Algorithmic complexity is a measure of information. For any non-trivially sophisticated (i.e. interesting) system, there exists no shortest/best programmatic representation – i.e. theory, model, framework or network wiring. This means that in some circumstances we can reduce ad infinitum. There is no best, only better; a lesson in abject humility still to be learned by […]
Tag: cybernetics
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Cybernetics: the Good Regulator
Ashby had powerful insights. The Good Regulator theorem of Conant and Ashby that every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system is instructive. Further down the Ashby path – the variety (a.k.a. complexity) of a model needs to be at least as sophisticated as that of the system it models. […]
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Technology as Displaced Entropy
Context: Australia installs first space laser optical ground station in southern hemisphere It is interesting to observe, and from a broader (integrated, technological) systems perspective, that the value acquired by iterating upon and through the technical ratchet of space-based communications solutions and innovations is a measure of displaced information (as much as material) entropy. Much […]
Notice that the organisational as much as technical self-propagation in AI research is, beyond the enlightened self-interests of commercial investment and the low-hanging fruit of metric spectacles, profoundly shaped by the degree to which the emergent entities, artefacts and systems provide the optimal opportunities for their own (non-ergodic, constrained or probabilistically-damped) self-replication. I realise that […]
The question might become as of the extent to which integrated biological systems express or manifest an altogether more subtle logic than purely brute-forced calculation. We have a tendency to isolate intelligence and problem solving in the processing unit but, beyond the implicit (or at least plausible) value in any identifiable circuits and cleverly-constructed cybernetic […]
Cognitive diversity represents that useful, recombinatory information entropy from which insight and innovation assert and reproduce or replicate themselves. A subtle, adaptive balance between self-propagating continuity and incessant metamorphosis is the source of as many evolutionary wonders as it is of the abstract information origami of psychological, cultural and technological enigmas with which we are […]
All ordered organisational systems are engaged in an endless competition with (and of) disorder and entropy; it is a race to weave order and patterned persistence from available resources while the other end of the tapestry continuously unravels into largely unrecoverable waste and loss. These organisational systems aspire to a relatively stable or constructively adaptive […]
Complexity is a lot smarter than we are – all of our ratiobal interdictions into behavioural and sociological problems tend to amplify by displacement those problems.
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Cultural Systems and Useful Entropy
Even apparently useless phenomena usually have an implicit purpose or reason to exist. It just requires a little lateral thought to untangle the complexity a little…
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Relative Intelligence
I’m not entirely confident in the marketing, PR and hype surrounding the notional “Intelligence” characterised in emerging contemporary applications and technologies. The kinds of sophistication and mental processing (on a spectrum towards consciousness and self-awareness) constitutive of authentic intelligence appears to be anything other than what is being achieved by these narrowly defined intelligent machines […]
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