Hannah Tongxin Zeng

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on the atlas — 35

highlights — 115

I had idealistic notions of how scientific search and knowledge synthesis "should work". I’ve been flirting with this entire cluster of ideas including open source web annotation, semantic search and semantic web, public knowledge graphs, nano-publications, knowledge maps, interoperable protocols and structured data, serendipitous discovery apps, knowledge organization, communal sense making and academic literature/publishing toolchains for a few years on and off ... nothing of it will go anywhere.
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
I had to wrap my head around the fact that close to nothing of what makes science actually work is published as text on the web.
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
This skip-and-scan selective processing also explains why agglomerative, auto-generated and compiled visualizations that incorporate a large corpus of papers are not that valuable: most of the sources would’ve been discarded up front.
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
which was entirely different from my non-expert approach to reading papers. It makes sense: If you don't have a strong domain model, you have no map that guides your scan, so you have to read it all top to bottom … like a computer.
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
In industry, open literature reviews are a sporadic, non-standardized task. Professionals spend years building internal schemas of a domain and have social networks for sourcing (ie. discovery) and vetting relevant information if needed.
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
Most knowledge necessary to make scientific progress is not online and not encoded. All tools on top of that bias the exploration towards encoded knowledge only (drunkard's search), which is vanishingly small compared to what scientists need to embody to make progress. Expert and crowd-curated world knowledge graphs (eg. ConceptNet) can partially ground a machine learning model with some context and common sense but that is light years away from an expert’s ability to understand implicature and weigh studies and claims appropriately. ML systems are fine for pattern matching, recommendations an…
The Business of Extracting Knowledge from Academic Publications
Although both countercultures developed impressively thick and wide approaches to problems of meaning, both failed, for the same reason. Systematicity can never succeed on its own terms; it cannot be absolute. Reality is nebulous, and systems cannot fully grasp its variability. The universalism of the countercultures was their undoing. They could not accommodate the growing demand for cultural, social, and psychological diversity. Subcultures could, and did.
Countercultures: modernity’s last gasp | Meaningness
The end of rationalist certainty was not a single event. It came as a series of unexpected, unwanted discoveries, throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Here I cover only some key events: non-Euclidean geometry, Einstein’s general relativity, quantum theory, and the foundational crisis in mathematics caused by problems with infinities and in logic.
The collapse of rational certainty | Meaningness
The promise of rationalism was that everything can be known with certainty, and understood and controlled, by applying the eternally-correct methods of reasoning. This was true enough to bring about the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, reasonably well governed democracies, great advances in health, life expectancy, living standards, human rights, and saner public morality. There was every reason to suppose progress would continue and accelerate.
The collapse of rational certainty | Meaningness
The chemical pollution planetary boundary is the fifth of nine that scientists say have been crossed, with the others being global heating, the destruction of wild habitats, loss of biodiversity and excessive nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists | Pollution | The Guardian
The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years.
Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists | Pollution | The Guardian
The S-C 4020 produced tabular data, graph plotting and design drawings, grid projections, and drawings of axes and vectors; it made previously impossible visualizations possible. Among the works Patterson describes are E. E. Zajac's short film of an orbiting satellite, which drew on the machine's graphic capacities as well as the mainframe's calculations; a groundbreaking exhibit of “computer generated pictures” by Béla Julesz and Michael Noll, two scientists interested in visualization; animations by Kenneth Knowlton and the Bell Labs artist-in-residence Stan VanDerBeek; and Lillian Schwartz'…
Peripheral Vision | The MIT Press
Yet, reading into its hidden computational processes may be inferred from the strategy it adopts on the shared interface of the game board. It is learning new patterns and strategies at lightning speed, and is said to possess a “beautiful” and deft, near “perfect,”[5] manner of play. Commentators have, for instance, praised its ability to focus on the most important part of the go-ban, or its ability to effectively balance tactical versus strategic gains in tight exchanges.[6] These commentaries are a method of reading into the black box of the computer – a reading which, more often than not, …
Allegorithms: an Introduction - Diffractions Collective Blog
Within this interconnected framework of intertwined circuitry, the seeming paradox of a binary distinction between the algorithmic and the allegorical is effectively defused. Furthermore, when time and rhythm of exchange are taken into account, the seeming aporia of the dichotomy between code and language dissipates. As Gregory Bateson writes, “logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored.”[19]
Allegorithms: an Introduction - Diffractions Collective Blog
Only certain individuals, for instance those which McKenzie Wark has termed the “vectoralist class,”[15] may have access to and be able to navigate certain interfaces and thus harness the power of their algorithmic potential.
Allegorithms: an Introduction - Diffractions Collective Blog
Therefore, doesn’t the skeuomorph’s role in facilitating interaction for its user also raise the question as to whether the user itself grasps what s/he or it’ is ‘doing’ through, and with the interface? Ultimately, we see the significance of highlighting how the existence of manipulating and customizing the means of abstraction via interfaces veils ‘the hidden abode of production’ and execution.
Allegorithms: an Introduction - Diffractions Collective Blog
Rather, taking up Fredric Jameson’s view, we regard “allegorical interpretation” as “first and foremost an interpretative operation which begins by acknowledging the impossibility of interpretation in the older sense […]”[7] – a mode of interpretation, a “newer allegory” which is always predicated on the gesture of “transcoding,” and one that is “horizontal rather than vertical,” whose signification always slides to other linguistic discourses and aggregates.
Allegorithms: an Introduction - Diffractions Collective Blog
Adding mechanistic details does not always yield explanatory progress.
Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition | Reviews | Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews | University of Notre Dame
I am calling for abandoning the classical approach of just searching for computational explanations of human behavior without worrying much, if at all, about neural computation. . . . anyone seriously interested in explaining cognition should strive to show how the computations she posits may be carried out by neural processes, to the extent that this can be made plausible based on current neuroscience.
Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition | Reviews | Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews | University of Notre Dame
于是一座座巨构形态的矿场便浩然横亘于田野之间，以极大尺度的实体撑开区块链所构建的价值网络。然而同样伫立于郊野，发电厂，水坝，矿场所构建的是一种功能外化于形态的人造自然。作为替代虚拟自然的实体，比特币矿场则形如一个个闭塞的方盒子，有着如同在拒绝表达的抽象。
区块链下的基础设施：田野币矿与都市升维|INFRASTRUCTURE UNDER BLOCKCHAIN: FIELD INVESTIGATION ON MINING AND URBAN UPGRAD
智人(Homo Sapiens)作为一种大规模群居性物种，协作模式的变化推演了近乎整个人类社会的历史变迁。组织社会学中对于协同模式(Synergertios)的考察有四个相对指标，包括：规模，跨边界，实时性，与强弱关系
区块链下的基础设施：田野币矿与都市升维|INFRASTRUCTURE UNDER BLOCKCHAIN: FIELD INVESTIGATION ON MINING AND URBAN UPGRAD
Finally, underwater instruments (sensors, robots, modems and batteries) are neither cheap nor disposable. This fact may be the single most important feature that (at least for now) distinguishes underwater sensor networks from their terrestrial counterpart, and fundamentally changes many network design paradigms that are otherwise taken for granted.
Underwater sensor networks: applications, advances and challenges | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Underwater communication systems today mostly use acoustic technology. Complementary communication techniques, such as optical [2,3] and radio-frequency [4], or even electrostatic communication [5], have been proposed for short-range links (typically 1–10 m), where their very high bandwidth (MHz or more) can be exploited
Underwater sensor networks: applications, advances and challenges | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
However inefficiently they do it, though, large language models clearly do end up learning a great deal of embodied knowledge through their extensive training on web documents.
Do large language models understand us? | by Blaise Aguera y Arcas | Dec, 2021 | Medium
Thus the people of the community on an island are linked with each other forming the first level of a network: each community is self organized and at the same time remains connected with other communities in the Archipelago, which in turn maintain links with other island groups in the broader Mediterranean sea. All communities in each one of these three levels of connection share the kind of participation that fuels the distributed networks.
kyriaki goni
Markos Zagoraios is the κλειδοκράτορας (keyholder) of the Chora on Sikinos island: he holds the keys of all houses in the Chora and takes care of them when their residents are away, nurturing a network of trust on the island. According to him, cooperation and networks are the way people on the islands of the Archipelago have managed to survive through the centuries.
kyriaki goni
If information such as pathogen genome sequences or synthetic biology protocols is available online, this could make it much easier for malicious actors to build their own pathogens. But even if they’re not online, hackers can also steal sensitive information from the databases of biotechnology companies, universities, and government laboratories.
Superbugs and the risks of biotech: the next pandemic might be lab-grown - Vox
It can be harder to discover your interests than your talents. There are fewer types of talent than interest, and they start to be judged early in childhood, whereas interest in a topic is a subtle thing that may not mature till your twenties, or even later. The topic may not even exist earlier. Plus there are some powerful sources of error you need to learn to discount. Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to? [8]
How to Work Hard
working hard means aiming toward the center — toward the most ambitious problems.
How to Work Hard
The difficulty of figuring out what to work on varies enormously from one person to another. That's one of the most important things I've learned about work since I was a kid. As a kid, you get the impression that everyone has a calling, and all they have to do is figure out what it is.
How to Work Hard
I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.
How to Work Hard
It's straightforward to work hard if you have clearly defined, externally imposed goals, as you do in school. There is some technique to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate (which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and not to give up when things go wrong. But this level of discipline seems to be within the reach of quite young children, if they want it.
How to Work Hard
我常常反省，我可能没有在做「艺术」，我充其量是做出了一种用于讨论「艺术」的仪器与工具。这一次我试图制作与接近的事物是什么呢？我想，如果「艺术」这件事仍然对我有着诱惑，可能就在于它是这样一种徒劳的努力：用最隆重的手段去固定住最易逝的事物，用最不计代价的方式去呈现完全免费的真理，用镶金的肉身去圈住一团被软件模拟出的泡泡。
迟早 / Sooner or Later
The denial of climate change is based, in part, on a persistent refusal to include humanity within the deep flux of artificial planetarium to protect a worldview that gives our culture a particular meaning. The conviction that the worlds cannot be altered is what allows the idea that we are not altering the planet (because we cannot); or, in another variant, that, if it is being altered, then any transfiguration of that properly timeless homeland is a perversion (the problem in any case is that the change is artificial).
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
The denial of climate change is based, in part, on a persistent refusal to include humanity within the deep flux of artificial planetarium to protect a worldview that gives our culture a particular meaning. The conviction that the worlds cannot be altered is what allows the idea that we are not altering the planet (because we cannot); or, in another variant, that, if it is being altered, then any transfiguration of that properly timeless homeland is a perversion (the problem in any case is that the change is artificial).
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
Along these lines, naturalistic fallacies choreograph everything from agriculture to architecture, offering a palliative aesthetic of rehabilitation and reconnection with that intuitive horizon whose loss caused Husserl's anti-Copernican anxiety.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
The understanding of nature as a vital source, by definition never artificial in itself, but later altered by culture, is a reactionary notion that is not opposed to modernity, but remains a persistent theme in the way that the Industrial culture tries to give an account of what its industry means.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
Of all the artificial effects and patterns that really matter, the absolute limits impossible to draw between what is and is not anthropogenic climate change are the most consistent encounter with the artificial.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
The artificial is "anomalous regularity."
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
A resigned commitment to the artificial suggests an ontological turn of a different kind, not one based on the various social constructions of a pluriverse.relativistic, but in the recognition of our own cognition and industry as manifestations of a material world acting on itself in regular intelligent patterns. In this sense, the artificiality that concerns us is not that of the false versus the authentic, but the artificial as the trace of intentionality and design within the patterns of emergence and vice versa. It is a way of recognizing the agency by measuring the regularity of its conse…
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
The very idea of an absolute outside of culture is obsolete, but it persists, and yet the opposite is even more difficult to accept. Since there is no nature, there is no culture either.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
They arise from the recognition that the superstitions upon which pathological forms of planetary management depend prior to 2030 are based on self-delusions regarding the relationship between the natural and the artificial as domains, definitions, qualities and values.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
The question of automation is within the question of climate changeand it cannot be approached in any other way, and vice versa: the question of climate change is within the question of automation and cannot be approached in any other way.
Terraforming (and the transformation of an artificial planet) - Ethic: Ethic
Maybe the way to go was building an intelligence that developed gradually, as in children—seeing and walking first. Perhaps intelligence of many kinds, even the sort that solved theorems and played chess, emerged from the most basic skills
The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark | The New Yorker
Since the beginning of modern birdsong research, the field has focused on male songbirds. Any ornithologist or serious birder working in the tropics could tell you that females do sing, sometimes as frequently as males. However, early birdsong researchers tended to be men and to study species near their universities in the Northern Hemisphere. Men are significantly less likely than women to lead research projects studying female song, and temperate-zone birds show different female song behaviors than tropical birds. Thus, we are missing key behaviors as a result of historical and geographical …
Why We Didn't Know That Female Birds Sing - Scientific American
lots of little explanations
How technology has inspired neuroscientists to reimagine the brain - Vox
Spanish physician Santiago Ramón y Cajal mapped neuron networks in the brain, making truly beautiful drawings. He struggled with the telegraph as a metaphor because his anatomical work showed too much plasticity and flexibility. Instead, he gravitated toward plant metaphors.
How technology has inspired neuroscientists to reimagine the brain - Vox
She would then say, “What number do you want?” And she would then connect that wire to the number you wanted to talk to. So the key point here is that messages can change their destination. The wiring is flexible, in that it alters depending on what you’re doing, and this coincided with a realization of the structure of the nervous system. Some astonishingly beautiful neuroanatomy, with new stains that people were developing, meant they could see these structures under the microscope in particular.
How technology has inspired neuroscientists to reimagine the brain - Vox
The shows led him to his thesis work, part of which revealed that learning the secrets behind magic tricks increased viewers’ enjoyment and made them interested in seeing more magic.
What Does It Take to Fool Penn and Teller? | alum.mit.edu
I'm not recycling a sound (or data), I'm trying to understand it.
Electric + Eclectic : Giorgio Sancristoforo's Radiotone - Perfect Circuit