Category: Science

• How Occam’s razor guides human decision-making

  A rather complex but very interesting article was published @PennLibraries and (somewhat more recent) @bioRXiv But for those who want to understand by a lecture, I can recommend the Simons Faoundation lecture from Joshua Gold (also available on Youtube: How Occam’s Razor Guides Human and Machine Decision-Making) Occam’s razor is the principle stating that, all…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-03

  #Wicked, AI, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

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

• A map is not the territory it represents, but…

  I quote one of the key ideas of my activities, as stated bij Korzybski: A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness Korzybski, “Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics.“ This post is created to…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-03

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science, Social-Technical

  #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 ◦C ambitions

  This article in Cleaner Production Letters studies the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO2). Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change. Findings suggest that…

  walterstiers

  2023-03-03

  #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

  #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Ten tips for facilitating emergent processes

  I just discovered a nice medium article/blog entry from Sonja Blignaut on working towards emergent solutions for wicked situations. I just summarise, but details are in the article. Facilitating emergent group processes requires a different kind of facilitation. When you’re not working towards a predetermined outcome, following a pre-designed agenda, the following principles are helpful…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-27

  #Cynefin, #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• “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

• Size and Weight

  I already referred to “You Are Not Expected to Understand This”, in which two chapters refer to space & information correctness: This book was meant to be a review of the human stories behind programming, enabling those of us who don’t think much about code to recognize its importance, and those who work with it every…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-23

  #Sensemaking, Information Technology, Science

  #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

• The evolution of universal cooperation

  Humans work together in groups to tackle shared problems and contribute to local club goods that benefit other group members. Whereas benefits from club goods remain group bound, groups are often nested in overarching collectives that face shared problems like pandemics or climate change. Such challenges require individuals to cooperate across group boundaries, raising the…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-22

  #Sensemaking, #stakeholder economy, Complexity, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #StakeholderEconomy, #TheInformationLens

• David Krakauer Lecture on What is Complexity?

  David Krakauer • What is Complexity? is a great and enlightening talk sectioning the concept of complexity and exploring complexity epistemology and emergence. (Also to be found on Sante Fe Institute website: The Complexity Explorer)

  walterstiers

  2023-02-21

  #Wicked, Complexity, Science

  #emergence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Brain-Behavior relationships

  “Improving the study of brain-behavior relationships by revisiting basic assumptions” discusses how scientific communities tacitly agree on assumptions about what exists (called ontological commitments), what questions to ask, and what methods to use. All assumptions are firmly rooted in a philosophy of science that need not be acknowledged or discussed but is practiced nonetheless. In…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-21

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

  #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The Art of Abduction 

  Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete. A medical diagnosis is an application of abductive reasoning: given this set of symptoms,…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-21

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• “You Are Not Expected to Understand This”

  When starting my professional career in IT, I got close to the holy grale of the UNIX source code, well known for the most striking comment in IT history. “You Are Not Expected to Understand This”. Few of us give much thought to computer code or how it comes to be. The very word “code”…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-10

  #Wicked, Information Technology, Science, Social-Technical

• The complexities of knowledge co-production

  Practical wisdom and virtue ethics for knowledge co-production in sustainability describes how since antiquity, philosophers in the Western tradition of virtue ethics have declared practical wisdom to be the central virtue of citizens involved in public and social life. Practical wisdom is of particular importance when values are conflicting, power is unequal and knowledge uncertain.…

  walterstiers

  2023-02-10

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Policy, Science, Sustainability

  #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Beware the “lure of models”

  Scientists cannot help but use models says Mark Buchanan. Models help to clarify the consequences of theoretical assumptions, or to draw out complex lines of cause and effect … Without simplified conceptual models, scientific communication itself would be largely impossible.Of course, mathematical models also underlie some of the sciences’ most impressive achievements, like e.g. today’s…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-18

  #Sensemaking, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Science

  #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• How mathematics invented new realities

  Although Euclid’s ideas about geometry in 300 BC were rooted in physical reality, the field became ever more abstract throughout the twentieth century.In her new book, historian Alma Steingart reveals how this push for abstraction was mirrored by, and often triggered, parallel trends in economics, sociology, psychology and political science. (Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-18

  #Sensemaking, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Science

  #ProblemSolvingMind

• Develop or disrupt & team size

  “Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology“Increases in team size have been attributed to the specialization of scientific activities, improvements in communication technology, or the complexity of modern problems that require interdisciplinary solutions. This shift in team size raises the question of whether and how the character of the science and technology…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-09

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

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Stats don’t show enough

  Same Stats, Different Graphs: Generating Datasets with Varied Appearance and Identical Statistics through Simulated Annealing has some great figures I want to share. They show datasets which are identical over a number of statistical properties, yet produce dissimilar graphs, are frequently used to illustrate the importance of graphical representations when exploring data. As a geo-scientists,…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-04

  Information Technology, Science

  #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Intellectual humility

  Intellectual humility involves recognizing that there are gaps in one’s knowledge and that one’s current beliefs might be incorrect. For instance, someone might think that it is raining, but acknowledge that they have not looked outside to check and that the sun might be shining. Research on intellectual humility offers an intriguing avenue to safeguard…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-02

  Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind

• “CAUSEME” to benchmark causal methods

  The heart of the scientific enterprise is a rational effort to understand the causes behind the phenomena we observe. In large-scale complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system, real experiments are rarely feasible. However, a rapidly increasing amount of observational and simulated data opens up the use of novel data-driven causal methods beyond the…

  walterstiers

  2023-01-02

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Information Technology, Science

  #CausalMethod, #EarthScience, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• Paleodiet becoming a reality again:

  Nature Briefing of December 13 2022 tells you about the oldest cooked meal ever found: a tasty-sounding seed flatbread that might have been cooked by Neanderthals 70,000 years ago. Readers had to see that recipe, and palaeoecologist Chris Hunt did not let us down. Here are the edited details: Neanderthal ‘flatbread’Based on an analysis by archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu,…

  walterstiers

  2022-12-17

  Science, Sustainability

• Over-reliance on English hinders

  Several studies report a ‘bilingual advantage’ for cognitive control: the ability to plan, focus, and execute a wide array of tasks is better among bilinguals compared with monolinguals, in particular among older adult bilinguals. Nonetheless, this bilingual advantage is not replicated consistently, as the effect is heavily modulated by task, age of participants, and bilingual…

  walterstiers

  2022-12-07

  Biology of Information, Creative Thinking, Life Ideas, Science

  #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens