Can a butterfly really cause a hurricane? Reflecting on the nature of causation

Is robots taking over the world bad? Some of the AI-risk scenarios I’ve read
almost feel like it’s inevitable – and I’ve been wondering if there is a way it
could happen that we would actually be comfortable, or even happy with. Let me
roughly outline one…

Seeing is believing. Before we could accept the germ theory of disease, we had
to invent the microscope to directly see the culprits of our ailments. These
days, we live in an age that largely discounts the role emotions play in our
social structures. Even…

I just did my first substantial donation (informed by Effective Altruism, and my own work on complex social systems). Even though I have thought before about how and when it is best to donate, the ac…

I spent the 6 years in my Ph.D. thinking of the broad topic of origins of life, or “abiogenesis”: how does non-living matter turn into living matter? This was a lot of fun, big ideas, wild speculations, and crazy discussions with friends and colleagues –…

We’re all somehow familiar with the concept that a person's actions can be “too perfect” – to the point of seeming creepy, or mechanical, or even dangerous. Classically this comes from sci-fi portrayals of humanoid robots, but can also just be an experience…

I want to explore a word that seems to be very triggering, and thereby somehow very important, in our culture: the word God. Whether you love it or hate it, many people have some sort of a visceral r…

[The ideas here followed from some great discussion with Jerome Warren in Brussels 2022] Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance argues that an absolutely tolerant society is impossible, since it would be vulnerable to intolerant people coming in and breaking…

At my recent Vipassana retreat, I had a peculiar experience of feeling distinct physical sensations outside of my physical body... O_o

Can we objectively define "progress"? Here I explore a Darwinian approach to this question, and point out that when referring to cultures or world-views, physical selection must be complemented by memetic selection. This leads to interesting consequences…

TL;DR: All three of these are centered around the idea of consensus reality – that reproducibility, or redundancy of consistent records, is what makes something "objectively true." Slight deviations from such consistency is what leads to non-classical effects…

Just wanted to present an overview of one of the most basic models behind finance - since I couldn't find it all laid out simply anywhere. I think these insights can also be applied in our daily life, relationships, and governance.

Scientists serve the role of shamans in modernity, and so their wisdom and personal attainment (or lack thereof) spreads to the rest of the human tribe.

Can complex systems science help us ground some of the abstract concepts of Eastern Philosophy in hard scientific language? In this talk I suggest that this may be the language that will allow to really bring in Eastern wisdom into our Western paradigm, leading…

I’ve often heard of the dichotomy of making decisions with “mind” vs “heart” – which I understood to be roughly equivalent to conscious vs subconscious, or system 2 (thinking slow) vs system 1 (thinking fast). This also seems similar to the difference between…

Blog of Scientific Blue-Sky BrainStorming (BS^3): applying ideas from complexity science to real-world questions

How immanent existential threat may help us find enlightenment the hard way. Or a personal journey trying to reconcile death with happiness

Are academics miserable? Could science help us to be happy? In this conversation about alternative research environments we explore these questions and what sort of a research environment we might want. Pavel is now creating such spaces - like a week-long…

Work as meditation