It's a very different perspective when we realize that our bodies consist of an entire ecology of bacteria and viruses that are also passed to our ancestors. Mammals rear their young and as a consequence transfer the microbiome and virome to their offspring.

The Nature versus Nurture is a debate about scientific doctrine. It is a debate about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

The Representation versus Non-Representation shares the same debate. It is also about the correct way of explanation for cognition.

It is also the difference between thinking in nouns versus thinking in verbs. Nature and Representation have deep roots in Western thinking. It is a functionalist and reductionist way of thinking that meets its limits when analyzing complex adaptive systems.

It is perhaps due to this Western bias that concepts from the study of complex systems have had little traction in modern society. It is of course, more than a Western bias, but a human bias to seek out simple causal explanations of this world.

But the world is complex and messy. Spiral dynamics which is an evolutionary model of individuals and society explains how models of the world shape ourselves and our civilization.

In physics, energy is that which is causally invariant or symmetric with respect to time. Said differently, energy is never created or destroyed, it is conserved in the universe.

Now there is a question about information. Is information causally invariant? Does information remain the same with respect to time? To understand this, let's first understand what energy is, then attempt to understand what information is.

The strange thing about energy is that it is this universal currency that seems to be interchangeable between the different forces in nature (i.e. electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravity). It is that thing that makes change possible.

Now let's assume that the universe is computational in nature. That is, anything we see in nature is a consequence of computation. That is, there is computation underneath the physics that is driving the universe to change.

What does it mean then that information is conserved in this computational universe? Also, how is energy conservation related to information conservation?

All Biological life on earth is possible because of a discrete digital mechanism of preservation and replication.

The mechanism of signaling between the superorganism we know of as bacteria and its ongoing war against viruses is through a digital mechanism.

The source of innovation in biology is in this milieu of microbiome and viromes that are ubiquitous in every complex multicellular organism on earth. Humans are walking ecologies and cannot survive stripped of these ecologies.

We can picture this as a cloud of digital interaction that surrounds all of us.

The cells of multicellular creatures however do not communicate in the same way as bacteria. The DNA of mammals are sequestered from daily activity so as to prevent wear and tear.

Abduction is that thought process where we renew our past, question our present, and reimagine our future.

It was C.S. Peirce, a century ago, that coined the use of this term to describe a thought process that would convey hypothesis making.

A little over 50 years ago, proponents of Artificial Intelligence, proposed that deduction would be the core feature of human intelligence. This idea was driven by the bias towards formal logical systems and the emergence of computers.

This approach was in stark contrast to cybernetics (introduced a decade early) that proposed that dynamical systems were a model for intelligence. The descendant of this approach was coined as artificial neural networks.

This dynamical systems approach was later understood as being similar to an induction based thought process. Deep Learning leads to what can be characterized as Artificial Intuition.

On December 29 we were dillucidating here if the drops meant "surprise, relatively neutral expression" or "a negative expression, horror" (Remember: https://t.co/J2gjQjAENw ). Well, December 22 drops seem to clarify it. First, the December 29 drop that generated the confusion 1/*

didn't appear in today drops, while several old ones have been posted again. I would say that all December 22 drops regarding facial expression mean and clarify "surprise". 2/*

More 3/*

And more. So, they didn't point to a negative event, just to one that generates surprise. 4/*

All these drops were completed with a Christmas gift one, confirming the surprise neutral meaning and adding a related positive one connected to the surprise. 5/*

1/23 We haven't had a lot to celebrate during this pandemic. But achieving the milestone of offering vaccine to the over 70s, health and care workers and the most clinically vulnerable just before target date is a huge cause for celebration, given the scale of the achievement.

2/23 When Margaret Keenan got her first jab in Coventry on December 8th last year, who’d have thought that, by Valentine’s Day, we’d have vaccinated over fourteen million people across the UK in just ten short weeks? Amazing, extraordinary and truly, really, world class!

3/23 I’ve been struck by how much joy and relief has been brought to those doing the vaccinations and those receiving them. A GP told me yesterday that nothing had given him greater pleasure in his long career. And that the patient's relief was sometimes overwhelming.

4/23 It's vital to recognise the extraordinary contribution of the staff and volunteers who have made this happen. One of my close family had their jab yesterday and was in awe of the volunteer standing outside in the freezing cold for a four hour shift meeting and greeting.

5/23 What I wanted to share in this thread was the slightly untold story of some of the extraordinary challenges the NHS has had to overcome to deliver this target. Requiring superhuman effort from NHS leaders and staff, way beyond the call of duty. Five challenges set out below.

Can any MP ask the government why early treatment kits to stop viral replication & infection are not made available cheaply & prescription free in pharmacies as they are in India? Is it lives we want to save or is it Big Pharma profits? Because the two are mutually exclusive.

There could even be competing kits, & the decision which to take could be left to doctors & patients, as happens with most medicines. The problem is that there is not one of these kits available cheaply & prescription free anywhere in the West.

Doxycycline, Ivermectin, Azithromycin, Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, omega-3s, all approved as safe drugs decades ago. This is clearly not an issue of safety. It should be left to a doctor's experience & judgement whether they are effective or not, not academia.

A GP could simply state on his website: of all the kits I recommend Kit Z, then Kit Y etc. No need to wait hours for consultations, as soon as the symptoms are clear the self administered treatment begins, and thousands of lives are saved, as well as hospitals remain underwhelmed

There is no need to go to ER or ICU if people can buy early treatment kits from pharmacies. There is no need for any hospital to be overwhelmed. This problem could be resolved in days. There is simply no political will to save lives as it means to go against Big Pharma profits.

Let’s talk about ORGANIC.

Robert Paarlberg’s new book on the food system is out today, and here’s an excerpt.

He’s not a fan of organic, and he makes some good points but misses others.

Here we go.

Organic's biggest shortcoming is that you need more land to grow the same amount of food.

The yield penalty happens in almost every crop, in almost every study.

The gap could narrow with more research/varieties, but it won’t go away.

This has big, bad climate implications.

The second issue I have with organic, which Paarlberg shares, is that its basic criterion is naturalness.

Natural doesn’t mean safe, or even safer. A farming standard based on it forces farmers to sometimes use more dangerous, less effective tools.

On human health, there’s scant evidence that pesticide residues on conventional produce are harmful to consumers (though it’s possible farmworkers could be at risk).

What I don’t want is for folks who can’t afford organic to worry about feeding their kids conventional produce.

On the plus side, Paarlberg acknowledges that the organic standard has some real advantages for animal welfare.

This is why I buy organic animal products.

Many in the organic world would like more regs ensuring animals have decent lives.