Yi Izzy Yu

Poet, Translator, Horror Writer, Sometimes a Fox

[Yi Izzy Yu @YizzyYu]

The Shadow Book of Ji Yun (紀昀/紀曉嵐): The Chinese Classic of Weird True Tales, Horror Stories, and Occult Knowledge https://t.co/KVOjDsugQy and Zhiguai (志怪) are both out now. Check them out if you're into horror, the paranormal, translated literature, or flash nonfiction.

[Donald Hoffman @donalddhoffman]

“physicists are learning that the two defining features of quantum mechanics, entanglement and magic, correspond to the two defining features of space, its shape and its flexibility.”

https://t.co/TSgJdhX5zd

[Adrienne LaFrance @AdrienneLaF]

You really have to read Ted Chiang on consciousness and AI—just published in The Atlantic:

https://t.co/z9eRSlkwQ8

[XingWu🐉ChineseFolklore @x1ngwu]

In Chinese #folklore, not every crow is merely a bad omen. Some are thunder wearing feathers.

A Qing tale in Jianhu Ji (《坚瓠集》) tells of a rainy day when a crow fell into a courtyard. A curious boy trapped it beneath a chicken cage, and instantly the sky erupted, 1/3

[Angela Liu @liu_angela]

Excited to have a new story out today in @UncannyMagazine!

“Magical Girl Eater” is one of my oldest shorts (I wrote the first draft back in 2021!) and is about what it means to become magical girl-worthy villain.

https://t.co/3siMdH8AeW

[Donald Hoffman @donalddhoffman]

“evolution shaped us not to perceive objective reality directly, but to experience a simplified survival interface … space-time may function more like a navigational dashboard than objective reality itself”

https://t.co/hj5Ex5cFRR

[Giorgio @perennialmystic]

"We are not peace-loving people unless we love the peace of others as much as our own."

~ Thomas Merton

[Michael Levin @drmichaellevin]

A lot of people have suggested over the centuries that ecosystems might have some degree of cognition. What would that look like? Could there be recognizable memory phenomena on the scale of population dynamics? Here's a #preprint where amazing high-school student @asamanta42, @HananelHazan, and I use a model system - in silico predator-prey dynamics - and analyze the possibility of several kinds of learning:
https://t.co/JqmiakAJPM

(the basics are kind of like https://t.co/PH1ZKUxXqS, but some very cool new stuff here, including the interesting and unique pattern of learning-compatible values in the parameter space).

[Donald Hoffman @donalddhoffman]

“the empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates ... and many invertebrates”

https://t.co/5DmhbqabbD’s%20most%20evolutionarily%20ancient%20realm&_kx=9apYVVG_DsL35WOHmUkAk4uuEuPYV9ME8KnAMzt9UiY.WEer5A

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."

Mary Oliver on creativity: https://t.co/AttdRqMwnO

[Rizwan Virk @Rizstanford]

Does the entire universe consist of light, just as the sacred scriptures and ancient mystics have been telling us all along?

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

"The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far."

This is excellent: https://t.co/OeiG0UyFM8

[ValueHao @ValueHao]

This book was really really good imo. Must read for China heads out there.

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

In a world in which everything feels like a copy of a copy, where can we find creativity? | https://t.co/Q9kfGQYGnr

Here, philosopher Victoria Trumbull argues that consciousness holds the key, providing the space for the possible to become real.

[Donald Hoffman @donalddhoffman]

“Does a ginkgo tree have an inner world? In the film Silent Friend, the protagonist, a neurologist who studies brain activity in infants, attempts to quantify the internal signaling of a ginkgo tree on a university campus.”

https://t.co/2n5z9M5B97

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

Plato wanted to ban poetry because of its distance from truth, and philosophers have distrusted it ever since. | https://t.co/QRLkApGrQE

But Magdalena Ostas argues that poetry's embrace of ambiguity is a way of capturing reality's inexhaustibility that literal language simply can't.

Drawing on Emily Dickinson's exploration of the self, Ostas makes the case that poetry isn't the opposite of philosophy but one of its most powerful forms.

[Angela Liu @liu_angela]

Contract signed! My Nebula, Hugo, and Rhysling Finalist poem "The Mourning Robot" (@UncannyMagazine) will be translated into Chinese and published at Science Fiction World!

This has been a top writer bucket list items for a long, long time. Can’t wait to show my parents 😭

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

Most physicists are materialists: they believe the world, at its most fundamental level, is made of physical particles. | https://t.co/eVHl1vka5s

Others have pushed further, arguing that reality is a simulation, or nothing more than a hallucination conjured by the brain.

But Andrew T. Jaffe thinks all of them are wrong, and proposes a radical alternative: a consciousness-first theory of reality, in which space and time don't form the bedrock of existence but they emerge within it, like the architecture of a dream.

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

Most physicists are materialists; others have argued reality is a simulation or a hallucination of the brain. | https://t.co/t6bjYoxqAa

Andrew T. Jaffe challenges all of these views, proposing an alternative consciousness-first theory where space and time arise as within a dream.

[Institute of Art and Ideas @IAI_TV]

What if the divide between the quantum world and the classical world is an illusion? | https://t.co/KyNx5NBd45

Oxford Professor Vlatko Vedral offers a radical new interpretation of quantum mechanics, arguing that everything in the universe is a quantum wave.

This bold theory dissolves the measurement problem, the observer problem, and the puzzle of quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) in one sweep.

The classical world, it turns out, was never really there.

[Aslan Pahari @AslanPahariii]

Easily in the top 5 Buddhist artefacts of all time.

11th century wooden statue depicting the priest Baozhi transforming into the Eleven-Headed Avalokitesvara as he reaches nirvana.

Created during Japan’s Heian Period.