Infinitely large, randomly wired sensors cannot predict their input unless they are close to deterministic

Sarah Marzen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0202333

Infinitely large, randomly wired sensors cannot predict their input unless they are close to deterministic

PLoS One. 2018 Aug 29;13(8):e0202333. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202333. eCollection 2018.

Author

Sarah Marzen¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, Physics of Living Systems Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.

Abstract

Building predictive sensors is of paramount importance in science. Can we make a randomly wired sensor "good enough" at predicting its input simply by making it larger? We show that infinitely large, randomly wired sensors are nonspecific for their input, and therefore nonpredictive of future input, unless they are close to deterministic. Nearly deterministic, randomly wired sensors can capture ∼ 10% of the predictive information of their inputs for "typical" environments.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Electrical Equipment and Supplies*
Markov Chains
Models, Theoretical*

Grants and funding

The author was funded by an MIT Physics of Living Systems Fellowship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.