Category: Science
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“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…
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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,…
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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…
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Statistical inference links data and theory in network science
The number of network science applications across many different fields has been rapidly increasing. Surprisingly, the development of theory and domain-specific applications often occur in isolation, risking an effective disconnect between theoretical and methodological advances and the way network science is employed in practice. . In this work, we will focus on three intimately related…
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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…
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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…
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Inquisitive but not discerning
Deprivation curiosity is associated with excessive openness to inaccurate information. New psychology research reveals a dark side of curiosity states: “highly deprivation curious people have an excessive openness to information. More deprivation curious people are more likely to see meaning in meaningless gibberish sentences, and they are more likely to entertain pretty blatant disinformation”. “So…
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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…
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The curse of knowledge
Experts are poorer communicators in their own domain than nonexperts, MIT Sloan’s Miro Kazakoff says, and he offers ways to reverse that curse. “One of the critical challenges of professional communication is to recognize and internalize the variety of ways that people decode things,” “When we see a pattern or recognize something or know something,…
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Offline memory consolidation during waking rest
People spend approximately half of their waking hours in a so- called offline state — daydreaming, mind wandering or otherwise inattentive to their surroundings. These activities are often viewed as a waste of time, perhaps as moments of lost productivity. However, periods of offline waking rest can facilitate the consolidation of newly formed memories. Even…
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Where the senses fail us, reason must step in
It is true that the unique human ability to reason is what allows for science, technology, and advanced problem-solving. But there are limitations to reason. Highly deliberative people tend to be less empathetic, are often perceived as less trustworthy and authentic, and can undermine their own influence. Ultimately, the supposed battle between head and heart is overblown.…
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task-related information and form functional networks encode both sensory input and behavioral choice.
Cortical processing of task-relevant information enables recognition of behaviorally meaningful sensory events. How task-related information is represented within cortical networks by the activity of individual neurons and their functional interactions was investigates. A subset of neurons transiently encode sensory information used to inform behavioral choice. These neurons form functional networks in which information transmits sequentially.…
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Plan with “value-guided construal”
When people plan, they do so by constructing a simplified mental representation of a problem that is sufficient to solve it—a process that we refer to as value-guided construal. An ideal, cognitively limited decision-maker should construe a task so as to balance complexity and utility. Preregistered predictions of this model explain people’s awareness, ability to…
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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…
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Will it ever happen?
Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken – Can machines ever achieve true intelligence? , is a perspective article in entropy by Ricard Solé and Luís F. Seoane, has a great discussion on intelligence. When computers started to become a dominant part of technology around the 1950s, fundamental questions about reliable designs and…
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Metacognition accompanying decision-making
Decision-making is usually accompanied by metacognition, through which a decision maker monitors uncertainty regarding a decision and may then consequently revise the decision. These metacognitive processes can occur prior to or in the absence of feedback. The neural mechanisms of metacognition remain controversial. A novel “decision–redecision” paradigm to investigate the neural metacognitive processes involved in…
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Enriched Environment helps decision
Inter-Individual Differences in Cognitive Tasks: Focusing on the Shaping of Decision-Making Strategies is a recent publication about the Mouse Gambling Task. It revealed about 30% of healthy mice displaying risk-averse choices while about 20-25% of mice make risk-prone choices. These strategies are accompanied by different brain network mobilization and individual levels of regional -prefrontal and…
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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…
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Characteristics, potentials, and challenges of transdisciplinary research
Resolving the grand challenges and wicked problems of the Anthropocene will require skillfully combining a broad range of knowledge and understandings—both scientific and non-scientific—of Earth systems and human societies. One approach to this is transdisciplinary research, which has gained considerable interest over the last few decades, resulting in an extensive body of literature about transdisciplinarity.…
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‘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…
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