new-math-untangles-the-mysterious-nature-of-causality-consciousness

Using the mathematical language of information theory, Hoel and his collaborators claim to show that new causes--things that produce effects--can emerge at macroscopic scales. They say coarse-grained macroscopic states of a physical system (such as the psychological state of a brain) can have more causal power over the system's future than a more detailed, fine-grained description of the system possibly could. Just as codes reduce noise (and thus uncertainty) in transmitted data--Claude Shannon's 1948 insight that formed the bedrock of information theory--Hoel claims that macro states also reduce noise and uncertainty in a system's causal structure, strengthening causal relationships and making the system's behavior more deterministic. With Albantakis and Tononi, Hoel formalized a measure of causal power called "effective information," which indicates how effectively a particular state influences the future state of a system.