In the past few months, I have been trying to find a way to make my intuition and the math behind it more interpretable. This is for the dissertation that I am writing for international relations, which aims to integrate insights from Daoism, information theory, system's theory and complexity science into a coherent paradigm that would allow one to diagnose systemic conditions, like giving a reading of atmospheric conditions in order to predict possible weather.
It is a risky theory-building dissertation. But I don't care, I am going to fully exploit the creative license that is afforded to every PhD student. Even imaginative endeavour entails risk; and I don't want to play it safe. One of my problem is how to make the mathematical model of my framework interpretable. My solution: simulate the mathematical equations of my different metrics are they are all related. It is theory-building assisted by computation.
So, I started with theory, integrate information-theoretic measures, conceptualize mathematical relationships among them (I had to revisit a lot of my math -- any coherent theory can be mathematically modelled), simulate, let unsupervised machine learning explore the landscape, and discover emergent clusters -- where the data from the simulation "speaks" its own structure. So now i have informational regimes (which can be used to diagnose specific systemic condition from information theoretic measures emerging from data).
The key assistive components I used in this theory-building are:
1. Parameter space exploration, which tests theoretical relationships across all possible states (I used 10,000 points --- I could use more but my laptop would definitely give up. But this resolution is good enough.)
2. Machine learning which reveals latent structures invisible to manual analysis. I used Silhoette-optimized K means Clustering to do this. K-Means Clustering a fundamental unsupervised machine learning algorithm used to group unlabeled data into clusters based on similarity.
I ran this through Python (which i learned through AI-assistance). And of course, a 3D topological visualization of the informational regime that looks sexy; I had to record it while listening to a set by Rrose! <3
Can't relate on this , but still happy you have a new post Ms Sass :)
With the way you're discussing these things Sass to lay people like me who are not academics engaged in those studies, you're making us realize that ultimately the human brain's consciousness is the ultimate quantum computer. All the AI, machine learning tools are just higher-level calculators and computers meant to be used, controlled and managed as tools by the human being to discern and define knowledge. It is the human consciousness that recognizes, defines, articulates, collates, classifies and correlates all the data and knowledge into coherent theories, thought and analytic processes. Without the human brains, all these data and equations are just like the rest of the universe, a mystery.
Moving forward, is AI already part of the Philippines' basic education curriculum? We read about the ethical debates on and the dangers of AI but there isn't even enough education on AI, machine learning and quantum computing available to the Filipino youth. Therefore, it's not the dangers of these technologies that we should worry about but about our levels of capabilities or lack of them to understand and use them.... This is why I wrote a reaction to your another article about reforming the sectoral party-list system that is strictly related to work, professions and livelihood because that's the most effective way to engage Filipinos in policy-setting politics that go beyond personalities and celebrity politics. Imagine a party-list on science and technology that will propose policies to reform basic education and include all the new technologies in the primary and secondary courses of the youth. When we relate these concepts to the daily lives of Filipinos, they become interested, animated and engaged in them because most Filipinos prefer to learn by experience.
PS: Happy birthday, belated! I wish you great progress and success in your studies! On another note, I hope you will consider social media alternatives wherein you can go live, because we still need your discussions and insights in the months ahead when we will face new developments in our national politics....