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The Learnable Universe

Treating AI as a philosophical project by Joscha Bach.

Why do we find ourselves in a universe that has learnable properties? How is it possible for a symbol to mean something? What is the relationship between observation, perception and knowledge? What is agency? What constitutes a self model?

When we approach Artificial Intelligence as a philosophical project, we gain a fascinating and useful perspective on age-old questions of philosophy.

This short presentation will touch on some of these questions and aims to open up a broader space for discussion.

Our speaker, Joscha Bach, PhD, is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher specializing in computational models of cognition and neuro-symbolic AI.

He has taught and worked in AI research at Humboldt University of Berlin, the Institute for Cognitive Science in Osnabrück, the MIT Media Lab, the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.

Continue reading “The Learnable Universe” | >

Hume, Rovelli, and why the quantum world contains no objects

Quantum Mechanics is arguably one of the most successful theories in the history of science, for its predictions are confirmed by countless experiments, making it a cornerstone of contemporary physics. However, a century after its inception, the theory still challenges our classical worldview, offering a counterintuitive description of nature at microscopic scales. Contrary to classical mechanics, where objects are individually distinguishable and possess well-defined attributes at all times, QM speaks about indistinguishable systems with indeterminate properties, superposed states, and non-local interactions. Unsurprisingly, then, questions concerning its ontology, i.e., what fundamentally exists, are still vividly discussed to this day.

Despite its empirical success, however, physicists and philosophers alike enquire whether QM should be considered a true description of the natural world, because this theory is affected by conceptual conundrums and formal difficulties (e.g., the measurement problem). To address such issues, new quantum interpretations emerged from the 1950s. Among the many existing alternatives, here we consider a widely discussed framework that turns thirty this year, Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM).

RQM is motivated by Rovelli’s work in loop quantum gravity, where spacetime is not a substance existing per se, but rather it emerges from a dynamic network of relations, providing a relational perspective of it.

The universal theory of structure: a fundamental ontology for ontic structural realism

Universal nature of structure.

Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) holds that structure is ontologically fundamental, yet it lacks a precise metaphysical account of structure. Returning to the insight that originally motivated structural realism, I develop a new basis for OSR grounded in the metaphysical foundations of mathematics. This approach draws on the principles of ante rem structuralism and their formal axiomatizations to define Structure Theory (ST), the view that structures exist sui generis and constitute the subject matter of mathematics. ST compels OSR to confront its “collapse problem” of distinguishing physical from mathematical structure. I argue for embracing the collapse by adopting the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), which identifies our physical universe as an ante rem structure.

Scientists discover atoms suddenly spinning backward in quantum experiment

Scientists have directly watched angular momentum move through a crystal for the very first time — and discovered a bizarre twist along the way. Using ultra-powerful terahertz laser pulses, researchers triggered tiny atomic rotations inside a quantum material and found that the direction of rotation can unexpectedly flip as momentum is transferred. The strange reversal happens because of the crystal’s underlying symmetry, creating an almost impossible-sounding effect where two rotations combine into one spinning the opposite way.

Why Uploading Creates Only a Clone | Roman Yampolskiy

If your mind could be copied perfectly into a machine, would the uploaded version still be you?

Roman Yampolskiy argues that even a flawless digital upload would only create a copy rather than preserve the original self — raising deeper questions about personal identity, continuity, and whether virtual immortality truly preserves the person who entered the machine.

0:08 Why Uploading Creates a Copy Instead of You.
1:11 The Problem of Personal Identity.
2:27 Why Continuity Matters More Than Duplication.
4:12 Internal Observation and the Sense of Self.
5:11 Why Personal Identity Is Always Changing.

Roman V. Yampolskiy is a tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Louisville’s Speed School of Engineering, where he founded and directs the Cyber Security Lab. Widely credited with coining the term \.

Structural biologists are first in world to visualize key cell protein

University of Cincinnati structural biologists are the first in the world to visualize a key cell protein as part of newly published research from the College of Medicine. The Seegar Lab has become the first to visualize the structure of a regulator protein, iRhom1, bound to the ADAM17 enzyme, using cryogenic electron microscopy housed in UC’s Center for Advanced Structural Biology research facility.

This follows the lab’s work published last year that visualized the structure of ADAM17 bound to iRhom2.

ADAM17 enzyme activity is essential in humans for proper tissue development and immune response, and regulating its activity is a drug target in treating chronic inflammatory diseases. Ectodomain shedding is the fundamental biological process in which enzymes, such as ADAM17, rapidly cleave and release other protein targets from the cell surface, altering cell-to-cell communication.

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