In this SFI Seminar, Eric Goles of the University of Adolfo Ibáñez explores fungal automata, a cellular automaton model in which information flows only horizontally or vertically. He shows that despite these directional constraints, fungal sandpile automata can simulate arbitrary Boolean circuits and are computationally universal. Watch Goles’s SFI seminar: youtube.com/watch?v=N_HmfSz8…

We are truly standing on the shoulders of Giants today! @drmichaellevin together with @MillerLabMIT "Physicalism has been dead since the time of Pythagoras, and probably long before that." "The basement of all this, I don't think, is math. I think this is behavioral science. I think math is a behavioural science of a certain kind of pattern." "It's a bioelectric code, because the network instructs the patterns of gene expression and cell behaviour and morphogenesis. If you want the system to make an eye on a tadpole's tail, or a flatworm that has two heads… you have a chance to do that." Scientists working at the bleeding edge of bioelectricity at very different scales. They agree stuff, they disagree on stuff. Watch now ⬇️

the dichotomy of applied and pure mathematics is often subconsciously conflated with the distinction between mathematics that requires exact alignment to apply and that which can be fired from the hip. i'd like if we had more tools in pure mathematics that can be hip-fired

What are the preferences of novel in silico and in vivo agents that aren't directly engineered toward a specific set of behaviors? Here is an example, from the world of Lenia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenia) - our new #preprint on agnosiophobia (avoidance of the unknown): arxiv.org/abs/2605.30708 @jessescool_