Yogi Jaeger 💙 @[email protected]
@yoginho
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Wördern, Österreich
Joined November 2009
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I have big news to share!
I'll be leading a large philosophy & science project on agency & evolution (together with my co-leader Tarja Knuuttila). The project is funded by Templeton & will be hosted at the Department of Philosophy of
@univienna
, starting in Dec 2022.
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I'm thrilled to announce that our paper (with Andrea Roli & Stu Kauffman) on (the impossibility of) artificial general intelligence (AGI) & the role of agency in open-ended evolution is out in
@frontiersIn
today: .
#AGI
#evolution
#agency
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New blog post just dropped!
"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."
reviewing this recent Nature paper:
TL:DR: potentially interesting model, wrapped in utterly misleading packaging.
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So: I got a grant. Believe it or not. A substantial one as well. It's been a looooooong time since the last funding success on my part, but worth the wait. Details to follow. The project is set up to fail in interesting ways. The way proper basic science ought to be done.
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Why not be honest and call "artificial intelligence" (
#AI
) "algorithmic mimicry" (AM) instead? It's been a misnomer (and AI researchers always knew that) from the very beginning. It would help us so much to properly understand & contextualize its capabilities & limitations.
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On this day, 5 yrs ago. I was mobbed out of my last academic job. I've been transitioning in my mind from unemployed to independent ever since. A few reflections in this 🧵.
I'll post some additional insights from my time in academia & after in threads branching from this one.
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"Dyson was an outsider—and it showed. It is unlikely that we will ever see an outsider like him in academia again. The institution science has become is not meant for the Dysons of our time. This is to the world’s detriment." via
@areomagazine
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Free will, yay, genetic reductionism, nay. Whether you agreed with what he had to say or not, his writing was among the best you can get in the philosophy of science. He leaves some real patterns in this world... what else could any one of us wish for? RIP
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Here's a really cool paper for all those who think the brain is a computer (it isn't, and hasn't evolved for computing). And those who think you can just add an additional computational layer on top to make our "lizard brains" better.
@GaryMarcus
@TonyZador
@anne_churchland
@Nancy_Kanwisher
@PessoaBrain
@neurograce
@ylecun
Paul Cisek has a really thoughtful, comprehensive article on brain evolution through a control system lens: Resynthesizing behavior through phylogenetic refinement
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Naturalizing Relevance Realization: Why Agency and Cognition are Fundamentally not Computational, with
@AnnaLeptikon
, Alex Djedovic,
@vervaeke_john
& Denis Walsh.
It's massive indeed! I'll do a TL:DR thread on its argument one of these coming days.
Teaser: massive new preprint to come out tomorrow or the day after. An amazing collaboration! The definitive refutation that cognition is computational. 💪
Stay tuned!
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Just received my expected rejection from
@elife
(after appeal).
The way I was rejected reflects the atrocious attitude of the journal & the whole field of biology towards conceptual work.
It also showcases a lack of intellectual integrity on behalf of the journal editors. 🧵
Just submitted my article on AI () to
@elife
, hoping that they'll have a look at it despite it being purely theoretical research.
(And, yes: theoretical research can be rigorous original science too... imagine that.)
#AI
is
#AlgorithmicMimicry
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First batch of lectures recorded for my crash course in the philosophy of science for researchers. It’s called “Science as Process and Perspective.”
I’ll post them on my YouTube channel over the next few days.
Stay tuned!
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New preprint out on
@OSFramework
: "How organisms come to know the world: fundamental limits on artificial general intelligence." (A collaboration with Stu Kauffman & Andrea Roli.)
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Today, our discussion group covers Bill Wimsatt's "Ontology of Complex Systems" 1st published in 1994 & reprinted as ch10 of his 2007 "Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings."
This the single most life-changing piece of philosophy I've ever read!
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I just read another one of those “how I overcame writing anxiety and became a more productive writer” threads on
#AcademicTwitter
. They are a frighteningly frequent thing. A few thoughts.
#StockholmSyndrome
/1
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I just (re)discovered this recording of my "How Organisms Come to Know the World" talk at the Max Planck in Leipzig in 2022: .
It covers this paper: .
A wonderful collaboration with Andrea Roli & Stu Kauffman.
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This is the complete
#BeyondNetworks
playlist: .
