Cyberpunk City: Hong Kong & Ghost in the Shell

A third transition in science and the evolving cosmos

Kauffman SA, Roli A. (2023) A third transition in science? Interface Focus 13: 20220063. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0063

Abstract: Since Newton, classical and quantum physics depend upon the‘Newtonian paradigm’. The relevant variables of the system are identified. For example, we identify the position and momentum of classical particles. Laws of motion in differential form connecting the variables are formulated. An example is Newton’s three laws of motion. The boundary conditions creating the phase space of all possible values of the variables are defined. Then, given any initial condition, the differential equations of motion are integrated to yield an entailed trajectory in the prestated phase space. It is fundamental to the Newtonian paradigm that the set of possibilities that constitute the phase space is always definable and fixed ahead of time. This fails for the diachronic evolution of ever-new adaptations in any biosphere. Living cells achieve constraint closure and construct themselves. Thus, living cells, evolving via heritable variation and natural selection, adaptively construct new-in-the-universe possibilities. We can neither define nor deduce the evolving phase space: we can use no mathematics based on set theory to do so. We cannot write or solve differential equations for the diachronic evolution of ever-new adaptations in a biosphere. Evolving biospheres are outside the Newtonian paradigm. There can be no theory of everything that entails all that comes to exist. We face a third major transition in science beyond the Pythagorean dream that‘all is number’ echoed by Newtonian physics. However, we begin to understand the emergent creativity of an evolving biosphere: emergence is not engineering.

* * * * *

Eli Stark-Elster, Earth’s Organisms Developed Via Evolution. Some Theorists Wonder: What if the Entire Cosmos Did, Too? Smithsonian Magazine, August 18, 2026.

Historically, scientists have viewed the cosmos as akin to a rock—complex, perhaps even beautiful, but formed through arbitrary events. Evolutionary cosmologists instead argue that universes, like living organisms, grow and reproduce, spinning off new universes with small variations from their progenitors. In doing so, these cosmic offspring are refined across generations into forms that maximize the number of universes yet to be born. Since the Big Bang, our universe, like any developing child, has been unfurling into an optimal shape.

Under this view, the universe is not a rock. It is an egg.

This analogy comes from Julian Gough, an Irish poet, novelist and musician best known for writing the short story that plays at the end of the video game “Minecraft.” He has recently become a public advocate for and scholar of cosmological evolution. Gough writes a Substack blog, The Egg and the Rock, where he publishes essays, personal updates and predictions about new data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Over a decade ago, Gough began wrestling with the question of why the complexity of our universe has increased over time. “It goes from … a ball of hot gas to building out structures like stars and galaxies,” he says. From there come planets and, on at least one of them, biological life. “That’s a very strange thing for hot gas to do.”

Maybe, he wondered, the universe evolved into its current form. “It seemed to me an evolutionary explanation was the natural one,” he says. “In every sphere, when we discover a self-ordering, self-complexifying system, it turns out it’s had a previous evolutionary history. And why would that not apply to the universe itself?” [...]

Smolin published his ideas in a 1992 paper titled “Did the Universe Evolve?” as well as a 1997 popular-science book called The Life of the Cosmos. Gough found both and read them excitedly. And yet, it seemed as though virtually nothing had come of Smolin’s ideas since. “Obviously,” says Gough, “[I thought] it must be wrong, because it had been 25 years and nobody seemed to be putting it forward as one of the possible mainstream explanations. Then I dug into the literature and realized—oh, my God—it hasn’t been falsified. It just hasn’t been engaged with properly at all.”

Smolin’s theory had not completely vanished. Some futurist philosophers had extended the idea to explain the emergence of complex life from hot gas and stars. Humans exploit increasingly powerful energy sources, a progression they argued could culminate in artificial black holes. If those black holes spawned new universes, then a cosmos capable of producing technologically advanced life might produce more offspring. The progression from hot gas to stars, life and technology could, they proposed, be a product of cosmic natural selection. [...]

