Category: Information Technology

• Information theory: A foundation for complexity science

  Amos Golan and John Harte published a perspective paper, consolidating the insights and research on knowledge and models from incomplete information in complex environments, based on MaxEnt Modeling and inference are central to most areas of science and especially to evolving and complex systems. Critically, the information we have is often uncertain and insufficient, resulting…

  walterstiers

  2022-11-29

  Complexity, Information Technology, Science

  #EconomicBehavior, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• It all comes together in a perfect storm :: “Keep it Simple”

  Three different levels of information processing show a remarkable alignment. They all are guided by similar principles, which do map and overlap.Let me briefly summarize them: First:Active Inference , a sentient behaviour theory, builds on the free energy principle. FEP implies a coupling between the internal and external states of a system that is symmetric:…

  walterstiers

  2022-11-14

  #Cynefin, #Sensemaking, Active Inference, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked

• Technology readiness levels for machine learning systems

  The development and deployment of machine learning systems can be executed easily with modern tools, but the process is typically rushed and means-to-an-end. Lack of diligence can lead to technical debt, scope creep and misaligned objectives, model misuse and failures, and expensive consequences. Engineering systems, on the other hand, follow well-defined processes and testing standards…

  walterstiers

  2022-10-20

  AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI

• Beslissen: FEP, AI, Bayes

  “We sample the world to ensure our predictions become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Karl Friston De beslissingswetenschappen en neurowetenschappen werden recent verrijkt door het principe van vrije energie (Free Energy Principle / FEP) van Karl Friston. FEP is misschien wel het meest allesomvattende idee sinds de theorie van natuurlijke selectie van Charles Darwin. Samenvattend is het…

  walterstiers

  2022-10-11

  AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Uncategorized

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

• Samenwerking en Ecosystemen

  Deze aanpak van de meeste contracten bestaat uit het uitbesteden van opdrachten zonder bijzondere aandacht aan gestructureerd overlegorganen voor gemeenschappelijke beslissingen. Deze werkwijze is terug te voeren op een inzicht in de geschiedenis van “Near-Decomposability”.Herbert Simon is een van de iconen van Near-Composability, een beheer- en bestuur methodologie, die grondig uitgewerkt is een veelvoud management-methodes.…

  walterstiers

  2022-10-11

  #Cynefin, #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Social-Technical, Sustainability

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Rethinking Computational Approaches to the Mind

  Rethinking Computational Approaches to the Mind Fundamental Challenges and Future Perspectives One-day Online Symposium21st October 2022 REGISTER HERE This one-day online event will bring together researchers with expertise in various areas such as complexity science, machine learning & artificial intelligence, information theory & data science, as well as computational/theoretical neuroscience & philosophy to explore different computational approaches…

  walterstiers

  2022-09-08

  #Sensemaking, AI, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• The Learning Power of Listening

  Sensemaking is related to the mapping and understanding of entangled complex situations and deciding upon the first best move. This all is best observed through stories and story-telling analysis, like the Cynefin Sensemaker. Oxfam just relesed a great guide “The Learning Power of Listening Practical guidance for using SenseMaker“, showing their use of the method…

  walterstiers

  2022-08-04

  #Cynefin, #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Policy, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Supporting sensemaking and decisions with scientific evidence

  If you have the opportunity to work on a complex problem, including change at the technical, organizational and governance/policy level of a rather complicated environment, you can considered to be lucky to start with the insights from the Cynefin farmework, developed by Dave Snowden. Recent evolution of this framework include “Entanglement“, liminality and the great…

  walterstiers

  2022-08-03

  #Cynefin, #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Design Thinking, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Policy, Science, Social-Technical, Uncategorized

  #ActiveInference, #Cynefin, #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #Sensemaking, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked

• Enhancing human agency through redress in Artificial Intelligence Systems

  […] automation of workflows enabled by AI systems could even go as far as to challenge individual agency, autonomy and active mediation. It is paramount to not only scientifically but also empirically assess new ways to enable active human agency. In terms of policy, […] users lack the means and tools to exercise this agency in the…

  walterstiers

  2022-06-09

  AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #HumanAI, #Wicked

• Fractal Organization

  A recent BCG article “The Organization of the Future Is Fractal” has a clear description of what John Seely Brown expresses as “we’ve moved from the age of enlightenment to the age of entanglement where sense-making aided by imagination is now more critical than ever.” Over the past 50 years or more, as the global…

  walterstiers

  2022-06-02

  #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Sustainability

  #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens

• The Why, How, and When of Representations for Complex Systems

  Complex systems, composed at the most basic level of units and their interactions, describe phenomena in a wide variety of domains, from neuroscience to computer science and economics. The wide variety of applications has resulted in two key challenges: the generation of many domain-specific strategies for complex systems analyses that are seldom revisited, and the…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-20

  #Wicked, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Digital Twins: Societies are not machines, & optimization is a too narrow approach

