Jessica Flack @C4COMPUTATION Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

1 year

For those interested in collective computation + emergence, I am in the process of of updating my website.

6

24

187

Last Seen Profiles

@pamontas

@fromkemala

@adambmawardi

@BbyPretti

@harupyon_hirata

@jandakembangstw

@stw_pdg

@VmaniakJ

@stw46

@EnjoyAj04871248

@MichaelG1

@stw_pdg

@VmaniakJ

@stw_pdg

@saydemesne

@maddeplorable22

@jandakembangstw

@Hijabbacol2883

@Digodovoxel

@mattismoen

@airplane

@CyvOph

@nakataryo_OM

@ControllerModz

@cocoa_11vv

@Enciphered

@AM_Escucha

@yukiidraws

@LauraThevenard

@aimeeolrod

@H_alwad3ani

@jon_bois

@jandakembangstw

@BandarStw

@daedosoo

@miyaxrin

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

Happy Birthday, Claude Shannon. One of Shannon's conceptual feats was to connect information content to uncertainty via entropy. Uncertainty reduction has become one of the most powerful concepts in biology showing up as a foundational idea in cognitive science + evolutionary

13

196

830

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 months

Frans de Waal has died. Below is a photograpgh of Frans' showing a male chimpanzee inviting another to reconcile after a fight with the invitation accepted a few minutes later. One of my all time favorite images. Frans was an incredible observer + student of animal behavior and

8

192

740

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Forthcoming—COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE—a new, open access journal devoted to theoretical + empirical foundations of CI across levels + substrates frm organizational behavior + CS to biology + physics. Chief editors-- @ipeirotis , @Scott_E_Page , @geoffmulgan + @c4computation . More soon

11

187

602

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

In a surprising yet entirely overdue decision, the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for groundbreaking contributions to complex systems theory with half of the award going to Giorgio Parisi ( @giorgioparisi ) 1/n

6

180

596

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

11 months

Murray Gell-Mann once whispered (in a typically mischievous Murray way) to me during an @sfiscience seminar, "biology is not ready for maths." I don't agree but I am sympathetic. Moving forward requires triangulating bw diff types of representations. Even as we approach the

34

92

588

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

New: The Information Theory of Individuality. Assumptions abt fundamental units underpin evolutionary theory. We @sfiscience propose a formalism for individuality based on 1st principles that's a natural extension of Boltzmann+ von Neumann ideas (thread)

20

161

525

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

I spent the morning reading Dijkstra’s 1972 Turing Lecture, “The Humble Programmer”, in which he points out that the job of programmers is not to “make programs” but to design classes of computations that display desired behavior. With this re-framing 1/n

8

97

495

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Snow leopard triggers a hidden camera in the Ladakh region of the Indian Himalayas. Image by Sascha Fonseca.

9

99

472

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

What is complexity science? A complex system is collective (many body--meaning many interacting parts), coupled (what i do effects what you do), characterized by adaptation/ learning, feedback b/w scales, nonlinearities, nonstationarity +noise from erroneous perception or... 1/?

Steven Strogatz

@stevenstrogatz

4 years

A few weeks ago, someone was asking about "complex systems". Is there anything to it, or is it just a buzzword? How does it compare to agent-based modeling, chaos theory, systems science, etc.? This concise survey by Mark Newman answers those questions:

11

164

529

11

161

428

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Shannon, father of information theory + titan of 20th c. science combined rigor, playfulness + insatiable curiosity (to?) invent a powerful but simple formalism linking thermodynamic entropy to information content. Jaynes' 1957 paper on that connection

6

94

404

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

Among the most basic science questions in evolutionary biology are: how do levels of organization arise, does complexity increase in an interesting way as we move up scales, + do the levels “talk” to each other: does what happens at the microscale or individual level matter 1/8

4

79

387

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

So sad to hear of the passing of one the 20th (+21st) centuries great biologists, E.O. Wilson. Wilson made two types of contributions to science. The 1st was to write books that are likely to stand the test of time. The 2nd was to change the course of disciplines. 1/n

4

79

357

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Congrats to @sfiscience 's Prof Geoffrey West for winning @LosAlamosNatLab 's highest honor, the Los Alamos Medal, for his contributions to scaling theory, including identifying principles underlying law like behavior in adaptive systems

8

119

351

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

John Conway's A Survey of Life Forms—a taxonomy of Conway's discoveries from the Game of Life + sent in 1970 to Martin Gardner. The image is discussed in Ananyo Bhattacharya's ( @Ananyo ) new book, The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann. 1/n

4

70

334

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

For the 1st time humans are capable of coordinating on global scales to design robust, adaptable social systems. @MelMitchell1 + I @sfiscience discuss how we can harness uncertainty + complex systems science to emergently engineer solutions to challenges

Complex systems science allows us to see new paths forward | Aeon Essays

The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity – seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all

aeon.co

9

122

328

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

So far mirror self-recognition, an indicator of self-awareness, has been verified in primates, elephants + cetaceans. Video sggsts cats can do it. In animal cognition experiments proof is often not so much in the pudding as in creative experimental design @CCCAnimals you're up!!

11

82

321

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Want a super accessible intro to entropy, its rltn to disorder, arrow of time, why it (generally) increases+how probability is at root of it all? Read post+then paper: A diff apprch to intrdcg stat mech ht @mioconnor @joeybernhardt

Entropy Explained, With Sheep

An explorable blog post about entropy, with sheep.

aatishb.com

7

115

320

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Complexity all the way down: It's becoming clear that the view complexity increases as we move up life's organizational hierarchy is wrong (thread) Dendrite compartments allow single neurons to compute XOR @mattlark @quantamagazine

Hidden Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons

The dendritic arms of some human neurons can perform logic operations that once seemed to require whole neural networks.

www.quantamagazine.org

7

106

323

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 months

Look what arrived today! Glad to have this edited volume at hand on the foundations of computation while I work on a book on collective computation + emergence. Jack Copeland's expertise is the philosophy + history of computing + he serves as Director of the Turing Archive.

8

44

317

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Collective memory: How does society forget? @crcandiav @cesifoti @NatureHumBehav study of patents, citations, songs, movies+sports biographies finds oral transmission dynamics+physical recording interact to produce a complex memory that decays in 2 phases

9

118

302

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

The Information Theory of Individuality (ITT) has been selected by Quanta as one of 2020's science breakthroughs. Thanks to @QuantaMagazine for recognizing our work @sfiscience +for the tremendous public service it provides reporting science rigorously 1/6

10

59

286

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 months

RIP Danny Kahneman Kahneman recently told me in a discussion about collective intelligence that if he had at least another decade to live, he'd found a department to study the role of noise in human behavior. Of course noise--a phenomenon often with counterintuitive

9

56

281

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Jorge Luis Borges, from a 1981 interview in El Pais.

11

78

267

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

10 months

Please join @sfiscience on Tues. Aug 23 @TheLensic for an accessible public lecture by physicist-neuroscientist Vijay Balasubramanian on overlaps b/w computers + brains and how mind emerges from our ~100 billion neurons. Streaming

4

79

271

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

I was reminded today after watching a video of an orca reconciliation of one of my all time favorite photographs. It shows a male chimpanzee inviting another male to reconcile after a fight. A few minutes later the invitation was accepted. Photograph by Frans de Waal.

8

54

264

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Collective computation: What makes a "good" formal language for computation in biology? Some of us @sfiscience , building on Fontana + others, believe an FL needs to take seriously the logic of biological mechanism + thermodynamic constraints. Useful background to this discussion

3

59

249

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

8 months

ASSEMBLY, MICRO-MACRO MAPS + EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS @leecronin , @Sara_Imari + @sfiscience colleagues created a fire-storm w a paper @Nature last week that despite limitations makes good progress formalizing the role of compositionality in evolution. 1/n

12

60

249

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Do you work on how molecular, cellular, neural or social systems compute from pov of biology, physics, computer science, or collective behavior? David Wolpert + I @sfiscience r editing a unique issue @Entropy_MDPI on foundations of biological computation

4

75

234

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

So sorry to share that irreverent, creative, always kind, Chris Boehm— @usc cultural anthropologist extraordinaire—has passed away at 90. He was a dear friend+mentor. Among his books: the influential +insightful Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior 1/n

3

58

234

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Collective behavior is as old as the origin of life + universal property of biological systems. When did fish discover collective motion? Apparently aligned Erismatopterus levatus fossilized ~50MYA. @RSocPublishing @nytimes

9

52

232

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Social complexity: Social power is the degree of agreement in a group an individual can use force successfully..but the actual use of force implies the absence of power. A distinction made elegantly by one of the great scholars of power--Robert Bierstedt.

10

59

220

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

11 months

@PhysInHistory Murray Gell-Mann was also passionately interested in how the fundamental laws of physics connect to the complex world around us. And so in 1984—15 years after winning the @NobelPrize for his work on the quark—he co-founded @sfiscience where he continued his research + inspired

6

35

222

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE is pleased to announce an outstanding Founding Editorial Board. Thanks to all for agreeing to serve. We are now accepting submissions. For submission guidelines+types of papers CI publishes ScholarOne site

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Forthcoming—COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE—a new, open access journal devoted to theoretical + empirical foundations of CI across levels + substrates frm organizational behavior + CS to biology + physics. Chief editors-- @ipeirotis , @Scott_E_Page , @geoffmulgan + @c4computation . More soon

11

187

602

8

86

221

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

Biological+social systems r collective systems, often w complex interactions,+(sometimes) intelligent output, facts that fundamentally unite them despite substrate differences. Hone your synthetic skills+help discover principles of collective intelligence

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Forthcoming—COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE—a new, open access journal devoted to theoretical + empirical foundations of CI across levels + substrates frm organizational behavior + CS to biology + physics. Chief editors-- @ipeirotis , @Scott_E_Page , @geoffmulgan + @c4computation . More soon

11

187

602

10

64

218

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

The McNamara fallacy is to believe what can’t be easily measured doesn’t exist. What if synergies, synchronicity + collective implementation of strategy r among the most important contributors to team performance? @bcmassey +I discuss the mechanics of team

What complexity science says about what makes a winning team | Aeon Essays

Is a great team more than the sum of its players? Complexity science reveals the role of strategy, synergy, swarming and more

aeon.co

5

59

206

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

ROBUSTNESS + COMPLEX SYSTEMS: The 12th largest economy is "effectively" being deleted from the global economic system. This is a massive perturbation. It's a mistake to think the effects can be predicted. However from @sfiscience + elsewhere there are complex systems 1/n

10

34

207

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Can we identify a set of alternative computational frameworks for formalizing the concept of "mind"? Register for a sure-to-be fun Oct 21 discussion w talks by @MelMitchell1 @KordingLab @GaelVaroquaux @RomainBrette @jlizier +me. Org by @NadineSpychala +.

9

54

206

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

The physicist John Wheeler, inventor of the phrase, "it from bit" at a Princeton blackboard discussing what in nature can be quantized but as if he were looking at Walton Ford's, "Falling Bough," a fantastic depiction of collective behavior.

7

46

205

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Does nature favor simplicity or complexity? The answer may lie in the computational properties of nature's maps for producing macro from micro & output from input. Great @NaturePhysics @Mark__Buchanan perspective on new work in algorithmic info theory

5

75

196

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

7 years

Potentially very useful paper on relationship b/w thermodynamics & Bayesian inference via @lshlj

1

76

194

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

10 months

SANTA FE INSTITUTE POSTDOC CALL Oct 13 Emergence, new theories of computation, physics of information, scaling + micro-macro, collective intelligence, AI+AGI, robustness, evolvability, causality, consciousness. . . there is no better place to do a postdoc then @sfiscience . I

4

84

188

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Want to gain intuition for flocking, contagion, percolation, criticality, or predator-prey dynamics? Check out @DirkBrockmann 's Complexity Explorables--elegant interactive simulations you can tweak to see how canonical complex systems behave

4

109

179

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

What makes teams great? How do cells decide what tissue to form? A role for noise in collective decision-making? Minimal algorithms for CI in swarms? How do termites regulate mound temperature? How should info be aggregated in forecasting? Submit to CI!

4

57

180

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Great intro to Mandelbrot & fractals, how visualization can help discover unifying concepts, & the role of computation--complex iteration--in producing structures found in nature, which despite their apparent complexity have elegant mathematical properties

1

74

180

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Ruth Benedict in 1934 published "Patterns of Culture", which remains among the most eloquent books about the mutual dependency of individual + collective, feed-forward + feedback effects, + the importance of timescales. This prescient quote is from the insightful Chapter 8.

8

34

176

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Physics produces order thru energy minimization. Adaptive systems also process information. Does this imply intrinsic subjectivity? Cepelewicz in @quantamagazine tackles awesome work by @wbialek +others sggstng error can be overcome+info processed optimally

The Math That Tells Cells What They Are | Quanta Magazine

During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life.

www.quantamagazine.org

3

58

169

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

My aunt—a recently retired New York State Supreme Court Justice—winter surfing the Montauk breaks this week at age 74. Water temperature is in the low 40's.

14

3

170

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Leo Tolstoy on collective phenomena + the difficulty of locating emergence.

5

32

167

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

A remarkably prescient reply by Charles Babbage in response to a question about computation from a befuddled Parliament. So apropos. I love to use it in my talks on coarse-graining in nature, collective computation + first principles thinking for information processing systems.

9

34

163

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

Wittgenstein remarked, "One keeps forgetting to go down to the foundations. One doesn’t put the question marks deep down enough." With deep gratitude to @B3_MillerValue for making possible a ground-breaking, relentless pursuit of foundations @sfiscience

Santa Fe Institute receives $50 million from Bill Miller

In the largest single donation in its history, the nonprofit Santa Fe Institute will receive $50 million from legendary investor Bill Miller. The gift will advance the Institute's pioneering science...

www.santafe.edu

5

17

167

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

SARS-CoV-2 Immune-Virus Complexity: Very useful preliminary overview @NatRevImmunol covering what's currently understood about how infection develops as virus + immune system interact, as well as how drug therapy might work. Figures r accessible+give gist

1

89

163

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Not irrational, not impossible & not chance. Just need perseverance, trust, patience & communication

4

19

159

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

When does a physical system compute? Fontana argued @sfiscience w/ a system can only be said to be computing if we can specify encoder + decoder. Related: Endogenous coarse-graining Internal coarse-graining

4

41

163

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

At a recent meeting on alternative computational frameworks for study of mind ( @NadineSpychala ) we discussed gradient descent+how brains, circuits + neurons tune, as this would seem to imply mechanisms for evaluating whether a computation is “correct.” 1/n

8

34

159

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Collective computation: Yesterday I suggested formal languages for computation in adaptive systems will require taking seriously the logic of biological mechanism + constraints imposed by thermodynamics. These papers by @kcore_analytics et al propose using symmetries as the

1

33

152

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

11 months

DOWNWARD CAUSATION + MEMORY EMERGENCE: Pinotsis + @MillerLabMIT find electric fields produced by neurons subsequently constrain neural behavior (voltage fluctuations, which in turn influence spiking) + coordinate the computation of multi-region neural ensembles collectively

8

39

154

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

I am a strong advocate of a variant on Penrose's three worlds diagram: Understanding in science is achieved over time by triangulating bw the data, natural language & mathematical representations. By triangulating, we reduce our uncertainty about the interpretation of the data.

Iosif Lazaridis

@iosif_lazaridis

6 years

@carlzimmer @stevenstrogatz @seanmcarroll @JSEllenberg Sir Roger Penrose's "three worlds" diagram is the most brilliant illustration of the relationship between math, our minds, and the physical world that I've ever seen.

10

51

157

5

40

151

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

The Santa Fe Institute has been sharing complexity science with the public through its community lecture series for more than 30 years & the 2019 @sfiscience line up is awesome. We welcome you to join us for these talks wherever on this planet you are.

4

67

150

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Information processing: Why r beliefs robust despite contradictory data? Nuanced @gershbrain paper argues Bayesian apprch to belief updating reveals robustness can be rational & to change beliefs target structure of belief system, not simply updating mechs

4

55

150

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

8 months

It or bit, matter or information—which is primal? In 1989 Wojciech Zurek organized a wacky @sfiscience meeting on this issue, now a central debate of 21st century science. Complexity, Entropy & the Physics of Information, w a cheeky intro by Seth LLoyd, has been republished by

7

22

148

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Is human social behavior governed by particulars or universals? In work @PhysRevE led by @sfiscience 's @da_eddie_lee () we start by assuming scaling laws + find using these constraints diverse properties of conflict dynamics show regularities at scale,

5

34

149

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Collective intelligence: Study finds politically polarized teams of Wikipedia editors have more useful debates than moderates & produce better articles. Polarized teams appear to integrate more diverse info & be valuable for crowdsourcing contested ideas

6

60

139

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

1 year

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: FOUNDATIONS + RADICAL IDEAS Please join @sfiscience June 19-23 to discuss intelligence in collectives from adaptive matter to animal groups to brains to AI to teams. We will focus on 1st principles + dynamics. Space is limited!

3

43

140

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Do you study collective intelligence, collective computation, forecasting, swarming +synchronicity, emergence, team performance, voting system + prediction market design, or hybrid human-AI systems? Attend Collective Intelligence 2020 Abstracts: Feb 15.

2

53

142

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Energy + Information: A big open q is how info processing in adaptive systems impacts law-like behavior. @Jp_odwyer in a great perspective @NatureEcoEvo discusses approaches for getting information+ decision-making into canonical models like Lotka-Volterra

0

44

140

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

7 years

What is entropy, really? 3 concepts+functional forms in hist-dependent nonergodic+nonmultinomial systems @sfiscience

10

55

136

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

The concept of individuality is one of the most fundamental in evolution. Excellent, accessible take @quantamagazine by Jordana Cepelewicz on the Information Theory of Individuality () w community + @sfiscience input on history+issues

3

41

134

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

11 months

@sfiscience Jim argued that a sense of time flowing arises from computation—as an entity computes an action (output) from a perception (input), w each image of the environment that an entity captures constituting its 'present'. He points out that bc of special relativity there are

6

17

131

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Criticality & collective behavior: Do we need a cognitive or strategic stat mech to model collective state transitions in adaptive systems? Excellent @NaturePhysics review sggsts how info is accumulated & aggregated not well handled by existing formalisms

3

61

127

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

7 years

Common, important errors in probability & statistics from the base rate fallacy to Simpson's paradox via @dabacon

Paradoxes of Probability and Other Statistical Strangeness

Nowadays, researchers can access a wealth of software packages that can readily analyse data and output the results of complex statistical tests.

quillette.com

0

33

129

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

SFI is a wonderful, irreverent, intellectual, playful place that puts a premium on taking messy ideas outside the boundaries of science & converting them into tractable problems that can be approached w rigor. Apply for a postdoctoral fellowship!

4

81

126

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

The Santa Fe Institute ( @sfiscience ) is a special place in so far as it has mastered the art of converting liminal space ideas into theoretically solid + empirically grounded operational concepts. It needs to be protected. 1/2

4

16

126

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

New books. . .😻

7

6

125

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

9 months

Please join @sfiscience live @TheLensic + on YouTube Tues+Wed Sep 19+20 for our 28th annual free Ulam Memorial Lectures. External Prof @ricard_sole will discuss diverse forms of cognition + computation found in nature + the role synthetic systems—to include AI—can play in

1

41

122

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

How does nature compute? A typical approach is to ask if system is a Turing machine. Dueñas-Díez+ @sfiscience ’s Mercader in @cellpressnews find sophisticated computation does't require biochem. A simple inorganic system can recog context-sensitive languages

1

35

119

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

1 year

Much love, Cormac. Looking south from Muley Point at your stomping grounds, where "all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinships."

6

12

120

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Evo theory tends to focus on stable states w transients dismissed. However complexity may in fact be result of long-term transients. Exc @sciencemagazine review classifies transients +mechs+ forecasting. Rel to collective behavior, social systems, finance

1

58

116

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

1 year

Must computation be programmed in advanced or does biological computation harness emergence? @lifelikephysics @BiophysRev reviews computing on the go using nonequilibrium system props like condensation + pattern driving pattern mechs like low rattling.

0

31

112

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

How do fireflies synchronize? Not just by timing flashes. Information is also encoded in motion, with some males setting the pace. In this lovely @aeonmag essay, @oritpeleg @sfiscience relays her quest to solve the mystery of firefly collective behavior.

How firefly flashes illuminate the physics of complex systems | Aeon Essays

Solving the mystery of how and why fireflies flash in time can illuminate the physics of complex systems

aeon.co

1

23

115

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Collective computation: Complexity can arise from simple interactions among components but does it happen this way in nature—complexity at the microscale suggests not (). The origins of this view lie in model systems like cellular automata yet von Neumann

2

41

110

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Hello @elonmusk . @Twitter harnesses priceless social capital and—more significantly—creates it. It’s invaluable for science+learning. There is to date no better tool for synthetic thinking. It is humanity’s 1st meta-brain. It’s more important than @SpaceX . Pls. do not let it die.