We had our last discussion with the Uni Vienna MSc students today.
A little reflection… 👇🏻 /1
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I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve received a Dr. Chopin Visiting Professorship this semester at Webster Vienna Private University: .
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My commentary on assembly theory (and the hype surrounding it) is now out in the Journal of Molecular Evolution:
(Figures by
@mneustetter
)
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We just dropped a new preprint!
"Beyond networks: explaining dynamics in the natural and social sciences."
It's a broad criticism of network modeling in both the natural & social sciences & a study of where its shortcomings originate historically. 🧵
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New paper (with philosopher James DiFrisco) just out in
#BioEssays
as part of a collection of articles on causality in biology, which was initiated by
@drmichaellevin
: .
Proposing a dynamical framework to think about genetic causation in complex systems.
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"Natural selection is not a consequence of how well the organism solves a set of fixed problems posed by the environment; on the contrary, the environment and the organism actively codetermine each other.”
— Lewontin & Levins, “The Dialectical Biologist”, 1985
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So, I’ve applied for my first philosophy position today.
Let’s see what happens.
Although I very much enjoy my freedom at the moment, eventually, it’d be nice to get paid for my work on a regular basis again.
Teenagers eat a lot, you know...
#philsci
#AcademicTwitter
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Horrifying. This is reckless & dangerous. It is absolutely irresponsible to interfere with ecosystems in this way when we have absolutely no idea what the possibly ruinous consequences will be. Believing we can predict the consequences is pseudo-scientific hubris.
750,000 of genetically modified mosquitoes to be released in Florida. Last year release of 450,000 GMO mosquitoes in Jacobina resulted in unintended genetic contamination of local mosquitoes. The same company Oxitec was in charge and promised that this wouldn’t happen.
@nntaleb
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I once swore never to present a poster at a meeting again, but preparing this one was actually fun!
#EEDGalway
#EED2018
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We made this little video to explain the difference between living and non-living things:
Text:
@yoginho
Animation:
@mneustetter
#life
#autopoiesis
#embodiment
#LargeWorld
#evolution
#NurturingNature
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What this pandemic has revealed to me is that "normality" was crap before the pandemic. Our society was dominated by neurotic egotistical narcissism. What the pandemic should teach us is that we can't survive without taking care of each other. /19
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Network modularity: structure does not equal function. I am very proud and excited about our new paper on dynamic modules, just out in
@elife
!
@BertaVerd
#evodevo
Tl;dr tweet summary follows...👇🏻
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Your individual freedom ends where other people's freedom & health start. Anything else is just childish egotism.
It's maddening that this simple message does not come through. The media have failed us in a big way here. /20
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Scott Gilbert’s “Achilles and the Tortoise” (), is a critique of the use of mathematical modelling in biology. It showcases a number of misconceptions that biologists have about the use of mathematics that are worth discussing. /1
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So I just got a request to review a paper for one of the increasingly many Nature journals this planet is cursed with.
It was my pleasure to reject them.
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I will always remember 2019 as the year I finally realised that I am free, no longer chasing a career and rewards from a broken system I never actually agreed with… the future is open! Let’s see what 2020 will bring.
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I am incredibly proud to announce that the gap gene oscillator is accepted for publication in
@plosbiology
! Excellent work by
@BertaVerd
,
@ErikClark01
,
@KoralWotton
,
@ServusScience
,
@evaevodevo
&
@antoncrombach
Latest pre-print here: .
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Our collaboration with artist Gemma Anderson (
@Isomorphology
) & mathematical biologist Berta Verd (
@BertaVerd
) has finally been published in the arts & science journal Leonardo: .
Definitely the most beautiful paper I’ve ever contributed to!
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Here is a first draft of a little manifesto why biology needs more philosophy: .
I want to improve it. Feedback very welcome.
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Exceptionally,
@JimRuttShow
barely gets a word in, while Stuart Kauffman provides an excellent overview of his work and ideas on the nature of the organism, and the coming transition towards a science for the 21st century:
This is well worth your time!
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I offer a CRASH COURSE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE for researchers that is truly unique in its focus on practice, perspective, & process.
It's for researchers in the natural, social, and formal sciences at all stages of their career. No previous knowledge of philosophy needed.
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My "Fourth Perspective" essay on why the basic unit of evolution is a complete life cycle, and thus an organismic agent, and why that really matters for evolutionary theory, is officially out today!
#evolution
#theory
#agency
#philsci
#biology
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Doubters gonna doubt: BUT. I. HAVE. ACTUALLY. STARTED. WRITING. A. BOOK!!! Just passed the 4,000-word mark. Only five years delay so far. Could be worse... much worse.
Stay tuned! 🤓
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Excellent news: I signed my contract with
@univienna
today, which means I’ll be giving my “Beyond Networks” lecture again this spring!
Registration (for
@univienna
students):
Prerecorded lectures (public link):
#evodevo
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Just submitted my article on AI () to
@elife
, hoping that they'll have a look at it despite it being purely theoretical research.
(And, yes: theoretical research can be rigorous original science too... imagine that.)
#AI
is
#AlgorithmicMimicry
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I'm really thankful for
@WiringTheBrain
. He's written a multi-part response to Sapolsky, called "Undetermined:" .
Sapolsky's argument is like groundhog day: every few years, some poor creature mistaking the assumptions of mechanistic science as ...
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Frankly, I wind the most troubling aspect of how we "deal" with the pandemic. Not having to change anything, not sacrificing even the slightest comfort, seems to be more important than to protect the vulnerable. That is a frightening amount of egotism. /11
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What an amazing place! Faraday’s original lab is in the basement of the Royal Institution.
@Ri_Science
#ProcBio18
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How come evolutionary biologists are not yet being shouty about this new paper?
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.
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Drop me a line if you know a person or place interested in this sort of profile. Let me know if you hear of opportunities for a philosophically inclined scientist like me. Hire me to teach your students philosophy, critical thinking, and/or the role of creativity in open inquiry.
Always looking for new projects & job opportunities! I'm a biologist interested in dynamical modelling & the organisation of organisms. I'm a philosopher with a process perspective on life & (scientific) explanation. Teaching philosophy to scientists, writing about open science.
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JBS Haldane (1963) on the 4 stages of acceptance of an idea:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so.
(via
@NicholsonHPBio
)
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I got a short-term fellowship to spend six months at the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity
@criparis
(). Planning to be there from ~Oct18 to Mar19. Working on my book & an online course. Extremely grateful & excited about this awesome opportunity!
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Make
#Bitcoin
illegal. Worldwide. Now.
Some statistics to start the year:
During 2021 Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Argentina.
Related CO2 emissions were ~64 Mt; enough to negate the entire global net savings from deploying EVs.
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Just a quick heads-up that I’ve now recorded & uploaded all 12 lectures for my crash course in philosophy of science for scientists.
Are you a researcher in the natural, formal, or social sciences?
Do you sometimes wonder what you’re actually doing?
This course is for you!
“Science as Process and Perspective” is a crash course in the philosophy of science for researchers (from all fields, across the formal, natural, and social sciences).
More info: .
YouTube playlist with lectures (being uploaded): .
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"What is life? What is it that enables living things, apparently so moist, fragile, and evanescent, to persist while towering mountains dissolve into dust, and the very continents and oceans dance into oblivion and back?"
Rosen (1991), Life Itself, p11
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I find it increasingly difficult to give advice to young academics. I used to say "never give up," but think that's wrong. "Never give yourself up." That's more like it. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
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An interesting commentary! As far as I understand, it makes two main points: (1) we should focus more explicitly on non-linearity in biological regulatory processes, and (2) gene networks act under the constraint of their (biophysical) context, which contributes to cell function.
Just out, our “Call for a better understanding of causation in cell biology”
with
@drmichaellevin
& Mariano Bizzarri, Douglas Brash,
@briscoejames
, Claudio Stern
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What an amazing collection of essays on a central blind spot of current biology: the organization of living systems.
My own contribution "The Fourth Perspective: Evolution and Organismal Agency" is in very good company within this volume:
"While a systemic trend is progressively pervading various biological fields – notably Evolutionary Biology, Systems Biology and Origins of Life – I suggest that organization still remains a blind spot of biological thinking"
New book out!
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The
@ERC_Research
just asked me to serve as a reviewer on one of their panels. I feel recognized. That feels nice. But no, thank you. Below you can read why in my reply.
Peer review is broken.
Stop cronyism & opportunism.
We need grant lotteries now!
