A Synergistic Perspective on Multivariate Computation and Causality in Complex Systems

What does it mean for a complex system to “compute” or perform “computations”? Intuitively, we can understand complex “computation” as occurring when a system’s state is a function of multiple inputs (potentially including its own past state). Here, we discuss how computational processes in complex systems can be generally studied using the concept of statistical synergy, which is information about an output that can onlybe learned when the joint state of all inputs is known. Building on prior work, we show that this approach naturally leads to a link between multivariate information theory and topics in causal inference, specifically, the phenomenon of causal colliders. We begin by showing how Berkson’s paradox implies a higher-order, synergistic interaction between multidimensional inputs and outputs. We then discuss how causal structure learning can refine and orient analyses of synergies in empirical data, and when empirical synergies meaningfully reflect computation versus when they may be spurious. We end by proposing that this conceptual link between synergy, causal colliders, and computation can serve as a foundation on which to build a mathematically rich general theory of computation in complex systems.