PIRSA:14120020

State-Space Compression, Coarse-Graining, and the Averaging of Life and Mind

DeDeo, S. (2014). State-Space Compression, Coarse-Graining, and the Averaging of Life and Mind. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/14120020

DeDeo, Simon. State-Space Compression, Coarse-Graining, and the Averaging of Life and Mind. Perimeter Institute, Dec. 17, 2014, https://pirsa.org/14120020 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:14120020,
            doi = {10.48660/14120020},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/14120020},
            author = {DeDeo, Simon},
            keywords = {Other},
            language = {en},
            title = {State-Space Compression, Coarse-Graining, and the Averaging of Life and Mind},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2014},
            month = {dec},
            note = {PIRSA:14120020 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Simon DeDeo Indiana University

DOI 10.48660/14120020
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Renormalization is a principled coarse-graining of space-time. It shows us how the small-scale details of a system may become irrelevant when looking at larger scales and lower energies. Coarse-graining is also crucial, however, for biological and cultural systems that lack a natural spatial arrangement. I introduce the notion of coarse-graining and equivalence classes, and give a brief history of attempts to tame the problem of simplifying and "averaging" things as various as algorithms and languages. I then present state-space compression, a new framework for understanding the general problem. At the end, I present recent empirical results, in an animal social system, that show evidence for the coupling of scales: the reaction of coarse-grained facts about a system "downwards" to influence the microphysics.