Category: Biology of Information

• 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

• Creativity in Motion

  Some publications related to this topic: Embodiment and Human Development It is becoming increasingly accepted that the study of cognitive, social, and emotional processes must account for the embodiment of these processes in living, acting people. Within cognitive science, how bodily factors play a role in mental life is often considered through the lens of…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

  #sense-making, #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Uncategorized

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

• Legs move, thoughts flow : Physical exercise influences creative thinking

  I only give a summary of the article, lacking the capability to understand and read the native language. Still, the summary is very interesting: Creative thinking is the ability to generate novel and useful solutions to a problem, of which divergent and convergent thinking are two common types. Evidence shows that physical exercise may influence…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence

• Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction

  I found – rather serendipitous – this recent, open access and very interesting book “Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction“, edited by Springer 2023. This Open Access book presents the current state of the art knowledge on social and affective neuroscience based on empirical findings. Some highlights as appetiser: Molecular Imaging of the…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-09

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Walking

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Affect and Decision Making (computational models)

  Decision science evolve towards the use of formalized mathematical and computational models of choice (such as sequential accumulator or driftdiffusion models, DDMs). These may represent a key step forward, butonly if they properly incorporate the conceptual and theoretical richness of the affective sciences. Computational models increasingly inform our understanding of decision processes, but the influence…

  walterstiers

  2023-05-02

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• “gone too far”

  The history of movement has faced a crisis relationship between two elemental human phenomena: 1. On one hand there is the principle of economy—the human aspiration to reduce physical and mental efforts to a minimum, 2. and on the other hand there is the adaptation principle—the natural dependence of human beings on movement. The principle…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-25

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science, Social-Technical, Walking

  #TheInformationLens

• Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking

  A new theory of embodied consciousness has been described by Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio  in Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking. Forget ‘I think therefore I am’.  feelings are the source of consciousness. Long dismissed as secondary to reason, feelings are where consciousness begins. Without them, consciousness is impossible – with radical implications for the ‘hard…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-21

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• States of Mind (SoMs): TD:BU balance

  Noa Herz, Shira Baror, and Moshe Bar discuss in a 2020 opinion article the Overarching States of Mind.We all have our varying mental emphases, inclinations, and biases. These individual dispositions are dynamic in that they can change over time and context. The opinion article proposes that these changing states of mind (SoMs) are holistic in…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-16

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The innovation and intelligence of goats …

  Goats have not (yet) earned a reputation for their problem-solving abilities. But if you hide food in a strange cup and put a lid on it, a goat may find a way, a new study finds. And not just any goat. Animals that functioned like outsiders in their social group were best at tackling and…

  walterstiers

  2023-04-06

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Small steps

  Small steps for mankind: Modeling the emergence of cumulative culture from joint active inference communication discusses a testable deep active inference formulation of social behavior and accompanying simulations of cumulative culture in two steps: First: cast cultural transmission as a bi-directional process of communication that induces a generalized synchrony (operationalized as a particular convergence) between…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-28

  #sense-making, #stakeholder economy, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Neurobiology/psychology, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

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

• Peter Pan ?

  There is controversy around the mechanisms that guided the change in brain shape during the evolution of modern humans. It has long been held that different cortical areas evolved independently from each other to develop their unique functional specializations. Some recent studies suggest that high integration between different cortical areas could facilitate the emergence of…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Native language & connectome of the brain

  Investigation towards the question if the neuroanatomy of the language structural connectome is modulated by the life-long experience of speaking a specific language are presented. The current study compared the brain white matter connections of the language and speech production network in a large cohort of native speakers of two very different languages: an Indo-European…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Perceived time & heartbeat

  This blog entry about the Current Biology article “Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat” relates perfectly to my previous blog on “cardiac activity: its role in perception and action“ Perception of passing time can be distorted. Emotional experiences, particularly arousal, can contract or expand experienced duration via their interactions with attentional and sensory…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-20

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

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Cardiac activity: its role in perception and action

  Patterns of cardiac activity continuously vary with environmentaldemands, accelerating or decelerating depending on circumstances. Simultaneously, cardiac cycle affects a host of higher-order processes, where systolic baroreceptor activation largely impairs processing. However, a unified functional perspective on the role of cardiac signal in perception and action has been lacking. — Patterns of cardiac activity continuously vary…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-17

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

  #ActiveInference, #TheInformationLens

• Human innovation depends on our collective brains

  A recent study investigates hunters’ causal understandings of bow design and mechanics among the Hadza, one of the last remaining foraging populations. The results suggest that sophisticated technology can evolve without complete causal understanding. Human innovation depends not on our individual brainpower but on our collective brains, on networks of diverse minds sharing information, lucky…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-17

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens

• “A New Evolutionary Law”

  Revisiting Leigh Van Valen’s “A New Evolutionary Law” (1973) by Ricard Solé, (Biological Theory (2022) 17:120–125) Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Leigh Van Valen was an American evolutionary biologist who made major contributions to evolutionary theory. He is…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

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

  #Ecosystem, #emergence, #Entanglement, #TheInformationLens

• Ecosystems – Mutualism – Synthetic biology

  Synthetic Mutualism and the Intervention Dilemma describes how ecosystems are complex networks of interacting individuals co-evolving with their environment. As such, changes to an interaction can influence the whole ecosystem. However, to predict the outcome of these changes, considerable understanding of processes driving the system is required. Synthetic biology provides powerful tools to aid this…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• The Niche theory : Compete, Facilitate & Mutualisme

  From competition to facilitation and mutualism: a general theory of the niche by Koffel, Daufresne and Klausmeier explores the niche theory. Niche Theory is a central framework in ecology based on the recognition that most interactions between organisms are indirect, mediated by the biotic and abiotic dynamical environment these organisms live in. Despite its potential…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-25

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Life Ideas, Science

  #Ecosystem, #Mutualism, #TheInformationLens

• Can Creativity Be Stored? Yes, and It Should Be

  For those of us who are not creative, it is difficult to imagine how creative people work.The explanation for the messy creative person and the uncreative brainstorming session can be found in research by Poornika Ananth and Sarah Harvey published in Administrative Science Quarterly. They had a big study of creative individuals in theatre and architecture, and…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-23

  #Sensemaking, Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Design Thinking, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback

  The scientific reports article “Neuroplasticity enables bio‑cultural feedback in Paleolithic stone‑tool making” elaborates on the idea described in articles like The comparative neuroscience and neuroarchaeological evidence indicate that functional systems supporting stone tool making have undergone substantial change over human evolution, and that these changes may be relevant to a much wider range of distinctively…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-22

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

  #Analogy, #downcausation, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens