@yoginho@spore.social
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

yoginho

@yoginho@spore.social

Life beyond dogma! Free-floating systems thinker & natural philosopher. Antifragilist extemporanian metamodernist. Open science, society & living.

Freelance Researcher, Philosopher & Educator

Scholar, Ronin Institute

Project Leader, JTF Project "Pushing the Boundaries", Dept of Philosophy, Uni Vienna

Associate Faculty, Complexity Science Hub Vienna

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yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Just read Landauer, 1961. It's funny how his work gets misinterpreted by (pan)computationalists. 🧵

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Yes, he says computation must be physical, if not only imagined in the abstract but actually performed, because every (irreversible) logical operation requires a minimum amount of energy dissipation (i.e. entropy-increase).

Landauer's principle is just a reformulation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It establishes minimal physical requirements to carry out irreversible computation in the physical world. Landauer also analyzes rate limitations & error sources for such physical computations.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

But I've heard people claim that Landauer:

(a) shows that information must be physical, and/or

(b) that any physical process is computation.

Neither of these claims is remotely true.

The fact that we can perform computation on physical devices, says nothing about information being a physical thing beyond thermodynamic & Shannon entropy being equivalent descriptions of ontologically quite different phenomena.

In fact, Landauer's work does not even rely on this equivalence.

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

How come evolutionary biologists are not yet being shouty about this new paper?

https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120

I'm not quite through with it yet. Similar to assembly theory in spirit, using "selection" & "function" in a veeery broad sense, but at least they define their terms properly.

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

A few quick reflections on the blog post below & what I learned the last few days ... 🧵

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool

brembs, to evolution
@brembs@mastodon.social avatar

Nice, even-handed post by @yoginho on the assembly theory paper:

"Wouldn't it be nice if [...] authors would see their role as guides on our journey through such unknown conceptual landscapes? Instead, academic publishing has become a shameless swamp of self-promotion. The system is to blame, at least in part, but we cannot shirk our own responsibility as authors. This paper is a prime example of what is happening all over the place."

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@Fischblog @brembs

I do like the model.

Unfortunately, the authors bury its true nature and use under a heap of false advertising.

This is so common these days. It makes it such more difficult for people to get to the heart of the matter.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@Fischblog @brembs

As the paper is also not presenting a specific model of evolution (focusing on a general description of the theory & examples from their previous model on molecular complexity) it really makes no difference in this case.

yoginho, to evolution
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

New blog post just dropped!

"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool

reviewing this recent Nature paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9

news & views here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03061-y

#evolution #complexityscience #innovation #possibilityspace

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

TL;DR: I think assembly theory has lots of merit and potential, but this particular paper frames its argument in a way which is unfortunate and, frankly, more than just a bit misleading. My personal suspicion is that this has two reasons: (1) the authors hyped up their claims to get the paper published in a glam journal, plus (2) they also overestimate the reach and power of their model in ways which may be detrimental to its proper application and interpretation.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

"Unfortunately, by now, PR spectacles (or disasters) like this one abound in our field and greatly outshine any serious theoretical discussions we could be having instead. We're in pretty bad shape overall. It'd be great if more people would see this and do something about it, instead of contributing their own little turd to the whole feces-hurling exercise."

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust

🤣 I love a solid disagreement about scientific or philosophical matters more than anyone, as long as we don't just lecture past each other or only engage in self-promotion and posturing. There is so much of the latter today, so little true engagement.

Such pseudo-debates qualify as bullshit, in the philosophical sense defined by Harry Frankfurt. They are not even about the truth, they are only about promoting the bullshitter.

Hence the scatological metaphor.

yoginho, to Israel
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

I am utterly saddened that I won't be able to travel to Haifa tonight to teach the students of the Technion #PhilosophyOfScience.

My flight was canceled due to the horrific events unfolding in #Israel & #Gaza at the moment.

In my book, randomly & systematically murdering civilians is NOT fighting for freedom, no matter how oppressed you are. It's terrorism. I'm utterly disgusted by those who don't seem to understand that.

So much hate and senseless violence. It makes me speechless.

NicoleCRust, to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

How do you stay connected with curiosity and awe?

I suspect most researchers experience ups and downs. I periodically find myself disconnected from curiosity and awe and I need to find that compass again. (Writing a book like I’m doing now is arguably an overindulgence there).

I worry that researchers are globally a bit disconnected from it, coming out of the pandemic coupled with increasing pressures to produce.

One impression I have is that the special swath of researchers who inhabit this furry elephant are particularly in touch with curiosity and awe.

How do y’all stay connected to it?

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust

I quit the academic rat race! 🤣

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Out today! @WiringtheBrain

NicoleCRust, to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

How do we support the Katalin Karikó's?

There's a lot of reasonable outrage today around how Katalin Karikó was treated throughout her career (full disclosure: by my employer, UPenn). Obviously a number of someones made a huge mistake by not recognizing the brilliance and potential of her work - no question there!

What I've been thinking about and I'd love to get some scenius input on: how could we, as an academic community, do better?

Here's one summary of what happened:
https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-covid-vaccine-mrna-kariko-demoted-biontech-pfizer/

Taking seriously the notion that 1) we want to support the Katalin Karikó's, 2) high-risk, high-reward research takes time, and 3) everyone needs to go through a job evaluation at some point, here are a few ideas:

*) Better support to help geniuses communicate (and fund) their ideas.
*) More funding for high-risk, high-reward projects
*) A longer evaluation period for individuals engaged in high-risk/high-reward research

What would you add/change?

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust

The academic rat race is systematically shutting down risk-taking & originality. Add a bit of sexism & elitist cronyism & that's what you get.

I don't see how this is ever going to change with the utterly oligarchic academic system we've built over the past few decades:

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/self-censorship-and-the-cult-of-productivity-in-academic-research

The oligarchs are in control & are happy with the status quo. They don't want any Karikó's to challenge them. That's the whole point.

It's the central feature, not a bug of the system.

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

I remember exactly why I originally booked a direct train from Vienna to Berlin. But Deutsche Bahn canceled it a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm stuck, barely across the German border. 99% sure I'll miss my connection in Nuremberg.

Deutsche Bahn, you fucking suck. You suck so fucking much.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

😂 Made the connection after all because it seems all trains have a delay. Germany has a third-world train system these days...

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@albertcardona

Well, its train system was already fucked up way back in 1999 when I was doing my MSc in Devon. I escaped the Paddington train disaster by one or two trains, actually...

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

I generally LOVE by Nate Hagens. Do yourself a favor and listen to it!

https://thegreatsimplification.com/episode/88-robert-sapolsky

But what does this recent episode contribute to humanity surviving the coming ?

I'd say that the narrow-minded reductionist points which Robert Sapolsky argues are exactly what needs to be overcome. /1 🧵

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust @WiringtheBrain

Keen to read the book. Have not seen the talk yet, but will!

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Can't wait to read this!

Blurb by Stuart Kauffman: "“We are in a crisis that is global and civilizational in scale and existential. A conceptual transformation is needed. The Blind Spot shows us why.”

NicoleCRust, (edited ) to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

Neurophilosophers - am I getting this right?

Namely: what psychologists call "processes" are what philosophers would call "things" (not processes)

The philosophical distinction between things versus processes is the idea that these are two different ways of thinking about the world. In the things way of thinking, the world is made up of just that: things – dogs, cats, me, you, this book, that pencil. In contrast, the process way of thinking shifts the emphasis from thinking about things in a static way to acknowledge the reality that everything is always changing. It's the famous idea that you can't step in the same river twice because the river you would step into a second time is a changed river and thus not the same as the one you stepped into before. From a process perspective, the idea of a thing called "a dog" or "a river" or "you" is an abstraction that captures some aspects of reality (the static aspects) but fails to capture some others (the changing ones).

One way in which the "things" way of thinking manifests in brain/mind research is the idea that there are modules that our brains flexibly combine to accomplish complex tasks; things like vision, audition, memory, attention and decision making. While these are often called "processes" by brain/mind researchers, philosophers would point out that in the way that most brain researchers think about them, they are very much "things" (I think - is that right?)

@yoginho @WorldImagining @ehud @PessoaBrain @dbarack

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust

The same problem exists in systems biology and, in fact, any science that relies heavily on network approaches.

I think the problem is conceptual: modules are processes, if only you operationalize them properly.

Nobody does (yet), but I've written (with Nick Monk) about how it should be done:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2021.0011

https://doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/10.1007/978-3-030-71737-7_11

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

New blog post just dropped: "The thing about epistemic humility:" http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/the-thing-about-epistemic-humility.

Know when to be humble, and (even more importantly) when to stand up with conviction and call out people's bullshit.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

@NicoleCRust

I was taught by Midgley during my MSc, eons ago. She was, let's say, rather controversial.

I liked her take-down of Dawkins, where she accused him of practicing evolutionary biology like a religion. He's the son of a methodist priest, apparently, and it does show...

yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Next stop for my article on AI (https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07515): @CellSystemsCP.

Inquiring with the editors about the possibility of submitting it as a perspective.

Let's see how this goes...

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Next editorial rejection already in.
@CellSystemsCP sent me two sentences. The first says the paper "would have a wider & more appreciative readership elsewhere." At least, the second sentence apologizes for the useless & generic content of the first...

The problem is that "elsewhere" has already rejected me. In the meantime, you can read the preprint here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07515

is

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Hive mind:

Where would you send something like this, to get visibility in ?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07515

Also: despite being on the arXiv section, I'm not getting any engagement.

Can anyone help getting this more traction? I think the argument is really original & important. It grounds a lot of the discussions about semantics in the biology of the organism.

is

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