On July 8, 2022, four days before Webb released its first data, Gough published his predictions on Substack. Already aware that his amateur background might make him sound unreliable, he feared being publicly wrong. “I was really terrified,” he says. “This could be fantastically humiliating.”

Fortunately for Gough, the results were the opposite. Webb found galaxies forming earlier, faster and in a more orderly manner than standard physics models had anticipated. In November 2022, NASA reported evidence that some galaxies had begun assembling only about 100 million years after the Big Bang, while follow-up observations of a galaxy just 470 million years after the event found an unusually massive black hole—nearly as massive as all the stars surrounding it.

In a 2025 paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists described these discoveries as a “conundrum [that is] part of the larger challenge to understand the stunning prevalence of massive structures and galaxies in the first few 100 million years after the Big Bang.”

There's more at the link. [H/t Tyler Cowen]

Cf. my article, Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted, 3 Quarks Daily, June 20, 2022.

Friday Fotos: The Mystery that is the Bergen Arches

Algorithmic Grammar of Flexible Cognition

🧠🤖New preprint
Algorithmic Grammar of Flexible Cognition:
A Walk through Latent Operationshttps://t.co/pgBHEw0TtB
Flexible cognition moves adaptively btwn cognitive modes. We formalize it as navigation, a walk over latent operations in neural space as much as the environment. pic.twitter.com/7HesQlvV5c

— Ida Momennejad (@criticalneuro) August 21, 2026

Abstract of the article linked above:

Flexible behavior requires moving adaptively between cognitive modes, between memory and generalization, or cached inference and step-by-step reasoning. Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a language to formalize adaptive behavior in terms of learning and meta-learning over states, actions, policies, and rewards, and neuroscience identifies representational geometries of memory and abstraction. However, the unit of analysis remains representations and a few operations or their tradeoffs. This misses the rich compositional operations commonly asso- ciated with prefrontal-hippocampal interactions. What is missing here includes, first, operations as units of analysis; second, higher order operations that can act on entire cognitive maps and representations, transferring structures, reshaping or merging them; and third, a cognitive and algorithmic grammar for the selection, ordering, and composition of operations. Here we examine the intersection of RL, computational neuroscience, and AI interpretability to identify the tools to address this gap. The latent spaces of transformers offer high-dimensional neural spaces as a testbed for composition of functions. Analyzing the order, branching, recurrence, and composition in sequences of algorithmic operations can help cognitive science identify grammar over algorithmic operations. In the other direction cognitive sciences help shift AI evaluation from benchmarks to adaptive paradigms, and AI architecture from input-output and next-token objectives to setting algorithmic operations and grammar as objectives, e.g., next-primitive-prediction.

Waffle, butter, bacon

Deep in the forest by the lake

In Newport Mall, Jersey City

Patterns of shadow , reflection, and refraction

A firetruck in Hoboken

An example of common sense reasoning: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Yesterday day I had a short post about the difference between a narrative and a narrative that is also a story. One of my examples was a statement that’s been circulating as a meme for some time now: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Strictly speaking that’s not a story nor even a narrative. It’s a statement that something is for sale, namely baby shoes that have never been worn. However the statement is of such a nature that we can easily infer a story that led to that statement. That inference is an example of common sense reasoning as the concept is understood in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.

Why common sense? Because no special knowledge is required. Anyone growing up under the appropriate circumstances will possess the knowledge required to infer such a story.

First, one must recognize that it is advertising something for sale. The words, “for sale,” could simply be a statement of fact. But we recognize that such a statement is also an offer, “something is being offered for sale.” The fact that that inference is utterly trivial doesn’t negate the fact that an inference is required to go from the statement of act to the offer. However, if one sees that statement in a newspaper in the appropriate section, its presence in that section constitutes the offer.

Now, just what story are we inferring from the statement? The most likely story is that a couple bought the shoes in anticipation of the birth of a child. The infant died shortly after birth, making the baby shoes useless. Hence they are available for sale, never having been worn.

All of that has to be inferred, the inferences are trivial, but still, they are inferences. Let’s tease things apart. Here’s one possibility:

1. When an infant is expected, preparations must be made.
2. Preparations include buying clothing.
3. Shoes are an item of clothing.
4. Once the infant is born, the items of clothing will be used.
5. If however the infant is stillborn, or dies after birth, the items of clothing will not be worn.
6. In that case something must be done with those items.
7. They could be put up for sale.
8. That would lead to placing an advertisement in a newspaper.
9. The statement “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is such an advertisement.

You could imagine other circumstances, but that seems to me the most likely case. But whatever alternative circumstances you propose, the point is that they must be inferred from the statement. They are not explicit in it. Ordinary language requires scads of such inferences. That requirement is the problem of common sense knowledge as it exists in artificial intelligence.

From the old neighborhood, one of them

What’s the difference between a narrative and a story?

Starting in the 1960s and continuing well into the 1980s (and beyond) we see a renewed interest in stories and narrative across a variety of disciplines, literary criticism (including narratology), folklore, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale was revived by the structuralists, George Lakoff recast it in the terms of formal linguistics in an essay, “Structural Complexity in Fairy Tales” (The Study of Man, 1, 1972), and everyone was reading Lévi-Strauss on myth. One of the questions that came out of this research is simple: What’s the difference between a mere narrative and a story? By the time I stopped following that research in the mid-1980 the question was still open.

According to an informal review by Mark Riedl that’s where things stood as of August 2021, “An Introduction to AI Story Generation” (The Gradient). He defines three key concepts:

• Narrative: The recounting of a sequence of events that have a continuant subject and constitute a whole (Prince, 1987). An event describes some change in the state of the world. A “continuant subject” means there is some relationship between the events—it is about something and not a random list of unrelated events. What “relates” events is not entirely clear but I’ll get to that later.

Story: A narrative that tells a story has certain properties that one comes to expect. All stories are narratives, but not all narratives are stories. Unfortunately I cannot point to a specific set of criteria that makes people regard a narrative as a story. One strong contender, however, is a structuring of events in order to have a particular effect on an audience.

Plot: A plot is the outline of main incidents in a narrative.

Let’s consider a very simple kind of narrative: someone leaves home, travels to the grocery story, purchases some items, and returns home. An actual narrative would mention a specific individual, specific places, events along the way, items purchase, and so forth. By Prince’s definition that’s a narrative because there has been a change of state in the world, several in fact depending on how you count them. Items have been taken from the store and transported home (involving two state changes per item) and money has been transferred from our “protagonist” to the owner of the store (two state changes).

I doubt, however, that anyone would consider such a narrative to be a story. Now consider a Japanese reality show that has been shown on Netflix, Old Enough! Young children, three to six years old, are given simple errands to perform. Going to the store, purchasing something, and returning with it is a typical errand. I have watched a number of these and would consider them stories. Why? Because the errands are challenging for the children. They’ve never done it before, there is no line of sight between home and the story, they have to remember the items, remember to ask for change, and so forth. It’s a challenge for them. We see them confronting and overcoming obstacles, including simply fear. That makes it a story proper.

Note, however, that I watched a video of the journey, one edited to amplify the challenges the children face.  That is to say, the events were edited “in order to have a particular effect on an audience.” It would be easy to write these stories in such simple and reduced form that the “storyness” is completely eliminated, leaving only the bare narrative husk. But someone with only modest story-telling skills could also write these stories in a from that includes accounts of the challenges faced by the children, thus making a story out of a bare narrative.

Now consider a six-word statement that’s been mistakenly attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” However, versions of that statement have appeared as early as 1883. Those six words don’t even give us an event, and yet we seem willing to treat them as telling a story. Why? Because those words lead us to infer something like: the baby shoes were purchased in anticipation of the birth of a child; the child was either still born or died soon after birth; the shoes are no longer needed. Question: At what age is a person sophisticated enough to make such an inference from those words? I doubt that a six-year old would do it.