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Getting paid again to do research as of today. No need to look for funding for the next couple of years. Doesn't feel too bad, overall, I must say...
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Everybody complains about "the system" after a few beers, but everybody is playing along. We are the system. If we don't change it, no one will. Changing the system will mean sacrifices. I was not able to make them until I was forced to. I hope you are wiser.
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First day at my new work! A big thank you to Uli Technau and his group for a very warm welcome at the Department for Molecular Evolution and Development
@univienna
, where I’ll be a guest lecturer in the Evolutionary Systems Biology Masters course this semester.
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Gap gene shifts are driven by a damped oscillator. Our paper is out in
@PLOSBiology
! It provides a number of brand new perspectives on the patterning function & evolution of the gap gene network, a classical textbook model system for developmental biology.
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@eLife
What science needs right now is an honest look in the mirror. We need tons *more* mere verbal philosophy and less big quantitative data sets that tell us nothing about the big questions of life. We have all the knowledge we need. What we lack is wisdom.
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Anyway, what are you doing to your mind if you attempt to optimise your productivity? You’re putting it into a cage. Creativity requires leisure. Time wasting. The best thoughts come to you under the shower. Don’t treat your mind as if it is a machine to be optimised. /5
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Re (2): it's mild & soon over.
The cynicism behind this is just baffling to me. There are millions of high-risk people on this planet that are acutely threatened by this "mild" disease, many children among them. We are sacrificing the vulnerable for our convenience. /10
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"Far from being master molecules, genes are prisoners of development, locked in the deepest recesses of a hierarchy of prisons.” James Griesemer, 2006
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Hooray! We got funding for the
#VeniceEvoDevo
course in 2019, co-organised by
@BertaVerd
, James DiFrisco & myself.
More detailed info, including preliminary course outline & programme below.
Please RT & spread the news!
The "Venice Summer School: Mechanism in Development & Evolution" will take place as an EMBO/FEBS Lecture Course, Aug 26–30, 2019.
Application opens Jan 2019. Follow
@VeniceEvoDevo
, or sign up at for updates.
Please share/RT
#VeniceEvoDevo
@EMBO
@FEBSnews
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Woah. I don't quite think I deserve this, but will say thank you for the very high praise! 😊
On the limits of AI, really interesting piece.
For those of us who are older, Jaeger feels like the Hubert Dreyfus of the moment (in a good way).
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I’m extremely excited to announce that our arts & science collaboration with
@Isomorphology
&
@BertaVerd
on “Drawing to Extend Waddington’s Landscape” is out in the journal Leonardo.
@mitpress
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I made the mistake of taking on a grant review in my old field of research. The first this year. Much has happened since January. And many of my priorities have changed. A few reflections. /1
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Few good philosophers would deny that their work must go hand in hand with the latest science. Very few scientists even know what the philosophy of science is. That is not a good situation...
"Why science needs philosophy" I loved having a philosopher of science on my thesis committee and it was incredibly useful. I do wonder... should we also ask why philosophy needs science?
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And an avalanche of bullshit shall wash over us. The
#enshittification
of everything is well on its way. h/t
@doctorow
New: this is crazy. The top Google image search result for "tank man" right now is an AI-generated "selfie" of the man. Shows that as AI content becomes more and more widespread, the platforms we use to surface content don’t have a good way to identify it
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Life science people out there: we are looking for young researchers (any subdiscipline, incl. neuro & cognitive science) who are engaging in philosophically-driven kind of theoretical work, and/or are interested in collaborating with philosophers. Do you know any?
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This is so amazimgly simple and obvious: higher-level constraints are causes. Downward causation is real. If your worldview doesn't allow for it, you'd better adjust your worldview instead of explaining the phenomena away...
Nitinol is an alloy of nickel and titanium that has shape memory. If we deform it plastically and then heat it, it will regain its original shape. By heating under voltage it is possible to give it a new shape...
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My paper with Nick Monk on the "Dynamical Modularity of the Genotype-Phenotype Map" is finally out as a preprint! It proposes a completely new approach to modularity in biological systems: via
@OSFramework
/1
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"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science;
there is only science whose philosophical baggage
is taken on board without examination” says
@danieldennett
.
I’m looking for similarly quotable quotes on the relationship btw philosophy & science.
Please share!
