Category: Biology of Information

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• The computational power of the human brain

  Peter J. Gebicke-Haerter published a great review article with this title. I selected some snippets and the key conclusion: At the end of the 20th century, analog systems in computer science have been widely replaced by digital systems due to their higher computing power. Nevertheless, the question keeps being intriguing until now: is the brain…

  walterstiers

  2023-08-28

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Conducting unveiled

  “Conducting unveiled: Sharing Simon Rattle’s Vision through Revolutionary EyeTracking Glasses” is a wonderfull story, I would like to share. “Split second shifts give the conductor and musicians a chance to anticipate the next move, but on a much larger, integrally collective scale.” This story brings together some together some topics already touched before, like conducting…

  walterstiers

  2023-08-27

  #sense-making, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Innovation Games, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• A top-down, bottom-up model of circuit function for anxiety and depression.

  A great review article describes the bottom-up and top-down processing from Marr’s computational-algorithmic-implementation perspective to understand depressive and anxious disease states. The review illustrate examples of bottom-up processing as basolateral amygdala signaling and projections and top-down processing as medial prefrontal cortex internal signaling and projections. Understanding these internal processing dynamics can help us better model…

  walterstiers

  2023-08-06

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Design for Well-Being and Sustainability

  Design for Well-Being and Sustainability: A Conceptual Framework of the Peer-to-Peer Sharing and Reuse Platform in the Circular Economy investigates how to infuse well-being components into the circular economy. Based on the literature review, it organized and analyzed the extant evidence of related well-being-based research to develop an ecosystem model of a sustainable product–service system…

  walterstiers

  2023-08-06

  #sense-making, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

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

• “Fitness” Beats “Truth”

  The “Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem” provides a quantitative measure of the extent to which the fitness-only strategy dominates the truth strategy, and of how this dominance increases with the size of the perceptual space. The FBT Theorem supports the Interface Theory of Perception. The Interface Theory of Perception is discussed and described in detail in 2015 by…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-23

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

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• What Do I Do …

  Michael Levin (@drmichaellevin) is a scientist at Tufts University; his lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems. Today, Michael posted 2 simple flowcharts, worthwhile sharing. “Many thoughtful people get destabilized by deep questions of science & philosophy – what are the implications for how to live life?…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-17

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• coffee, nope ….

  I used to drink it, long time ago, a little bit… coffee. I’m happy without – and the evidences are being presented more and more. Coffee consumption decreases the connectivity of the posterior Default Mode Network (DMN) at rest. The obvious clear title of a recent paper. A very readable summary is offered by Frontiers…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-17

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

• The Physics of Survival

  Please enjoy the fascinating discussion of the free energy principle with Dr. Maxwell Ramstead, a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy and Director of Research at VERSES. The 2 hour discussion includes great details on FEP. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-17

  Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Uncategorized

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens

• Complexity, Entropy & the Physics of Information

  The specter of information is haunting sciences. With these words, Wojciech H. Zurek invited fellow scientists to attend the 1989 Santa Fe Institute workshop on which this proceedings volume is based. Thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, the quantum theory of measurement, the physics of computation, dynamical systems, molecular biology, and computer science — information remains central to the…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-13

  Biology of Information, Information Technology, Science

  #PhysicsOfInformation, #Wicked

• How Constraints Create Coherence

  This entry is a pointer to the long-expected work of Alicia Juarrero: Context Changes Everything, How Constraints Create Coherence how the concepts of constraints provide a way to rethink relationships, opening the way to intentional, meaningful causation. Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrerochallenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are…

  walterstiers

  2023-07-12

  #Cynefin, #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The IDEA (Internal Dominance over External Attention )

  Sam Verschooren and Tobias Egner published “ When the mind’s eye prevails: “The Internal Dominance over ExternalAttention (IDEA) hypothesis“. The IDEA hypothesis asserts, contrary to the traditional view of attention as being primarily externally oriented, that attention is inherently biased toward internal information. Mine inner sense predominates in such a way over my five senses…

  walterstiers

  2023-06-22

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ProblemSolvingMind

• The self is an illusion

  The truth is that your left brain has been interpreting reality for you your whole life, and if you are like most people, you have never understood the full implications of this. This is because we mistake the story of who we think we are for who we truly are.  “Why are you unhappy?Because 99.9 percent of…

  walterstiers

  2023-06-16

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Decoding reward–curiosity conflict in decision-making from irrational behaviors

  Humans and animals are not always rational. “Decoding reward–curiosity conflict in decision-making from irrational behaviors” discusses the fact humans not only rationally exploit rewards but also explore an environment owing to their curiosity. However, the mechanism of such curiosity-driven irrational behavior is largely unknown. The article develops a decision-making model for a two choice task…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-19

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens