Category: Science

• The past as a stochastic process

  The concept of history unfolding stochastically is not new; in the context of the history of life on Earth, Stephen J. Gould famously asked what would happen if we could “replay the tape”, which implicitly supposes that an underlying stochastic process generated that tape. Similarly, stochastic process modeling of environmental dynamics has been used to…

  walterstiers

  2024-02-09

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, AI, artificial-intelligence, data-science, machine-learning, technology

• Bayesian model: prior–cost

  Sohna and Jazayeri discuss in “Validating model-based Bayesian integration using prior–cost metamers” the two competing views on how humans make decisions under uncertainty. Bayesian decision theory (BDT) posits that humans optimize their behavior by establishing and integrating internal models of past sensory experiences (priors) and decision outcomes (cost functions). An alternative hypothesis posits that decisions…

  walterstiers

  2024-02-02

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #EconomicBehavior, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• Representation of priors and decisions

  The PLOS article by Marshall, Ruesseler, Hunt, O’Reilly “representation of priors and decisions in the human parietal cortex” discusses how both humans and animals actively sample the environment using their sensory organs, far from being passive recipients of sensory information. In rodents, active sampling processes include whisking and sniffing; in primates, the most important and…

  walterstiers

  2024-02-02

  #Sensemaking, Active Inference, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Neurobiology/psychology, Science

  #ActiveInference, #DecisionIntelligence, #Neuroscience, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked, articles, memory, philosophy, Science

• AI Resources – A Worry

  ChatGPT is the first non-human addition to the list of people who shaped science… But also we have a worry related to this fact, as told in the (Dec.19,2023) Quote of the day “What worries me is we don’t have the resources to make sure that academic AI continues to be a centre of gravity.…

  walterstiers

  2024-01-10

  AI, Complexity, Information Technology, Policy, Science, Uncategorized

  #HumanAI

• It Takes Two To Think

  The title refers to the recent article by Yanai & Lercher. (Itai Yanai is a Professor at the NYU School of Medicine. Martin Lercher is Professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf at both the Institute for Computer Science and the Department of Biology. ) At the heart of science is a creative ‘night science‘ process,…

  walterstiers

  2024-01-09

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Creative Thinking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Models .. Right or Wrong:

  Often attributed to John Maynard Keynes, but the rooted elsewhere: “It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.” Carveth Read, “Logic: Deductive and Inductive” 4th edition -1920, p.351 You all have probably heard the story about Malcolm Forbes, who once got lost floating for miles in one of his famous balloons and finally…

  walterstiers

  2024-01-07

  #Sensemaking, Decision Intelligence, Life Ideas, Policy, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens, #Uncertainty

• Expert Predictions Fail …

  “When expert predictions fail“ examines the opportunities and challenges of expert judgment in the social sciences, scrutinizing the way social scientists make predictions. While social scientists show above-chance accuracy in predicting laboratory-based phenomena, they often struggle to predict real-world societal changes. Most causal models used in social sciences are oversimplified, confuse levels of analysis to which…

  walterstiers

  2024-01-05

  #Sensemaking, #Wicked, Complexity, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #DecisionIntelligence, #TheInformationLens, #Wicked

• The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds

  For over a century, psychology has focused on uncovering mental processes of a single individual. However, humans rarely navigate the world in isolation.The most important determinants of successful development, mental health, and our individual traits and preferences arise from interacting with other individuals. Social interaction underpins who we are, how we think, and how we…

  walterstiers

  2023-12-21

  #sense-making, Biology of Information, Complexity, Information Technology, Neurobiology/psychology, Science, Social-Technical

  #HumanAI, #ProblemSolvingMind, #TheInformationLens

• The Quark & the Jaguar

  In 1994, SFI co-founder Murray Gell-Mann published his only book, The Quark & the Jaguar.  Now available in electronic formats through the SFI Press, the book examines the laws of physics and the complexity of the natural world through Gell-Mann’s uniquely personal and unifying vision.  “The world of the quark has everything to do / with…

  walterstiers

  2023-12-21

  Biology of Information, Complexity, Science

  #TheInformationLens

• An New Law Needed?

  On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems - by Michael L. Wong, et al. (2023) Systems of many interacting agents display an increase in diversity, distribution, and/or patterned behavior when numerous configurations of the system are subject to selective pressure. The universe is replete with complex evolving systems, but the existing macroscopic physical laws…

  walterstiers

  2023-12-18

  #sense-making, #Wicked, Biology of Information, Complexity, Decision Intelligence, Information Technology, Life Ideas, Science

  #DecisionIntelligence, #emergence, #TheInformationLens