My book chapter about agency, biological organization, and their importance for the study of organismic development (ontogenesis) is now officially out!
Pattee's "How does a molecule become a message?" is a true gem of a paper.
In it, he has a great argument for the futility of big-data biology, & he complains (writing in 1969!) that biology is already overburdened with data that will never converge to an understanding of life.
The argument goes: in order for any molecule to be a message in an organism (to have a function) it must be embedded in the context of a larger network of physical constraints, which Pattee calls a "biological language" in analogy to grammar and the meaning of words in language.
... which means we are nowadays missing the point in biology more than ever before. We have more data, but less actual insight into the central question of life than Pattee had in the late 1960s. It's quite humbling. And astonishing how far a little bit of clever thinking ...
I'm not sure "most of us think this way about the world we want for our kids"... at least I don't. Not at all. I find this toxic optimist "vision" utterly naive & disgusting. /1
... we need to get through this time with pragmatic solutions, not high-tech technicolor dreams of unattainable shangri-las. We need grounding in reality. You need to see past the smokescreen. Only then will you realize that there is no there there. Nothing at all. /END
@yoginho I have to say, "no open science" has been a good filter to me. Roughly, if #openscience was too much effort, then the whole was not significant enough
After 4.5 months of being sick, 2.5 months of brain fog, I finally got an appointment with a neurologist that specializes in #LongCOVID.
Getting experimental low-dose naltrexone to fight the brain fog. It won't do anything to heal me. There is nothing but patience & pacing that may.
All specialists in this country are private (expensive,!) except for one public "Ambulanz" in Vienna that does not take any more patients, as far as I can tell.
We could have taken a cautionary approach to the disease, but we didn't. We could still care, but we don't. In the end, it is going to be a human tragedy and economic disaster of unprecedented proportions. But we are not discussing this.
Instead, the local govt is paying back fines that #COVID deniers got earlier during the pandemic. We have learnt nothing at all, & we are still playing deaf, dumb, and blind. And the pandemic is not the only problem we treat this way.
And the people with #LongCOVID conveniently disappear. They are not strong enough to remind you they're still here. So it's easy to pretend.
Denying reality has never made any problem go away. This and all the other problems we're ignoring will come back to haunt us very soon. And they will be much worse than if we'd cared the first time around.
I see everything and everyone pass me by at high speed. And I wonder: what are you all speeding toward?
I was hoping for a bit more questions on the book, and meaning in biology, but it's interesting to hear about his unique intellectual trajectory. I know very very few people who are as broadly read as Phil.
So wenig ist qualifizierte Ausbildung in diesem Land wert.
An den Unis ist es übrigens nicht anders. Ein hoher Prozentsatz des Unterrichts wird durch schlecht bezahlte externe Dozenten durchgeführt. Ich habe 2020 aus genau diesem Grund aufgehört, an der @univienna zu lesen. Für einen Hungerlohn arbeite ich nicht.
Genau so hier: >100,000 Euro pro Jahr für Professoren, von denen niemand so genau weiss, was die eigentlich tun (ausser permanenten akademischen Kleinkrieg führen). Die wirkliche Arbeit wird vom Prekariat gestemmt. Absolut widerlich, die Zustände...
@yoginho Und es wird sogar noch schlimmer. Momentan werden bei uns wieder mehr feste Stellen im sog. Mittelbau geschaffen und ich sehe, wie ProfessorInnen ihre traditionellen Aufgaben in der Lehre (Vorlesungen) auf diese neuen Stelleninhaber abwälzen. Das ist ein Punkt, den die #IchbinHanna Bewegung auch im Blick haben sollte.
I just realized that you can explain all the successes of information-theoretical approaches to biology using simple accounts of the evolution of nonholonomic constraints, which do not fall prey to considering the resulting dynamics as algorithmic or computational.
Instead, they lead to constructive dialectic dynamics. The future becomes radically open.
Now I only need to turn this post into a book. Voilà!
All of them. Vaccination is one of the all time top inventions of humanity, up there with writing and the wheel. To deprive oneself of that – it’s inconceivable.
Happy New Year! It's a slow start for me. Week 9 of breathlessness, cough & exhaustion. Had a wonderful last day of 2024: a long(ish) walk, good food, two glasses of wine & some socializing even, & I was only 90min short of midnight when I fell asleep. But paying for it today...
... the main rule with this thing is: two small steps forward, one step back. It takes a lot of patience, but I am learning to take good care of myself. I even managed to travel back from our family visit in Belgium without major repercussions. There is progress.
My new-years resolution is to enjoy the good things in life, to reconnect with worthwhile people around me, & to recover & hike to the top of a mountain again by summer at the latest. Life is not complicated when things are out of alignment, aims are clear, & there is purpose.