What, then, is the difference between a narrative and a story? It depends, doesn’t it? How are the events narrated and what can we expect the audience to infer from what is said? It’s not an easy question to answer.

Cream into coffee, three moments

Once again, the appeal of The Rockford Files [Media Notes 164 B]

Once again I find myself working my way through The Rockford Files thinking, “Gee, this is my intellectual comfort food, I should write a post about that.” And once again I discover, “Hey! I’ve already written that post.” And so I have.

That means that, to justify this post, I’ve got to cover new material, so I will. Here’s what I said in that previous post:

Garner is a handsome middle-aged man, six feet and perhaps an inch or two tall. He plays an easy going character, James Rockford, who is masculine without being macho. He can handle himself in a fight, which he frequently has to do, but he’s not a martial artist or a superhero. He’s competent, but vulnerable and takes his lumps. He likes sports, going to games, going fishing, often with his dad. He’s single, but is attractive to women, and kind. He’s had affairs in the past, and has one or three in the course of the show, he may even have been close to marriage.

Much of the appeal stems from the fact that he’s an interstitial character, if you will. He falls between the keys, lives in the cracks. While he makes a living, just barely, he’s not chained to a 9-to-5 job. He’s not been broken to harness.

I also noted that he doesn’t live within the confines of work mode. He’s not a slave to Homo economicus.

Moreover, he’s not married. His police buddy Lt. Becker is married, but Rockford himself is not. We do see Becker’s wife in a handful of episodes, but that’s all. She’s there as an adjunct to Rockford’s relationship with her husband. That’s all she could be in the show. So it doesn’t make sense to have her in too many episodes. She’d be in the way.

But why couldn’t Rockford himself be married? We know that he’s thought about, maybe even came close in the past. But married himself? How would that change the dynamic that makes the show work?

What if he’d married his attorney, Beth Davenport? It seems that they’d dated in the past and she pretty much confessed that she’d thought of him as a husband. Well, if they’d have gotten married, what kind of life would they have lived? I can’t imagine her living with him in that trailer; that’s not at all her style, not at all. Nor can I imagine him living her life style, with the elegant apartment. What of his PI business? Would he have taken it upscale to suit her clientele as a lawyer? I don’t think so.

Now, can I translate that paragraph into a statement about audience preference? That is, whoever finds Rockford appealing, male or female, finds him appealing as he is, an interstitial bachelor who likes women, dates them occasionally, and has longer term affairs, but that’s it. Whatever the basis of the show’s appeal, it’s incompatible with marriage as we currently conceive it.

Now, David Chase wrote and produced many episodes of The Rockford Files. But he’s best known as creator of and writer for The Sopranos. Marriage is central to that show, both Tony’s relationship to his wife and his two children, in addition to his many responsibilities as a gangster. What I’m suggesting is that, in a way, Tony Soprano is a Jim Rockford who’s married. Obviously, they’re very different types of people. Tony Soprano is overbearing, aggressive, and violent in a way that Jim Rockford his not. And if Jim Rockford is interstitial, then Tony Soprano is interstitial on steroids. And where Jim had is lawyer, Beth, Tony Soprano had his psychiatrist, Jennifer Malfi. That’s a very different kind of relationship – and I note that Rockford’s most substantial affair within the show was with a (blind) psychiatrist.

What interests me is that neither Rockford nor Soprano are “broken” to work mode. They make their living in (something like) play mode. I’m thinking something like: If you want to center a program around a Rockford-like character AND have him be married, you have to make him a gangster to do it. That is to say, our conventions about men, women, and marriage are such, that that’s what you have to do.

Do I believe that? Not quite. After all, I just made it up. It’s worth exploring with shows like Breaking Bad and Ozark, both about married couples (forced) to live on the wild side. The Hunting Wives? Sex/Life? Hmmmm....

Friday Fotos: From Wednesday's breakfast run