Arik Shimansky
I work across intelligence, consciousness, complex systems and institutions.
My current work explores how systems perceive, assign significance, maintain continuity and act under uncertainty, in biological organisms, artificial systems and organisations.
I pursue these questions through independent research, building and testing systems, and writing.
01 / Current research · Published preprint
Valence Under Temporal Constraint
An Umwelt-Based Method for Predicting Felt Experience
The paper proposes that some ecological situations create a temporal conflict between fast specialised responses and slower, broader processing. When excluded information could change the preferred action but fuller resolution would arrive too late, valenced prioritisation may become functionally useful. The claim about felt experience is conditional on an affective premise.
02 / Active inquiry · Synaptic Quanta
Can Complex Intelligence Emerge From Small Adaptive Systems?
An experimental inquiry into whether networks of relatively small adaptive components can develop capabilities that do not exist in the individual components. I am pursuing this question as a way to investigate composition and adaptation in intelligence. No public technical results have been released yet.
03 / Independent Ideas Lab
Synaptic Quanta
Synaptic Quanta is an independent ideas lab exploring how biological, artificial and organisational systems perceive, assign significance, organise and act. I founded the lab to pursue questions that cross established boundaries, through active inquiries combining theory, experiments, prototypes and external challenge.
05 / Selected experience
A route through science, finance, technology and institutions.
My background includes mathematics and physics, institutional finance, investment, technology businesses and climate systems. Across these settings, I have worked with incomplete information, unfamiliar systems and decisions whose consequences extend beyond a single discipline.
06 / Writing
I write about consciousness, human judgement, AI, institutions and the experience of change. Selected essays and earlier writing remain available as an archive.
07 / Contact
I am interested in conversations around research, collaboration, difficult cross-disciplinary problems and selected advisory work.