #sense-making, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

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

• Predecisional information search adaptively reduces uncertainty

  “Predecisional information search adaptively reduces three typesof uncertainty“ How do people search for information when they are given the opportunity to freely explore their options? Information search is an integral part of the decision-making process. Every choice we make is based on information that must first be obtained. In many cases, information search is inherently…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-18

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• The Universal Optimism of the Self-Evidencing Mind

  “The Universal Optimism of the Self-Evidencing Mind“:Karl Friston’s free-energy principle casts agents as self-evidencing through active inference. This implies that decision-making, planning and information-seeking are, in a generic sense, ‘wishful’. We take an interdisciplinary perspective on this perplexing aspect of the free-energy principle and unpack the epistemological implications of wishful thinking under the free-energy principle.…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-05

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, affirmations, manifestation, mindset, philosophy

• Cognitive Biases in Fact-Checking and Their Countermeasures

  “Cognitive Biases in Fact-Checking and Their Countermeasures: A Review“ We identify 39 cognitive biases that may compromise the fact-checking process. Through a systematic review, we highlight key categories of cognitive biases influencing human assessors. We propose a set of 11 countermeasures to mitigate the impact of cognitive biases on fact-checking activities. We describe the constituting…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-05

  #sense-making, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Practical Wisdom, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked, bias, cognitive-bias, cognitive-biases, decision-making, psychology

• A History of Bodies, Brains, and Minds

  We’re being spoiled by MIT Press Open Access. Not just did we just receive access to the great title “From Sensing to Sentience” , but also “A History of Bodies, Brains, and Minds: The Evolution of Life and Consciousness” became available for download. A panoramic view of the evolution of life on our planet, from…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-04

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens, brain, consciousness, evolution, philosophy, Science

• From Sensing to Sentience: How Feeling Emerges from the Brain

  Open access book, download available @ MIT Press A new theory of Neurobiological Emergentism that explains how sentience emerges from the brain. Sentience is the feeling aspect of consciousness. In From Sensing to Sentience, Todd Feinberg develops a new theory called Neurobiological Emergentism (NBE) that integrates biological, neurobiological, evolutionary, and philosophical perspectives to explain how sentience naturally emerges from the brain. Emergent…

  walterstiers

  2024-11-04

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, consciousness, sentience

• The illusion of information adequacy

  “The illusion of information adequacy““The science behind why people think they’re right when they’re actually wrong“ You don’t know what you don’t know.  –Socrates How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with…

  walterstiers

  2024-10-17

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Policy, Practical Wisdom, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, empathy, mental-health, philosophy, psychology, realism

• Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases

  “Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases“ The authors argue that many different biases, such as the bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, and outcome bias, can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans’ tendency toward…

  walterstiers

  2024-10-13

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Practical Wisdom, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, bias, cognitive-bias, cognitive-biases, confirmation-bias, psychology

• Nature heals

  “Nature heals: An informational entropy account of self-organization and change in field psychotherapy“Highlights Disordered wandering dynamics are fundamental for therapeutic change. Free-energy minimization creates a field of more and less probable sensory/affective phenomena. Sensorily coupled free-energy-minimizing agents share a common phenomenal landscape. Therapy changes the phenomenal field by allowing surprise to enter the system. Healing…

  walterstiers

  2024-10-13

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

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

• Affect-centered account of motivated behavior

  “The affective gradient hypothesis: an affect-centered account of motivated behavior“: everyone agrees that feelings and actions are intertwined, but cannot agree how. According to dominant models, actions are directed by estimates of value and these values shape or are shaped by affect. The article proposes instead that affect is the only form of value that…

  walterstiers

  2024-10-13

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, education, health, mental-health, personal-growth, psychology

• Movement Matters

  An Open Access book from MIT press, Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning (available for download). Experts translate the latest findings on embodied cognition from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to inform teaching and learning pedagogy. Embodied cognition represents a radical shift in conceptualizing cognitive processes, in which cognition develops through mind-body…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-26

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, cognitive-science, education, fitness, mental-health, psychology

• regulation of motivated behavior

  in “A unified theoretical framework underlying the regulation of motivated behavior“, Yu-Been Kim, Young Hee Lee, Shee-June Park and Hyung Jin Choi explain that multiple psychological components have evolved in order to orchestrate behaviors for survival. Despite several theories regarding behavior regulation, these theories do not clearly distinguish distinct components and do not explain the…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-26

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, AI, artificial-intelligence, health, machine-learning, technology

• Risk and Uncertainty

  The core of this post comes from “How do smart people make smart decisions?” by Gerd Gigerenzer, delivered at TEDxNorrköping – available at https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Lg7G8TMe_A and a transcript available . However, there are more sources which lead to this insights, like e.g.: Gigerenzer & Selten Eds. 2001 Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. MIT Press  Gigerenzer, Hertwig…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-25

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Practical Wisdom, Social-Technical, Uncategorized

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• How Collaboration Breaks Down

  Simon DeDeo and many other authors describe in this chapter how humans may be “super-cooperators,” but no collaboration lasts forever. This chapter summarizes the outcome of an interdisciplinary collaboration between political, social, economic, and cognitive scientists into the question of collaboration collapse. It locates the breakdown of collaboration downstream from the failure to align on…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-25

  #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Policy, Practical Wisdom, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens, business, collaboration, innovation, leadership, politics

• Will We Ever Have Conscious Machines?

  The question of whether artificial beings or machines could become self-aware or conscious has been a philosophical question for centuries. The main problem is that self-awareness cannot be observed from an outside perspective and the distinction of being really self-aware or merely a clever imitation cannot be answered without access to knowledge about the mechanism’s…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-24

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Resilience may have downsides…

  Traditionally, resilience has been viewed as a general positive adaptation to stressors. However, the hallmark of resilience – returning to the previous state following a perturbation – may also have severe downsides, which are often overlooked. Specifically, it may be unrealistic to return to the previous state or resilience may cause a person to become…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-23

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

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

• Complex Systems Research in Psychology

  Han L. J. van der Maas published August 31, 2024 this SFI book “Complex Systems Research in Psychology“, available as PDF for free. Prologue This book is intended for psychologists and social scientists interested in modeling psychological processes using the tools of complex-systems research. The book has three primary objectives. The first is to provide…

  walterstiers

  2024-09-06

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens