Related papers: Facing Complexity: Prediction vs. Adaptation

Conformal prediction is an uncertainty quantification method that constructs a prediction set for a previously unseen datum, ensuring the true label is included with a predetermined coverage probability. Adaptive conformal prediction has…

The recent framework of performative prediction is aimed at capturing settings where predictions influence the target/outcome they want to predict. In this paper, we introduce a natural multi-agent version of this framework, where multiple…

This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms…

Rationality is often related to optimal decision making. Humans are known to be bounded rational agents. However, recent advances in computing, and other scientific and technical fields along with large amount of data have led to a feeling…

Many complex systems satisfy a set of constraints on their degrees of freedom, and at the same time, they are able to work and adapt to different conditions. Here, we describe the emergence of this ability in a simplified model in which the…

Adaptivity is a dynamical feature that is omnipresent in nature, socio-economics, and technology. For example, adaptive couplings appear in various real-world systems like the power grid, social, and neural networks, and they form the…

Scientific and technological advances in numerical modelling have improved the quality of climate predictions over recent decades, but predictive skill remains limited in many aspects. Extreme events such as heat and cold waves, droughts,…

We can overcome uncertainty with uncertainty. Using randomness in our choices and in what we control, and hence in the decision making process, could potentially offset the uncertainty inherent in the environment and yield better outcomes.…

The process of doing Science in condition of uncertainty is illustrated with a toy experiment in which the inferential and the forecasting aspects are both present. The fundamental aspects of probabilistic reasoning, also relevant in real…

Astronomy is an observationally-led subject where chance discoveries play an important role. A whole range of such discoveries is continually made, from the trivial to the highly significant. What is generally needed is for luck to strike…

The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…

Biological approximations, which are universal for diverse species, are well known. With no other experimental data, their invariance to transformations from one species to another yields exact conservation (with respect to biological…

Prigogine and Stengers (1988) have pointed to the centrality of the concepts of "time and eternity" for the cosmology contained in Newtonian physics, but they have not addressed this issue beyond the domain of physics. The construction of…

Why are life trajectories difficult to predict? We investigated this question through in-depth qualitative interviews with 40 families sampled from a multi-decade longitudinal study. Our sampling and interviewing process were informed by…

It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…

The modified universality hypothesis proposed by Jones et al. (2022) suggests that adversarially robust models trained for a given task are highly similar. We revisit the hypothesis and test its generality. While we verify Jones' main claim…

The predictability problem for systems with different characteristic time scales is investigated. It is shown that even in simple chaotic dynamical systems, the leading Lyapunov exponent is not sufficient to estimate the predictability…

Approximations of optimization problems arise in computational procedures and sensitivity analysis. The resulting effect on solutions can be significant, with even small approximations of components of a problem translating into large…

Recently it has been demonstrated that causal entropic forces can lead to the emergence of complex phenomena associated with human cognitive niche such as tool use and social cooperation. Here I show that even more fundamental traits…

Many biological systems perform close to their physical limits, but promoting this optimality to a general principle seems to require implausibly fine tuning of parameters. Using examples from a wide range of systems, we show that this…