Marco Tuccio

I like to ask questions

[Josh Goldford @joshuagoldford]

Living systems routinely map environmental signals to responses through enzyme-catalyzed reaction networks, but what physical features actually determine their computational capacity?

We developed a scalable inverse-design framework that turns chemical reaction networks into function approximators by tuning physical parameters such as transition-state energies and reaction driving forces.

Here’s one example: fitting the von Neumann elephant with a chemical reaction network 🐘

We find that network size and local control over reaction driving strongly determine the expressivity of these networks.

Paper: https://t.co/45Mm0tBe5T
Code: https://t.co/l0B9aWPcyA
with @marcotux and Jason Rocks

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

Make something people want, or make people want something?

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

data is the program

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@fchollet Yesterday I realized I was being autoregressive in generating a sequence of abstract concepts in my mind. But how to formalize abstractions?

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@wgussml Yo this is beautiful! Does it work also with local models?

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@iamkylebalmer AI, let's see what you got

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

How does virtual emerge from real?

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@SOPHONTSIMP @fchollet Paying off != getting closer to AGI

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

Frameworks of thought produce framed outputs. Free thinking produces novelty. Framing produces optimization while free and playful combination of components produces open-ended evolution.

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

- Mom can I have AGI?
- No, there is AGI at home.
- At home...
Artificial Generative Intelligence

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@manlius84

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

Thanks

[Matt Spike @matspike]

PREACH

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@matspike Oh reductionism you did it once again dude when will you stop?
*reductionism drunkenly proceeds at reducing complex systemic phenomena to linearity*

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

The origin of life is the origin of death

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

This hits hard

[Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 @RuxandraTeslo]

Has academia become less hospitable to Weird Nerds, who are simply leaving it? @NateSilver538 said something in this vein a few days ago and my personal experience tells me that to some extent, yes.

https://t.co/LckOfLEnC1

“Most men will not swim before they are able to.” Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they wont think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.”

(Hermann Hesse- Der Steppenwolf)

The above quote from Der Steppenwolf is the best one I could find describing the difficulty faced by The Intellectual, or shall we say, in more modern terms, The Weird Nerd. The Weird Nerd is distinguished by its unyielding devotion to Truth, often placing it above social graces or conventional norms (that’s why it’s drowning in conventional society). This species, while occasionally difficult to interact with, plays a crucial role in society, acting as an innovator and “village truth-teller”. In the last decades, The Weird Nerd has found a sanctuary within the confines of academia, a natural habitat where its traits are not only tolerated but often nurtured. In this symbiotic relationship, the wider world benefits from the intellectual pursuits and discoveries of the Weird Nerd without the need to engage directly with its challenging demeanour. It's a situation that seems to maintain a harmonious balance: the Weird Nerd is protected from “drowning”, while society at large reaps the rewards of its unique contributions.

Has there been a disturbance in this equilibrium recently ? This is what Nate Silver argues in a recent tweet.

He ascribes a lot of it to economic forces: in essence, The Weird Nerd has been poached away from Academia by simple market forces.

Completely anecdotally, I tend to agree with Nate.

What I will add, is that in The Weird Nerd’s place, I have noticed the proliferation of a different type of species in academia: what I call The Failed Corporatist. This is someone who stumbles upon academia not out of a love for The Truth as much as due to an inability to thrive in corporate settings for various other, unrelated reasons. But the Failed Corporatist has a very conventional, corporate like mindset anyway. It usually loves process, admin and adding more admin and adding more process and METRICS and social conformity. This skill set enables them to ascend the ranks of academic administration, often gaining significant influence and control over The Weird Nerd. Confronted with this altered habitat, The Nerd often finds itself in a state of distress and confusion. Its intrinsic motivation clashes with the newly imposed corporate-like order and the demand for conformity, leading to frantic efforts to assert its natural tendencies. Unfortunately, these efforts are often met with resistance or outright rejection, not only from The Failed Corporatist but also from the broader world that the academic reserve is a part of. All in all, I think this disturbance means the remaining Nerds are further driven away.

Now, this is all anecdotal, but might we be on to something?

Biology Professor @JSheltzer has an interesting thread today that points in this direction. Through an ad hoc analysis, Jason discovered that while 66% of the top national winners at the Intel/Westinghouse Science Fair from 1990 to 2002 pursued careers in academia, this number dropped to less than a third for winners from 2003 to 2014. Now, for this to support my and Nate’s observations, you have to assume the Science Fair winners are good representations of the Weird Nerd. I personally think that’s a valid assumption! If you scroll down in his thread, you will see indeed some illustrious names of current academics among these winners. I’ll add to this list recent Nobel Laureate Katalin Kariko, who describes in her book having scored 3rd in her country in the Biology Olympiad. This is the closest thing Eastern European countries have to a Science Fair.

Now, if these Nerds are starting companies then maybe this is fine, they could do their research in those more entrepreneurial environments. It’s not perfect - in another post I explain that I do not think commercial research, even in small start-up settings, can replace fundamental academic research, but it’s better than Nate’s hypothesis about them going into Quant Finance.

But this “Entrepreneurial Nerd” hypothesis does not seem to be true. In fact, Jason’s analysis shows that Nate’s hypothesis is more realistic. Now, there is nothing wrong with working for Google or Quant Finance. But if I think start-up research is not going to replace academic research, that’s even less the case for big company research, especially Quant Finance! There’s a real risk here that even start-ups will run out of stuff to build on if high-quality fundamental research will cease to be done in academia.

Are we witnessing a radical restructuring of academia? And will The Failed Corporatist forever displace The Weird Nerd? And if this is the case, isn’t this what Metascience should be focused on, first and foremost, given the importance of human capital?

[Joscha Bach @Plinz]

As always, Miyazaki is more descriptive than prescriptive, but The Boy and the Heron is warning three times about the dangers of building substrates for the computation of autonomous minds using tuned linear algebra, rather than generative automata.

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@BayouPhilosophy An object, at a certain and fixed point in time, has certain properties (whatever they are). With time fixed, are these properties absolute to it or are they relative on the interaction from which these properties are observed?

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@BayouPhilosophy Can’t wait to read it!

[Marco Tuccio @marcotux]

@leecronin And autonomous biological intelligent agents are made from non-autonomous non-biological stupid objects, such an irony.