# Estimations of Integrated Information Based on Algorithmic Complexity and Dynamic Querying

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to estimate integrated information using algorithmic complexity and dynamic querying, enabling more efficient analysis of system structure and causality.

## Contribution

It presents a new framework linking algorithmic randomness with integrated information, along with a numerical perturbation method for estimation.

## Key findings

- High integrated information correlates with higher compressibility.
- Perturbation sensitivity helps distinguish randomness from structured systems.
- Method reduces computational complexity in estimating integrated information.

## Abstract

The concept of information has emerged as a language in its own right, bridging several disciplines that analyze natural phenomena and man-made systems. Integrated information has been introduced as a metric to quantify the amount of information generated by a system beyond the information generated by its elements. Yet, this intriguing notion comes with the price of being prohibitively expensive to calculate, since the calculations require an exponential number of sub-divisions of a system. Here we introduce a novel framework to connect algorithmic randomness and integrated information and a numerical method for estimating integrated information using a perturbation test rooted in algorithmic information dynamics. This method quantifies the change in program size of a system when subjected to a perturbation. The intuition behind is that if an object is random then random perturbations have little to no effect to what happens when a shorter program but when an object has the ability to move in both directions (towards or away from randomness) it will be shown to be better integrated as a measure of sophistication telling apart randomness and simplicity from structure. We show that an object with a high integrated information value is also more compressible, and is, therefore, more sensitive to perturbations. We find that such a perturbation test quantifying compression sensitivity provides a system with a means to extract explanations--causal accounts--of its own behaviour. Our technique can reduce the number of calculations to arrive at some bounds or estimations, as the algorithmic perturbation test guides an efficient search for estimating integrated information. Our work sets the stage for a systematic exploration of connections between algorithmic complexity and integrated information at the level of both theory and practice.