Memories as agential

Optimal Differentiation through Step-wise Learning

As far as necessary, but not necessarily far

“The first key result of this model is that entrants differentiate only as much as they need to.”

https://marriner.eccles.utah.edu/optimal-differentiation-through-step-wise-learning/

Treatment Effect Estimators as Weighted Outcomes

All roads lead to … difference in means

“The framework is applied to derive novel outcome weights for the six seminal instances of double machine learning and generalized random forests, while recovering existing results for other estimators as special cases. The analysis highlights that implementation choices determine (i) the availability of outcome weights and (ii) their properties. Notably, standard implementations of partially linear regression-based estimators, like causal forests, employ outcome weights that do not sum to (minus) one in the (un)treated group, not fulfilling a property often considered desirable.”

Knaus, M. C. (2024). Treatment Effect Estimators as Weighted Outcomes. arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.11559.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11559

More Than Money: The Complex Dynamics of Capital and Power in Entrepreneur–Investor Relationships

The Story of Balcones Distilling

“Tate resisted both proposals. Instead, he presented an alternative funding plan, one unlikely to reduce his ownership stake to below 10%. He also skipped board meetings, which took advantage of the operating agreement terms that required his attendance for board action to occur, such as recapitalization or restructuring of the company. Neither side backed down, which triggered an escalating series of actions by both sides as they attempted to exercise their power over Balcones’ affairs. The struggle became serious and intense, as the parties levied accusations of sabotage, espionage, dishonesty, and even death threats. Things had gotten bad and would get worse.”

“Ultimately, time cured what ailed the rivals. The two sides drifted apart as they walked different paths. Balcones walked the growth path, culminating in its 2022 sale to Diageo—a multinational that owns a sizable portfolio of liquor makers. Tate walked the control path, leading the new business until 2024. At that time, Tate was named master distiller for innovation at Foley Family Wines, a California-based wine company that recently entered the spirits market. With this new full-time position, Tate left Tate & Co. to be managed by investors.”

“Power based on social capital rests on an actor’s capacity to bond with others (Thompson, 2005), to achieve status (Podolny, 2001), and to broker information flows (Burt, 1997) in organizational networks.”

“Overall, power—including power obtained from non-financial capital—may be wielded positively or negatively, responsibly or irresponsibly, with the potential for severe and wide-ranging consequences. Outcomes can even reach beyond the organization to include society, such as represented by the Theranos and Open AI cases.”

Waldron, T. L., McMullen, J. S., Payne, G. T., Petrenko, O., & Wetherbe, J. C. (2024). More Than Money: The Complex Dynamics of Capital and Power in Entrepreneur–Investor Relationships. Academy of Management Perspectives

Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue

No matter where you look…there it is…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdXcV3dXa_4

“Note that this bowtie architecture—which forces a compression of data to a generative We do not know how this remarkable plasticity works yet, but one thing it does, to kernel that then has to be re-inflated and elaborated—is also a common feature of biochem- some extent, is free the downstream (future) agent from the restrictions of the upstream chemical, bioelectrical, and biomechanical pathways (Figure 7), that is, at the subcellular scale; at not only algorithmically deductive, in interpreting it in future contexts (as both the (past) agent. If we consider genomic DNA to be the engram of the the super-organism scale, recent data also reveal that a very simple parameter—waves of environment and body internals shift). The sense‐making process of memory evolutionary‐scale individual (the entire lineage as one huge time‐extended agent), then ATP—can mediate the complex morphogenetic information being shared and processed interpretation and the formation of models representing internal states and the external conventional memories do in smaller‐scale individuals,”

Levin, M. (2024). Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue. Entropy, 26(6), 481.

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/6/481/pdf

Reader Feedback

“Why are so many startups trying to replace the analyst with an agent without understanding anything about analytics?”

Footnotes

Gratitude to the 180 people who have shared their time over the past 47 days. I appreciate the time. There’s a strong urge to converge on a single solution space when there are so many problems in the garbage can. Thanks for hanging in there. A common theme is ~”I’m not sure if anything I said was helpful.” To which I mean it when I say: Yes. Yes it’s so extremely helpful.”

I’m getting a kick out of the divergence in perspectives at different levels of an organization. Board members, senior executives, junior executives, management, the front line, and consumers all have different takes on how other levels ought to be aligned.

My thesis is that we haven’t decided how we’re going to work, reason, and co-create with artificial agents. Well, it’s as though we haven’t decided how we’re working, reasoning, and co-creating with each other. And into this stew, we’re dicing up some agents and chucking them to swim.

Everybody is going to get know each other in the pot.

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