#philsci
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Fuck productivity anyway. Read
@melgregg
’s excellent “Counterproductive” instead: .
Excessive focus on productivity is what got us into this mess in the first place. It’s destroying health, education, and science.
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I've had the most amazingly wide-ranging conversation with
@pgmid
on his
#BrainInspired
podcast.
Thanks, Paul, for having me! And also,
@WiringTheBrain
, for an excellent question.
Give it a listen! Become a Patreon supporter. The podcast is excellent.
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Because the truth is that millions are wasted on yet another genome, yet another single cell sequenced. It’s just one damn thing after another. What we need is conceptual innovation. We need to rediscover life. Treating the living world as a machine is what got us here. /7
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@eLife
... construction of large data sets that are increasingly costly to produce but yield diminishing returns in terms of insight and understanding into the workings and organization of living systems. Hence, no surprise when my work was deemed "out of scope." That's fair enough.
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While we’re discussing scientific funding, here is Otto Warburg, requesting 10,000 marks for a microscope…
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I am a scientist whose empirical research & theorizing have been heavily influenced by the philosophy of science. But then I’m not an evolutionary psychologist, a field which obviously doesn’t have or need any philosophical foundation...
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Insight
#1
: never work for assholes, not even if the job seems to be 100% your dream job.
In particular: avoid petty fragile narcissists. They are the worst kind of academics. They spoil all your achievements, kill all the joy, and everybody will be worse off in the end.
On this day, 5 yrs ago. I was mobbed out of my last academic job. I've been transitioning in my mind from unemployed to independent ever since. A few reflections in this 🧵.
I'll post some additional insights from my time in academia & after in threads branching from this one.
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Nah. Systems biology is too busy sequencing & imaging the shit out of everything to think about the limitations of it's ultimately large-scale reductionist approach. A new theoretical biology, firmly rooted in naturalistic philosophy, will be needed instead.
Really enjoying
@WiringTheBrain
’s book on free will, Free Agents. Hold my drink physicists and philosophers, systems biology will sort this out!
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There is no way back: we can either grow up as a species, or we can perish, because our behavior, cognitive abilities, and social codes were not able to keep up with the complexification of our society. It's as simple as that. /22
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Always looking for new projects & job opportunities! I'm a biologist interested in dynamical modelling & the organisation of organisms. I'm a philosopher with a process perspective on life & (scientific) explanation. Teaching philosophy to scientists, writing about open science.
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If you only read one thing about
#COVID19
, please read this: how to react to pandemics, the general precautionary principle, and why early lock-downs are the way to go.
@normonics
@nntaleb
@yaneerbaryam
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New blog post out! “Self-Censorship and the Cult of Productivity in Academic Research.” Read it here: . /1
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And all those "experts" telling you about the evolutionary potential of the virus? They don't know what they are talking about. I am an evolutionary biologist & I can tell you that we have no idea how this virus is going to evolve next. No idea. /14
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After a week of trying, I have managed to return to Austria & my family, where I belong in these uncertain times.
It’s been a slightly bizarre (& costly) experience. More on that soon.
Avoid traveling at all costs if you can.
Looking forward to 2 weeks of quiet quarantine.
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I have so many questions... Domestic animals are bred with human purpose. What do you mean by eugenics “working” for humans? For what or whose purpose? And how would this purpose be free of ideology? What kind of discussion would you like to start with this tweet? Please explain.
It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.
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There seems to be very little push-back against this narrative, which is something that really surprises me. But worse than that: it does *not* bode well for the next pandemic (whether the next
#COVID19
variant or something altogether more worrisome). /2
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It's quite simple, but apparently hard to get: not the economy or the people. Both the economy and the people!
#COVID19
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Just submitted our paper with philosopher James DiFrisco about “Mechanisms and Process in EvoDevo” to ‘Biology & Philosophy’. It shows that mechanistic and process thinking need not be opposed in certain domains of biology.
#philbio
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... deeply ignorant of your work but equally deeply fond of their own non-existing expertise. Science is rife with bullshitters, operators, slave drivers, overworked zombies. It's nasty. It's toxic. It's completely captured by its own dynamics. Trapped.
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The problem with biology in one single tweet.
“Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order” -Sydney Brenner (via Judith Kimble)
@cshl
#sydneybrenner
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