[Fis] Contingency signals: AI Information, Decision and Learning

[Mark Johnson]

Hi John

There's a deep question about contingency and wholes. A whole might be seen
as a totality of contingency. Here we represent contingency as a
probability distribution, just as all AI is stochastic (and indeed, most
modern science - particularly obviously quantum mechanics)

I have a doubt in my mind with regard to this as to whether there are
things which are parts of wholes which appear impossible but nevertheless
causal in some way. Bhaskar includes this in his conception of the real and
his insistence on the importance of absence (echoed by Terry Deacon, Bob
Ulanowicz and others). After all, contingency depends on our position as
observers of the contingent. Are miracles contingencies, for example?

So the question to ask is not about AI itself, but about probability and
wholeness. We mentioned Spiegelhalter in the paper, and his view is that
probability is useful, but not ontological. That position also works for AI
😉

So those are my 2 messages this week!

Best wishes

Mark

Dr. Mark William Johnson
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
University of Manchester

Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
University of Liverpool
Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Tg7hDb7B01M7jm7lxLzMIb1w4DLpEcqy1F6wrZi8357ObosXOeTOY0wI5VE2fGhJp8PXcrh1QJliMdPWp-o5E5A$ 

On Thu, 20 Nov 2025, 11:54 JOHN TORDAY, <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:

> Any way to test whether the AI 'parts' are representative of a 'whole'? or
> just space-filling stuff....
>
> John Torday
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 4:29 AM Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> A group of colleagues and I have been working on diagnostic AI for some
>> years  using a comparison technique. A few of us just published this paper
>> on the inter-relationship between management decision making, the learning
>> of decision-making and technology: Developing judgement for business: an
>> AI-based model of independent management learning - ScienceDirect
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325006654__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WPhKwNIaSyPehSx-1rv1IXkLmAKWvfhjcSoF8ycbMGpQLKjNmUeRHbMR7LBpcGoUSKLBgkQAwLAnZMgvKms0B4w$>
>>
>> The role of information in this is obviously crucial - as is the
>> criticism of AI that it is an unreliable assistant. How might AI tell us
>> when it's not sure about things? While Shannon's H is a kind of contingency
>> signal, it is curious how with AI this aspect of mathematical information
>> theory is easily forgotten! However, there does seem to be an intersection
>> between the way information is conceived and effective social
>> decision-making where:
>>
>> a. information is framed in terms of varying degrees of contingency
>> b. good decision concerns the effective allocation of scarce human
>> expertise to maximise organisational effectiveness
>>
>> In essence, the greater the contingency in a judgement, the greater the
>> need to allocate human resource to debate choices; the less the
>> contingency, the less the need for humans in decision processes.
>>
>> The fundamental message is a management cybernetic one (i.e. Stafford
>> Beer) - it is not what the technology itself does, it is how we organise
>> ourselves with it that matters.
>>
>> The technique in the paper illustrates a way in which degrees of
>> contingency in decision-making can be identified by the technology. It is,
>> we would suggest, this signal which we need from our technology, not an
>> "answer" to questions. So the pursuit of "answer engines" (as Google and
>> others are discussing) is barking up the wrong tree.
>>
>> A deeper question is whether some kind of "contingency signal" lies at
>> the heart of biological information itself. This would have resonance with
>> deeper cybernetic ideas about contingency (Luhmann, Leydesdorff, Shannon,
>> etc) and cellular organisation (Torday and colleagues, Levin, etc) -
>> whether a biological "contingency signal" is produced in the gap between
>> the internal biological selection process of a cell (referencing its
>> evolutionary history acquired through symbiogenesis, for example) and
>> external selection pressure.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Mark
>> --
>> Dr. Mark William Johnson
>> Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
>> University of Manchester
>>
>> Department of Eye and Vision Science (honorary)
>> University of Liverpool
>> Phone: 07786 064505
>> Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
>> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Tg7hDb7B01M7jm7lxLzMIb1w4DLpEcqy1F6wrZi8357ObosXOeTOY0wI5VE2fGhJp8PXcrh1QJliMdPWp-o5E5A$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WPhKwNIaSyPehSx-1rv1IXkLmAKWvfhjcSoF8ycbMGpQLKjNmUeRHbMR7LBpcGoUSKLBgkQAwLAnZMgv378sKxM$>
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