Category: #Wicked
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42 and 5
Today, 42 years ago, we had the great pleasure of discovering the reality of 5-fold crystals. On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated…
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The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness
Thomas Metzinger’s latest book from MIT Press is focused on the experience of “pure awareness” as an investigation of the most basic fundamental nature of consciousness This specific experience, is the most important thing I have ever experienced in my life, as a personal attestation It is available for free here or also as pdf…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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Interoception and Active Inference for mental health
Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a momentary mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relationship to the outside world. Active inference is based on the premise that afferent sensory input to the brain is constantly shaped and modified by…
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EXplore-versus-EXploit problems
Trade-offs between producing costly movements for gathering information (‘explore’) and using previously acquired information to achieve a goal (‘exploit’) arise in a wide variety of problems, including foraging, reinforcement learning and sensorimotor control. Determining the optimal balance between exploration and exploitation is computationally intractable, necessitating heuristic solutions. In “Mode switching in organisms for solving explore-versus-exploit…
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Conceptual Bootstrapping (human cognition)
To tackle a hard problem, it is often wise to reuse and recombine existing knowledge. Such an ability to bootstrap enables us to grow rich mental concepts despite limited cognitive resources. This article presents a computational model of conceptual bootstrapping. This model uses a dynamic conceptual repertoire that can cache and later reuse elements of…
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Wicked7 – looking for “Regenerative” solution
12 jul 2022, TedX@Athens. Christian Sarkar makes bold statements: Globalization has failed. Income inequality has exploded. COVID hasn’t disappeared yet. And War is at the gate. What can be done in your neighborhood, in your city? We learn the lessons of regeneration from Palermo, Sicily – and the (website and) book by Christian Sarkar, Philip…
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“Fitness” Beats “Truth”
The “Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem” provides a quantitative measure of the extent to which the fitness-only strategy dominates the truth strategy, and of how this dominance increases with the size of the perceptual space. The FBT Theorem supports the Interface Theory of Perception. The Interface Theory of Perception is discussed and described in detail in 2015 by…
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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…
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Symmetry–simplicity–complexity
A number of (the 15) contributions to a theme issue ‘Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life’ have some interest to be referred. Symmetry is a motif featuring in almost all areas of science. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them particularly important in our quest to understand the structure of the world…