8

12

110

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

11 months

A profusion of color on last week’s Hamilton Mesa run + today’s Deception-Lake-Penitente peaks run. Hardy alpine flowers + lichen weave together Lake Peak’s micro environments, softening its wind swept, spartan facade at ~12,400’.

4

110

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

Can collective behavior be tuned in far-from-equilibrium systems? @PChvykov @lifelikephysics @sciencemagazine suggest local drive induced fluctuations, analogously to the conservation of energy principle at equilibrium, can induce ordered states 1/n

4

35

110

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Universality in physical + adaptive systems: Are there laws that apply x substrate, scale + history? This week @nsf we explore these issues in a meeting co-organized by @sfiscience 's David Krakauer, Geoffrey West, Jen Dunne + me. Brief, accessible essay:

4

35

106

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Information processing: Contrary to popular wisdom noise can play critical role in innovation, stabilizing complex structure & forecasting. Useful @cboettig @Ecology_Letters review covers noise as nuisance+creator+informer (e.g. prediciting tipping points)

3

34

108

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Collective intelligence: Gorgeous drawings by Amy Dyer produced using ant colony optimization algorithms.

3

30

105

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

7 years

Link to interactive map showing relationships among probability distributions ht @hardmaru

3

43

104

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

In the last two years @sfiscience has lost 2 of its founders, both titans of 20th century science: Murray Gell-Mann +, March 29, 2020, Phil Anderson. SFI obit: Anderson’s eloquent argument for complexity science @sciencemagazine

4

41

102

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Please join @sfiscience live on YouTube tomorrow, Tues, Oct 22 for an accessible lecture on the role of collective knowledge in overcoming error-prone information processing + how we can incorporate collective effects into theories of computation in nature

2

41

104

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Lem reportedly described Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius as having a perverse but logically perfect structure. Grimstad writes wonderfully for @NewYorker on one of the great socio-cognitive superforecasters of AI+ consciousness+fan of nonexistent books

3

35

102

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Complexity: Does understanding emergence in biology require a brilliant recasting of questions to give us a new lens to take a crude look at the whole? @sfiscience 's @VanMSavage + Chris Kempes compare progress in biology + physics in this great @aeon essay

1

56

104

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Energy & Information: Cost constrains biological computation + central q is how nature minimizes it. In @JphysA rev @sfiscience ’s Wolpert brings together CS+info theory+stochastic thermodynamics to lay groundwork for studying cost in nonequilibrium systems

0

42

98

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

The worrying singularity is not AGI but a full-fledged adaptive engineering of society thru control of individual + collective behavior using AI + big data @nybooks Data Leviathan & the Surveillance State @LRB Document Number Nine

5

25

102

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

6 years

Please join @sfiscience on YouTube Monday+Tuesday, Sep 24+25 (tomorrow), for the Ulam Lectures. In these accessible lectures SFI Prof Cris Moore will discuss mathematical & social limits to computation & implications for creativity & algorithmic fairness

3

46

101

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Does the difficulty of finding law-like regularities in complex systems lie in their oft-cited properties, like @manlius84 suggests in his lovely drawing, or is it in a problematic expectation of "predictable given initial conditions"? Could it be that regularities in complex

3

27

101

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

5 years

Our brains appear to operate near a critical point where it easy to shift bw diff states. Whether this is adaptive & what the states are has not been clear. New work discussed in a nice @QuantaMagazine essay sggsts brains are poised bw coherence & disorder

5

35

101

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

3 years

“How far down” do we need to go to predict + explain collective behavior? In this @sfiscience perspective, we a) introduce macroscale collectivity + propose formalizing it as information flow—channel strength—between micro+macro, b) frame it as the

3

17

100

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

4 years

Please help me in this historic moment collect images capturing expressions of solidarity by taking the knee or other means. By our police, our protestors, our communities.

Femi Redwood

@femiredwood

4 years

Just outside of Flint - police joined protesters rather than meet them with aggression. I’m told when protesters reached the station, they took a knee, the Sheriff came out and said “We’re mad too. What can we do?” The crowd said “Join us.” They did. #protests2020 #SundayMorning

204

8K

26K

5

28

99

Jessica Flack

@C4COMPUTATION

2 years

Today I spent reading the anarchist “poet laureate of deep ecology”, Gary Snyder. Seamus Heaney described his poems as primal and “trustworthy. . .you feel there’s a real coherence in the sensibility that's transmitting them to you.” Below—Snyder on self limits + many worlds.

5

19

98