Also leads me to think that it would be interesting to study types of non-citations, and in a way these are even more interesting than the current furore over citations...
06.03.2026 07:00
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Also leads me to think that it would be interesting to study types of non-citations, and in a way these are even more interesting than the current furore over citations...
Everyone complains that #GPTs make up references, but that makes me wonder. When do they *not* #cite things?
Presumably, this "enhances" the #novelty or #innovativeness of ideas that it has.
I think we should use AI as a community to write fewer and better papers, not more.
but these examples are superficial treatment of really interesting problems, whereas AI can really open doors to inaccessible analysis. But why is it being used to minimize cognitive effort instead of maximizing it?
Two papers so far this year that have crossed my desk for review that are more or less AI applications of previous work with slight modifications. In principle, little problem with new tool use...
Largest trees are also the fastest growing, so that’s likewise bad for the future.
Funny to see how myths put forward by Montesquieu in the 1700s about climate and vigor (hot=sloth) and geography and servility of spirit (plains=slavery) persisting today.
Further into Fukuyama…
He writes about public goods as things that cannot be taken up by the market b/c there is no incentive (e.g. clean air). Don’t see how this isn’t possible in principle.
Anything can be enshitiffied to the point where any marginal relative gain could be profitable to sell?
And from Alexander Hamilton:
A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice a bad government.
When an American thinks about the problem of #government-building, he directs himself not to the creation of #authority and the accumulation of #power but rather the limitation of authority and the division of power.
- Huntington
Glad to see politicians standing up for basic research!
"The HFSP fellowship program supports proposals for frontier, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. Applications for high-risk projects are particularly encouraged."
www.hfsp.org/funding/hfsp...
Are you looking for a #postdoc to start in 2027? Do you have a #physics background and are you interested in #ecology #forests #ecosystems #learning #plasticity?
I'm looking for candidates to nominate for the Human Frontier Science Program in the Physics Department at Seoul National University.
🧪🦋
A fantastic experience (I've heard)
Strong quantitative backgrounds would be ideal as well as interest in studying #ecosystem #dynamics and #learning / #plasticity.
"The HFSP fellowship program supports proposals for frontier, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. Applications for high-risk projects are particularly encouraged."
www.hfsp.org/funding/hfsp...
Are you looking for a postdoctoral position? I'm looking for candidates to nominate for the Human Frontier Science Program in the Physics Department at Seoul National University.
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New study examines 20+ years of armed conflict data across Africa. Researchers @kushwaha.bsky.social and @spintheory.bsky.social identify three conflict archetypes, but also show that classification does not necessarily help to predict the severity of conflicts.
Learn more: shorturl.at/81pkf
An important topic! Also key to think about how innovation feeds into extinction.
A wintry day for complex systems!
People are often using AI to increase the seeming complexity of minimal ideas, where I find I spend most of my time taking highly complex ideas and compressing them as much as possible into minimal descriptions. Can AI do that? I would say not.
It’s times like these that remind me of Asimov’s Mule. And an interesting question about how far we can go beyond probabilities in looking ahead with social behavior.
Your daily reminder that in complex conflict scenarios, long-term strategy is important: arxiv.org/abs/2508.13213
“Intuition is a name for rule-based cognitive processing where the rules consist of generally valid, experience-based heuristics, the details of which are not readily accessible to consciousness.”
Cited in De Groot’s 1986 paper on the importance of #intuition in #chess ♟️
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
„ Die Empfindung sagt mir, dass etwas ist; das Denken, was etwas ist; das fühlen, was etwas für mich bedeutet; die Intuition, was etwas werden kann.“
- Jung
The four basic mental functions: sensation, thought, feeling, and intuition.
“Unreason darkens that gap of time bridged by our lightspeed ships, and in the darkness uncertainty and disproportion grow like weeds.”
- Ursula Le Guin
Thanks!
2026년 가을부터 서울대학교 물리학과에 조교수로 합류하게 되어 매우 기쁘게 알립니다!
저에게는 새로운 장이 될 것이며, 학과에서 이미 진행되고 있는 놀라운 연구에 새롭고 복합적이며 다양한 기여를 더하게 될 것입니다.
마지막으로, 이러한 혼란스러운 시기에 민주주의와 법치주의를 수호하는 젊지만 활기찬 문화를 포용하는 곳으로 가게 된다는 것을 말할 수 있어 안도감을 느낍니다.
새해를 앞두고 미리 건배합니다! 🥂
Finally, it is a relief to be able to say that, in these troubling times, I am moving somewhere that embraces a young but vibrant culture of standing up for democracy and rule of law.
Here’s an early cheers to the new year!