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

Fri Nov 21 08:30:14 CET 2025

Dear all,

I am organizing, as *managers* do, a few *words *to pose two problems and
provide a *com-munication*:

- in the analysis of* trans-information*, the *theorem of the probability
of probabilities* underlying

*quantum mechanics* or *fuzzy logic* is very important;

- rather than *intelligence or artificial intelligences*, we must
speak of *technological
artifice*,

because *true emotional-rational intelligence is human*;-

- I am concluding the narration of a book on *Information. Communicative
language of art, *

*science, or the science of art*. Anyway, thank you and remember that
humanity is a *love that in love,*

* love creates*.

Francesco Rizzo.

Cari tutti,
*organizzo*, come fanno i *manager*, alcune *parole *per porre due problemi
e dare una *com-unicazione*:
-nell' analisi della *tras-in-formazione* conta molto il *teorema*
della *probabilità
delle probabilità *
sottesa dalla *meccanica quantistica* o dalla* logica fuzzy*;
- più che di *intelligenza* o *intelligenze artificiali*, bisogna parlare
di *artificio tecnologico,* perchè la vera i*ntelligenza*
*emo-razionale è umana*-
- sto concludendo la narrazione di un libro su *Informazione. Linguaggio
comunicativo dell’arte della *
*scienza o della scienza dell’arte*.
Comunque, grazie e ricordateVi che l'umanità è un *amore* che nell'*amore*
, *amore* crea.
Francesco Rizzo.

Il giorno gio 20 nov 2025 alle ore 13:59 Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 en gmail.com>
ha scritto:

> 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 en gmail.com
> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VqtM7JiKP7mewUWlIFaQOLNdLKkOM42VJNhyQUlZ-AdgBkz8gQmvp_oKpb1v0Lrl3bvAsDfD8KCcNgWQrUalD6i9Q8Ky$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Tg7hDb7B01M7jm7lxLzMIb1w4DLpEcqy1F6wrZi8357ObosXOeTOY0wI5VE2fGhJp8PXcrh1QJliMdPWp-o5E5A$>
>
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2025, 11:54 JOHN TORDAY, <jtorday en ucla.edu> wrote:
>
>> Any way to test whether the AI 'parts' are representative of a 'whole'?
>> or just space-filling stuff....
>>
>> John Torday
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 4:29 AM Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 en gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> A group of colleagues and I have been working on diagnostic AI for some
>>> years  using a comparison technique. A few of us just published this paper
>>> on the inter-relationship between management decision making, the learning
>>> of decision-making and technology: Developing judgement for business:
>>> an AI-based model of independent management learning - ScienceDirect
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325006654__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WPhKwNIaSyPehSx-1rv1IXkLmAKWvfhjcSoF8ycbMGpQLKjNmUeRHbMR7LBpcGoUSKLBgkQAwLAnZMgvKms0B4w$>
>>>
>>> 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 en gmail.com
>>> Blog: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!VqtM7JiKP7mewUWlIFaQOLNdLKkOM42VJNhyQUlZ-AdgBkz8gQmvp_oKpb1v0Lrl3bvAsDfD8KCcNgWQrUalD6i9Q8Ky$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!WPhKwNIaSyPehSx-1rv1IXkLmAKWvfhjcSoF8ycbMGpQLKjNmUeRHbMR7LBpcGoUSKLBgkQAwLAnZMgv378sKxM$>
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