If you're in #Vienna tomorrow evening, @oritpeleg.bsky.social will be giving a public lecture on how fireflies sync their rhythm at @csh.ac.at. Moderated by yours truly. #complexity #collectivebehavior 🧪🦋

As a former #NSF #GRFP I got an email asking about participating in the review process. But what I would like to know is the extent to which decisions are based on scientific merits vs political considerations. We’re living in a time where unfortunately this needs to be explicitly clarified.

Why is political science so adamant that the "issue space" is fixed??? It doesn't have to be, and it's not. This is a central assumption of the spatial voting theory frameworks, and people still cling onto it today. See Martin & Quinn and Poole & Rosenthal. 🧪🦋

Delighted to be here today!

Reading Douglas North and the importance of transaction costs in economic activity, which has played no role in neoclassical theory. Yet, they are prominent in an exchange-based economy.

Because of their superior computing power, #chess computers always beat human players (even if you're Beth Harmon from Queen's Gambit)♟️But also style of play is different, finds a new study: chess engines handle game #complexity fundamentally differently 🧪 The paper: shorturl.at/H8uGo The thread 👇🧵

Korean version of the EPIC page just dropped eltrompetero.github.io/ko/index.html

EPIC — 상호작용과 제약에서 창발하는 현상

생물·사회 시스템의 창발 현상을 연구하는 연구실입니다.

eltrompetero.github.io

Statistical mechanics ~= statistical learning The former aims for minimal complexity in representation, the latter maximal. Thus, one can formulate a statistical mechanics of learning, but not vice versa.

'The aphorism that one may have won the battle but lost the war is encapsulated in the notion of a “Pyrrhic victory.” Costly short-term gains must be balanced against the longer-term uncertainties, opportunities, or challenges that may emerge in competitive environments.' 🧪🦋 doi.org/10.1103/63cv...

Artificial intelligence sustains higher strategic tension than humans in chess

In the study the authors use network analysis to reveal that artificial intelligence systems sustain significantly higher and longer-lasting strategic tension in chess compared to human grandmasters. ...

doi.org

SNU workflow = admin bloat Get email in Korean -> translate copy -> navigate to website -> 2-factor login -> find form -> apply for doc to be issued -> pop-up fails -> install "security" software -> pop-up opens -> security software fails to find printer -> take a screenshot -> uninstall software

In other news, #Seoul National takes faculty dental hygiene very seriously 😁 #facultylife

The EPIC Lab is here

It’s official. The EPIC Lab’s new headquarters are at #Seoul National University’s Department of Physics & Astronomy as of this week. We’re recruiting graduate students! physics.snu.ac.kr/en/research-...

Hell yeah!

Complexity Science Hub@csh.ac.at · 3mo ago

Curious about #Complexity? Then the @csh.ac.at starter pack is for you. Follow our resident scientists, associate faculty, and people from our wider network to stay in the loop. 🧪 go.bsky.app/LvjrjC1 Kudos to @spintheory.bsky.social for contributing to the list!

To #migrate is a decision that depends on others. This has overlooked dynamical consequences. New #preprint with @kushwaha.bsky.social and Woi Sok Oh Collaboration between @csh.ac.at @uwaterloo.ca #NonlinearDynamics #Physics #Complex arxiv.org/abs/2606.30604 (1/5) 🧪🦋

Pulses, waves, and cascades in collective migration dynamics

Decisions to migrate depend on others' decisions. Dependence can produce nontrivial dynamics. We propose a minimal migration model that accounts for social influence alongside individual heterogeneity...

arxiv.org

Thanks for the call out!

Complexity Science Hub@csh.ac.at · 3mo ago

(5/8) That's the impact of studying the Foundations of Complex Systems. And these are the amazing people doing exactly that at the CSH: Stefan Thurner, Jan Korbel, Vito D.P. Servidio, Rudolf Hanel, @spintheory.bsky.social, Markus Hofer, Jan Fialkowski, Gordana Vujović, and Juan José Ochoa Duque.

NYT writes “Testing Truce.” Wouldn’t it be planner to write that the truce has been broken?

Get ready for something EPIC! Starting this fall at #Seoul National University, a new research group will be coalescing. *** For prospective int'l graduate students, apps for the PhD program are open July 6–9; rec letters due July 10. *** #physics #complex #complexity #phd #graduate

In Cordwainer Smith’s Rediscovery of Man, the future is taken back to the past, technology revoked, disease embraced, making civilization “great” again. “I myself was the first man to put a postage stamp on a letter…We watched at the eye -dash machine when cholera was released in Tasmania…”

Had a great time teaching and meeting the folks at @igfae.gal at the summer school and #datascience and #complexsystems

ConIII v4.0 is out 🎉 The Convenient Interface to Inverse Ising — a Python package for pairwise maxent / inverse-Ising inference. New: NumPy 2 + Python 3.13, modern build, reorganized API, docs, and a faster solver. pip install coniii 📖 coniii.readthedocs.io #Python #maxent #compneuro 🧪🦋

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

Exclusive: NSF puts new research grants to top universities on hold

US science funder once again restricts awards to Harvard University and other research institutions.

nature.com

#Turin! This week we’re discussing Computational Social Science in #Italy #complex #physics 🧪🦋 @cs2italy.bsky.social

A preview of "a planet where life has been reduced to absolute simplicity." Karol Jałowchowski, filmmaker of the scientific world, was at @csh.ac.at last year. Here's a preview of his work, a tour through the mind of Complexity Science Hub through an outrageous hypothesis. youtu.be/NhwKDoRUs0c?...

In Places Like This One | Teaser

YouTube video by Karol Jałochowski

youtu.be

Levi-Strauss on the natural environment as a conceptual apparatus that allows “savage” societies to order the world around them. The maps are many but he raises the question of if the logical structures are universal.

Love this attitude: "In 1963 Wilson joined the Cornell physics department and was soon given tenure even though he had hardly published." news.cornell.edu/stories/2013... 1/2

I would like to say I’m shocked about this but this is only the latest in a sequence of actions against common sense and scientific evidence that are beyond the pale.

Kristian G. Andersen@kgandersen.bsky.social · 2y ago

It is worth paying close attention to the new bill "Dangerous Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act" introduced by Senator Roger Marshall. If enacted, it will effectively stop all of virological research, including for vaccines. www.marshall.senate.gov/wp-content/u... 🧵👇

#Peace is fragile. And #conflict is much more #complex than a few world leaders deciding where to shoot missiles or send troops. A little thread coming from our years of work on the #physics of #conflict... 🧪🦋

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.

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...