Implicit Model

#concept12 mentions

An implicit Model is an evolved, embodied representation of a System’s Environment.This is in contracts to Explicit Models.

This means a system is

a statistical model of its niche in the sense of coming to embody statistical regularities of its world in its physical and functional composition.Kirchhoff et al. (2018), 4

In the case of biological systems, i.e. organisms or agents,

one should recognize that the morphology, bio-physical mechanics and neural architecture of the organism all constitute an agent’s model, and that these parameters (or parts) can be tuned and augmented by selection, learning and experience.ibid.

In this sense, “an agent does not have a model of its world – it is a model”. Friston,(2013), 213 (my emphasis)

– and therefore Every system is a model of its environment.

References

Every System Is a Model of Its Environment

For a System to have an Implicit Model means embodying “statistical regularities of its world in its physical and functional composition”Kirchhoff et al.

Explicit Model

An explicit Model is a consciously articulated, interpretive description of a target System that can be the object of the modelling system’s attention.

Generative Model

A generative Model aims to capture the statistical structure of some set of observed inputs by tracking […] the causal matrix responsible for that very structure.

Knowledge

Knowledge of something is “the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject”.

Model

A model is a simplified representation of a System.

Rationalism Is Not Rational

Rationalism à la Eliezer Yudkowsky has two connected fundamental flaws – an ontological and an epistemological one.

Revolutions Try to Force Systems into Imaginary Attractors

All political revolutionaries imagine a future constellation of their society and, if and when they succeed in disrupting the old system, use Power to implement the new one.

Scale Free Abstraction

Scale-free abstractions are a specific type of Shorthand Abstractions: highly general concepts taken from our best current thinking about evolution, cognition, and the world as a hierarchy of systems.

Self Organisation

Self-organisation is > a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered System.

Sensemaking

We make sense of the world in order to act in it.

Strategy Is a Learning Process

Strategy is de facto always an iterative learning process, even if this is often not made explicit and information gaps between iterations make it less effective and efficient.

Strategy Is Based on Models

Every Strategy is based on an (implicit or explicit) assessment of the situation, that is the Model a System has of its Environment.