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31 Mar, 9 tweets, 15 min read
"The Evolution of Agency"

Follow this thread for highlights from today's seminar by @WiringTheBrain of @trinitycollege. Watch without login on Facebook (we will post the recording to YouTube within 24 hours):

facebook.com/santafeinstitu…
"The genome doesn't specify the outcome at all; it just encodes the biochemical rules by which development happens."

- @WiringTheBrain on the multi-level interplay of "nature" and "nurture" on #personality ImageImageImageImage
"It's trendy today to deny that #FreeWill is real."

- @WiringTheBrain quotes @SamHarrisOrg & Schopenhauer on the prominence of biological #determinism and neural #reductionism in modern thinking on the nature of choice.

facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImageImage
Ways out of physical and biological #determinism include Cartesian dualism and the compatibilism of SFI/@TuftsUniversity Prof @danieldennett.

"But I think we have to get OVER determinism first, as opposed to just accepting it."
- @WiringTheBrain at SFI:

facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImageImage
"Life is not a state or a property; it's a #process, like a storm, or flame, or tornado. Where a living system differs is in the boundary that makes it into an entity that persists over time."

- @WiringTheBrain on "The #Evolution of #Agency" at SFI today:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImageImage
"Life's #purpose is to exist..." and from this emerge the innovations of approach and avoidance, which lead to the emergence of #meaning — which isn't localized in the signals an organism senses, nor in the organism's body, but appear in the interactions.

@WiringTheBrain at SFI: ImageImageImageImage
The evolution of #meaning, from the pragmatic coupling of sense input to motor function, to the #nervoussystem's extraction of high-level representations, decoupling sensory input from action.

Or to put it another way, from reflex to reflection...

@WiringTheBrain at SFI today: ImageImageImageImage
"An exact inversion of the reductionist logic: [biological states] only have causal power because they have #meaning at the level of the organism."
- @WiringTheBrain on how lossy compression in complex systems challenges physical & biological #determinism:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImageImage
"As you go up the hierarchy [of organizational complexity], timescales tend to get longer and and cognitive objects more abstract."

- @WiringTheBrain presents a naturalistic model that anchors #meaning & #value in a multilevel process of data aggregation:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImageImage

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More from @sfiscience

Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
9 Mar
On #InternationalWomensDay we'd like to pause and celebrate just a small slice of the enormous contributions to science women have made here at SFI.

Read the thread below for links to some of their own favorite research papers, and a few nominated by other SFI faculty members:
First off, these papers on #FoodWebs led by our VP for #Science, Jennifer Dunne:

[@royalsociety Proceedings B]
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

[@PLOSBiology]
doi.org/10.1371/journa…

...and this interview she did for @QuantaMagazine:
quantamagazine.org/with-food-webs…

#Ecology #Ecologist
Next, two papers on how humans navigate and process #information co-authored by SFI External Prof @DaniSBassett (@Penn):

[@NatureHumBehav]
nature.com/articles/s4156…
+ summary:
blog.seas.upenn.edu/studying-hunte…

[@nature]
nature.com/articles/s4156…
+ summary:
penntoday.upenn.edu/news/what-do-b…
Read 21 tweets
Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
20 Jan
"#Thermodynamics of Far-From-Equilibrium Systems, #Biochemistry, and #Life in a Warming World"

Today's SFI Virtual Seminar by Mark Ritchie of @SyracuseU

Streaming now – follow this thread for highlights.

facebook.com/santafeinstitu…

#Biology #Ecology #GlobalWarming
"If we look at the temperatures at which most biological #enzymes fall apart, it's upward of 50º — but most enzymatic activity fails well below that. What's causing this decline? The Standard Model doesn't account for this."

Mark Ritchie of @SyracuseU:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImage
Here's why #GlobalWarming is not just going to be "great for plants":

Thermodynamic constraints on living systems mean rising temperatures affect diffusion and transport of molecules across membranes, and too much heat messes with #photosynthesis.

Mark Ritchie of @SyracuseU: ImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
7 Dec 20
This week at SFI: "#Complexity and the Structure of #Music: Universal Features and Evolutionary Perspectives Across Cultures", an #interdisciplinary working group assembled to explore new frameworks for understanding music. Stay tuned for highlights!

santafe.edu/events/complex…
"Every pitch class set is connected to every other pitch class set."

– @mbnUNT, co-organizer of this week's #musicology working group, presents on how to understand the #topology of #harmonic structures in music with #network diagrams (e.g. Pic 4 with #JSBach's BWV 66):
Once you represent a musical composition as a network, it is possible to examine the evolutionary dynamics of its harmonic content over time, as explained by @mbnUNT in his opening talk for this week's SFI #musicology working group.

(Ironically, this #Beethoven is #scalefree:)
Read 21 tweets
Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
25 Nov 20
Today's talk is with neuroscientist #KarlFriston of @ucl, who will offer a heuristic proof suggesting that life is an inevitable emergent property of any weakly mixing random dynamical system that possesses a #Markov blanket.

Tune in here at 12:15 PM MT:
santafe.edu/events/me-and-…
...and because it's 2020 and nothing is ever simple, we are having technical issues with the stream. The talk is recorded and we will upload it across all of our platforms ASAP. Our apologies!
Spatial boundaries are statistical boundaries: #KarlFriston on #MarkovBlankets, the reciprocal interfacing between internal and external states.

Follow this thread for more highlights from the talk and stay tuned for the video link...
Read 11 tweets
Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
21 Aug 20
New piece at @aeonmag by SFI's @C4COMPUTATION & @MelMitchell1 ⚡
@aeonmag @C4COMPUTATION @MelMitchell1 "Simple cause-effect reasoning, to which the human mind can default, is not a good policy tool. Instead of attempting to narrowly forecast and control outcomes, we need to design systems that are robust and adaptable enough to weather a wide range of possible futures."
@aeonmag @C4COMPUTATION @MelMitchell1 "All human societies are collective & coupled. Collective, meaning our combined behaviour gives rise to society-wide effects. Coupled, in that our perceptions & behaviour depend on the perceptions & behaviour of others & on the social & economic structures we collectively build."
Read 11 tweets
Santa Fe Institute Profile picture
18 Aug 20
Streaming now: @michaelmina_lab of @HarvardBiz gives today's SFI Seminar on "#Testing our way out of #COVID19: A bumpy but possible path forward."

facebook.com/santafeinstitu…

Feat. work with Former SFI Postdoc @DanLarremore.

Follow this thread for highlights...
Now may be the best window to squash #COVID19 before flu season begins, but pandemic surveillance—especially in the US—has been a mess.

What are the relative strengths of virus testing vs. serological testing?

@michaelmina_lab speaking at SFI right now:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… ImageImageImage
"Really baseline testing doesn't give you enough information. If it tells you there is 5% infection in a nursing home it doesn't tell you if the virus is increasing. But serological testing can. These are complementary tools."

@michaelmina_lab at SFI now:
facebook.com/santafeinstitu… Image
Read 10 tweets

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