  I already did mention the importance of VVUQ when considering operational digital twins. More elaborated is the work from teh ETH Zurich team (Dirk Helbing & Javier Argota Sánchez-Vaquerizo), Digital Twins: Potentials, Limitations, and Ethical Issues. Rather than aiming for perfect digital twins, a predictable future, and total control, one should use computer simulation technology…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-03

  AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science, Social-Technical, Sustainability

  #DigitalTwin, #HumanAI, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked

• Collective Intelligence & information pooling or aggregation

  The review article on “Information aggregation and collective intelligence beyond the wisdom of crowds” describes how collective decision-making is a robust behavioural feature of groups for humans and other gregarious animals. Pooling individual information is also fundamental for modern societies, in which digital technologies have exponentially increased the interdependence of individual group members. Cognitive and…

  walterstiers

  2022-05-03

  #Wicked, Active Inference, AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Avoiding “Fake News” – also at old age – not as hard as one might think.

  Ryan C. Moore & Jeffrey T. Hancock just published “A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news”. This article gives promising news on the awareness and actions one can to avoid fake news and misconceptions. The intervention was a 1-hour, self-directed series of interactive modules designed to teach concepts and…

  walterstiers

  2022-04-19

  Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Social-Technical

  #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Your spatial navigation ability links with the entropy of your city street networks

  I already mentioned the importance of space-time decisions, Individual differences in information seeking, the importance of anology (for AI), The importance of spatial thinking and the Active Inference principle (the brain is an “inference engine” that seeks to minimize “prediction error.”) It all comes togethers in a great article in Nature: “Entropy of city street…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-31

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Information Technology, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Active Inference – The book

  Available, – Open Access – free to download – great reading … Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior  By Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo, Karl J. Friston The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-30

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens

• Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds

  This post is a pointer to a great article from Michael Levin, just published in Frontiers in Systems Neurosciences All known cognitive agents are collective intelligences, because we are all made of parts; biological agents in particular are not just structurally modular, but made of parts that are themselves agents in important ways. There is…

  walterstiers

  2022-03-30

  #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Why Can the Brain (And Not a Computer) Make Sense of the Liar Paradox?

  Ordinary computing machines prohibit self-reference because it leads to logical inconsistencies and undecidability. In contrast, the human mind can understand self-referential statements without necessitating physically impossible brain states. Why can the brain make sense of self-reference? This paper addresses this question by defining the Strange Loop Model, which features causal feedback between two brain modules,…

  walterstiers

  2022-02-09

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

  #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• ‘It from bit’

  ‘It from bit’ symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—at a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical…

  walterstiers

  2022-01-26

  Information Technology, Science

• Complex Data and Models lead to Ascendency Analysis

  When making decisions, data might not be overlooked, nor the methodology to collect and interprete them. Especially in complex matteras as sustainability and circular economy, data, the collection and interpretation is key in helping our understanding and guiding our decisions. The EU JRC just published a great overview report on “Domestic Footprint of the EU…

  walterstiers

  2022-01-24

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science, Sustainability

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty, #Wicked

• DLT decisions, 5 lessons from Walmart

  I could not resist to summarize the HBR Article on “How Walmart Canada Uses Blockchain to Solve Supply-Chain Challenges”Walmart Canada applied blockchain to solve a common logistics nightmare: payment disputes with its 70 third-party freight carriers. To solve the problem it built a blockchain network. The system has not only virtually eliminated the payments problem;…

  walterstiers

  2022-01-06

  #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Design Thinking, Information Technology

• What Does It Mean for AI to Understand?

  Melanie Mitchell has a great article, she just announced at Complexity Digest: Language models can generate uncannily humanlike prose (and poetry!) and seemingly perform sophisticated linguistic reasoning. How can we test if these machines actually understand what they’re doing? Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.orghttps://www.quantamagazine.org/what-does-it-mean-for-ai-to-understand-20211216/# Understanding language requires understanding the world, and a machine exposed only…

  walterstiers

  2021-12-17

  AI, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Information Technology

  #HumanAI

• Binary “Space-Time decisions” accumulate

  There was this great article in PNAS, recently: The geometry of decision-making in individuals and collectives. Luis M. Rocha posted a perfect summary on twitter: In biology, complex dynamics so often lead to binary (thresholded/critical) decision: “we predict that the brain repeatedly breaks multichoice decisions into a series of binary decisions in space–time”.

  walterstiers

  2021-12-15

  Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind

• Use complexity as a weapon … (but you might fail)

  From Tunnel Vision to Lateral Vision – In the Media & Elsewhere with Gillian Tett, a very short vido speech shared by the Sante Fe Institute, has a very nice reflection on why society accepts crisises like the financial-2008 Use complexity as a weapon The closing statement of the short fragment tells it all: “If…

  walterstiers

  2021-11-09

  Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Social-Technical