Alexey Tolchinsky
@tolchinsky.bsky.social
Clinical psychologist and researcher https://alexeytolchinsky.com/
Challenges in clinical psychology and psychiatry? A vast topic to explore with many angles and context. We talked about only a few items. It was most useful and interesting to talk to Anthony Weiss, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, @chrisfields38.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1CI...
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Final version: @bhartl.bsky.social, Leo Pio-Lopez, Chris Fields www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: A fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems
sciencedirect.com
AI has made it easy to construct the form of an academic paper without any true insight, and that’s not going away. We might have to move from peer review to peer recommendation. All papers get uploaded to a server, w/ an overlay where experts point to the good ones. The rest can just be ignored.
Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 3w agoThe anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/
New #paper: rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organ... Mostly unaltered conversation among some great people on the definitions of life.
Commands, predictions, and power lnkd.in/p/eR69Hec7
#fep #predictions #power | Alexey Tolchinsky, Psy.D.
Commands, predictions, and power Karl Friston in his lecture at NPSA congress lecture said that "motor commands are just predictions." Intuitively, this is not an easy thought, we are culturally prog...
lnkd.in
The identity dilemmas of the boundary cells/tissues. An illustration of why conjoined twins often have laterality defects (e.g. heart on the right) by @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIjw...
Computationalism and consciousness with Nic Rouleau, Jaan Aru, and Borjan Milinkovic.
YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content
youtube.com
What is life? Final version is out @blaiseaguera.bsky.social Reed Bender, Karina Kofman link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪
What Lives? A Meta-Analysis of Diverse Opinions on the Definition of Life - Biological Theory
The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of discipli...
link.springer.com
Ever wanted to talk to a gene regulatory network? Ever wonder what they could do in a different context, embodiment, space? New preprint - part of our approach for developing ways to talk to cells, organs, and much much weirder agents: @yanbozhang123.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2605.16321 🧪
Language Game: Talking to Non-Human Systems
Language carries thought and coordination among humans but rarely reaches further along the spectrum of diverse intelligence. Yet non-neural systems -- from gene regulatory networks and microbial cons...
arxiv.org
Finally submitted my response - The Stuff Matters - to the 50(!) commentaries on my 2025 BBS paper 'Conscious AI and biological naturalism'. I'm sorry to all commentators that it took so long. Hopefully the whole caboodle will be published soon. Target paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
An excellent dismantling by @philipcball.bsky.social of the confusing and vague and just generally muddled "selfish gene" metaphor..
Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 2mo agoI have read and enjoyed The Paradox of the Organism by @arvidagren.bsky.social and Manus Patten. I had a lot of thoughts about it, and about selfish genes. Here they are, in a long blog post. homunculusmusic.wordpress.com/2026/05/30/i...
An important breakdown of the foundations, motivations, and strategies of the anti-science movement...
Rebecca Sear@rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2mo ago“Scientists alone can not defeat an anti-science machinery they did not create. What we can do is ask for help. Give guidance. Start acting and hope others will join” open.substack.com/pub/protagon...
Reflecting more on @chrisfields38.bsky.social work on separability - incidentally, this is a key question in considering the Hard Problem of Consciousness to be a real problem. www.linkedin.com/posts/alexey...
Context is key to separability | Alexey Tolchinsky, Psy.D.
Does the Hard Problem of Consciousness exist? This sharp text by Carlo Rovelli is the third time I hear a voice of doubt about the Hard Problem of Consciousness as being the real problem. https://ln...
linkedin.com
New report finds that people with sustained attention play more music. Congratulations to the attention havers! We should pay more for attention lessons!
koenfucius@koenfucius.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew research, using matched musician/non-musician pairs, suggests people who practise playing a musical instrument exhibit small but reliable advantages in sustained attention—both in children and in adults: buff.ly/6K8HjXg
Psych metaphors for cancer In this work, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social suggested a metaphor of DID when describing cancer. Levin, M. (2021). Bioelectrical approaches to cancer as a problem of the scaling of the cellular self. Progress in biophysics and molecular biology, 165, 102-113.
Final forms of 3 new papers! #consciousness #selforganization #cognition #economics and more 🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article...
Brains and where else? Mapping theories of consciousness to unconventional embodiments
Abstract. It is assumed that a useful theory of consciousness (ToC) will explain why consciousness is associated with brains. However, the findings of evol
royalsocietypublishing.org
@chrisfields38.bsky.social on federated inference between semantically diverse agents www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Xy... background www.linkedin.com/posts/alexey...
Chris Fields on Federated inference
YouTube video by Alexey Tolchinsky
youtube.com
A discussion with Anthony Weiss and @chrisfields38.bsky.social on the relationship between the physical energy consumption and Variational Free Energy, as applied to mental health, biology, and social systems. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UnQ... #FEP #energy #thermodynamics #psychiatry
Conversation With Anthony Weiss and Chris Fields
YouTube video by Alexey Tolchinsky
youtube.com
New preprint out! We show how cellular nematic order can be harnessed to program tissue-wide force fields and guide 3D shape transformations. The tissue morphogenesis logic, now engineered into living, programmable materials. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #ActiveMatter #TissueEngineering
I recall several interesting discussions on "bright lines" in various models. This topic has settled in my mind. Here's what I think: alexeytolchinsky.substack.com/p/digitize-t...
On bright lines and smooth transitions
Digitize to stabilize?
alexeytolchinsky.substack.com
For those working with cult survivors, complex trauma and DID, this documentary might be useful. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iPa...
Trust Me: The False Prophet | Official Trailer | Netflix
YouTube video by Netflix
youtube.com
A conversation with @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Mark Solms, Karl Friston, and Richard Watson on forgetting, it's adaptive and maladaptive forms. Forgetting is often misunderstood. It essential for us to be able to function and it is a balancing act. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ci...
Discussion: Richard Watson, Alexey Tolchinsky, Mark Solms, Michael Levin, and Karl Friston
YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content
youtube.com
New discovery! Spoiler alert: Neural dynamics are key. Evidence for predictive computations in a brain hierarchy during a visual search task doi.org/10.64898/202... Work led by @pinotsislab.bsky.social #neuroscience
doi.org
New #preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.01932 "BraiNCA: brain-inspired neural cellular automata and applications to morphogenesis and motor control" @bhartl.bsky.social and Leo Pio-Lopez:
BraiNCA: brain-inspired neural cellular automata and applications to morphogenesis and motor control
Most of the Neural Cellular Automata (NCAs) defined in the literature have a common theme: they are based on regular grids with a Moore neighborhood (one-hop neighbour). They do not take into account ...
arxiv.org
Erik Hoel makes a compelling case for "why sex" as opposed to reproduction via cloning. substack.com/home/post/p-... Some planaria reproduce by asexual fission and they are indeed highly resilient, as @drmichaellevin.bsky.social's work shows. Seems that fission eliminates error accumulation.
IVF epigenetic damage gets worse across generations; The next Project Hail Mary; AI's "odorless" math proofs; Waymo at 100% human oversight? & more
Desiderata #39
substack.com
