A slide from a 2018 talk of mine on tipping points. That year, a climate report warned that we might be approaching critical turning points within 12 years. Everything suggests we are getting closer. Action is needed across science, engineering and policy. edition.cnn.com/2018/10/07/w...

Just four years ago, intelligent humanoid robots, robot-driven wars or thinking and talking machines able to mirror us still belonged largely to science fiction. No AGI yet, but the cultural and psychological shock wave of AI is already spreading fast. How far are we from Asimov’s dreams?

What does it mean for a human being to die? How is death connected to different levels/types of consciousness -or its absence? Rather than treating these as separate scenarios, a space of consciousness can help reveal their relationships, as I discuss in my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book.

Can we engineer longer lives without also increasing cancer risk? There is no magic trick, but experiments in mice show that combining telomerase with extra tumour-suppressor genes can extend lifespan while keeping cancer at bay. One example from my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book.

What separates life from death? What makes the cell on the left different from the one on the right? These are questions I explore in my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book. At the cell scale, death begins when the distinction between inside & outside collapses. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Megafires, floods, extreme weather and rising heat deaths were predicted by climate models more than 30 years ago. Now the window for action is rapidly closing, and science warns of a far greater crisis ahead. What are we going to do? repositori.upf.edu/server/api/c...

How can a brain shaped by evolution comprehend the 3.5-billion-yr process that created it? L Dugatkin & @carlbergstrom.com explore how simple rules & historical constraints generated life’s diversity: not perfect, but good enough to endure. @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social ctbergstrom.com/publications...

Si algun dia entrem en contacte amb una altra civilització, els seus cervells seran molt més complexos que els nostres? Potser no. El cervell humà és, en molts sentits, tan extraordinari com és possible imaginar. En parlo al meu assaig d’avui a @ara.cat a.cat

``The nervous system, which probably first evolved as a device to coordinate the behaviour of various cells in multicellular organisms (...) ultimately became able to invent the future''. Always so inspiring to read the great François Jacob. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3...

Can AI help us experiment with the past? “Historical LLMs” trained on texts from earlier periods could act as simulated way to explore how people thought, reasoned, and behaved across history. A fascinating @pnas.org article: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @manlius.bsky.social @brigan.bsky.social

Why is reading so fundamental to the human mind? In this fascinating paper, @standehaene.bsky.social & Co show how literacy reshapes and connects the brain’s visual and language systems. A timely reminder of what education could lose if LLMs replace reading & writing. www.unicog.org/publications...

Where is Wally? After a while, we found our mini orange cat hiding in the neuroscience part of our library. Good choice of topics.

Four years ago, I co-curated the exhibition BRAIN(S)-CERVELL(S) at the #CCCB in Barcelona: an exploration of matter, minds, and other forms of intelligence. Here is my first sketch of its three spaces. It was a wonderful adventure. www.cccb.org/en/w/exhibit...

Is the human brain really an optimal template for AI? Probably not. The connectome is a compromise among competing objectives, shaped by evolution, development, and biological constraints. Check this @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social paper www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @brigan.bsky.social

I just learned Peter Schuster passed away. A great colleague from @sfiscience.bsky.social , one of the smartest people I ever met. He made fundamental contributions to the maths of evolution and origins of life. A great inspiration for all. @josepsardanyes.bsky.social www.santafe.edu/people/profi...

How does nature find Turing patterns? Check in @pnas.org this beautful paper led by @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social Robert Endres on how evolution can search in high-dimensional parameter spaces using oscillations: www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... And here's my comment: www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

We just adopted a new member of the family. This is Wall-E (Wally for short) . A tiny orange cat, apparently very interested in hydrocarbons.

How can an extremely simple equation open the door to virtually infinite complexity? Fifty years ago, Bob May’s classic paper in @nature.com on chaos showed how deterministic rules can generate unpredictability, with deep implications for ecology, physics & beyond. mym.iimas.unam.mx/ramon/docs/M...

The first copy of my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book has just arrived at the office. It explores death in all its forms, from cells to minds, machines, languages and information. A complexity/evolutionary perspective, from Frankenstein to neuroscience. Soon out: www.amazon.com/Endless-Endi...

What kinds of living protocells could be created? In this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, we made a systematic exploration, from Rashevsky and Turing chemical protocells to Ganti's chemoton, Szostak's ribocells, transduction-driven cells & minimal cells royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Is the first artificial cell finally here? In this groundbreaking work lead by @kateadamala.bsky.social the team has been able to create a synthetic cell from scratch, capable of genetically encoded growth and division. An impressive achievement biotic.org/research/spu...

What happens when cells challenge physics instead of merely obeying it? This @natphys.nature.com paper reminds us that life is not just matter arranged in complicated ways, but matter kept away from equilibrium through energy, fluctuations, mechanics and control. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

What is a disease? In our new concept paper, we explore how complex networks, statistical physics, phase transitions and attractors allow us to redefine diseases as multiscale, emergent dynamical states. @manlius.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

What makes a new kind of mind possible? In this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, the authors explain why cognitive transitions are not just moments when animals became smarter, but evolutionary shifts that opened new spaces of cognition. @eplantec.bsky.social pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Can a single cell behave like a Bayesian agent? In this new paper by @maorknak.bsky.social, E Casacuberta & @multicellgenome.bsky.social show that eukaryotic cells trained with reliable cues survived stress better by using Bayesian guesses @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social journals.aps.org/prxlife/pdf/...

How do syntax networks grow? In this paper by @brigan.bsky.social & Co find a sharp transition in typical language networj development, while children with Down & other language impairment scenarios halt before a critical maturation gap. @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social journals.aps.org/prresearch/p...

What is time? How is it woven into the fabric of life? Why does it flow in one direction? After buying it in London in 1991, I still return to this remarkable book. It explores time through thermodynamics, chaos, quantum physics and Turing patterns. A great journey. www.alibris.com/The-Arrow-of...

Will alien intelligence look anything like ours? In this fascinating essay by @dornhaus.bsky.social she explores the idea that complex cognition may be common in the universe, but human-level intelligence could be a rare evolutionary accident. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... @manlius.bsky.social

This theoretical approach (previously in this @pnas.org s.org paper by @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social and Carl Woese www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...) seems consistent with the recent work by @tonigabaldon.bsky.social on the complex paths towards the emergence of LUCA.

How did life arrive at a single, universal genetic code? in this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper, @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social and co suggest that it emerged within a collective network of early replicators that exchanged information long before LUCA. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article...