Complexes

//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in  September, 2020 . Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last five years to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems, artificial life, information, evolution, cognition, robotics, and/or philosophy. Interested candidates should send CV and a tentative project/research interests (1 paragraph) to cgg-at-unam.mx by  February 10th  (we need some time for paperwork).  Postdoctoral fellowships are between one and two years (after renewal). Spanish is not a requisite. Accepted candidates would be working at the Computer Science Department ( http://turing.iimas.unam.mx  ) of the IIMAS ( http://www.iimas.unam.mx  ), and/or at the Center for Complexity Sciences ( http://c3.unam.mx/  ), both at UNAM's...

The Center for Complexity Sciences  (C3) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is seeking candidates for a one year researcher position (extensible for a second year). The candidates should have more than ten publications in indexed journals and to have directed at least one thesis (doctorate, masters, or bachelors). Projects can be individual or related to current research at the C3. Interested candidates should send CV and research statement before June 20th to cgg at unam dot mx.

A month late, but I share a draft where we propose a simple measure of antifragility and apply it to random and biological Boolean networks. Spoiler: biological networks are antifragile. Abstract: Antifragility is a property that enhances the capability of a system in response to external perturbations. Although the concept has been applied in many areas, a practical measure of antifragility has not been developed yet. Here we propose a simply calculable measure of antifragility, based on the change of "satisfaction" before and after adding perturbations, and apply it to random Boolean networks (RBNs). Using the measure, we found that ordered RBNs are the most antifragile. Also, we demonstrate that seven biological systems are antifragile. Our measure and results can be used in various applications of Boolean networks (BNs) including creating antifragile engineering systems, identifying the genetic mechanism of antifragile biological systems, and developing new treatment st...

My first philosophical text in years, comments welcome. Information theory has been developed for seventy years with technological applications that have transformed our societies. The increasing ability to store, transmit, and process information is having a revolutionary impact in most disciplines. The goal of this work is to compare the formal approach to information with Buddhist philosophy. Considering both approaches as compatible and complementary, I argue that information theory can improve our understanding of Buddhist philosophy and vice versa. The resulting synthesis leads to a worldview based on information that overcomes limitations of the currently dominating physics-based worldview. Gershenson, Carlos, Information in Science and Buddhist Philosophy: Towards a non-Materialistic Worldview (October 4, 2018). https://ssrn.com/abstract=3261381

I’m turning 40. Given the current life expectancy, statistically it’s about half of my life. A proper moment to reflect on what I’ve done, what I could have done, and what I would still like to do.  The dominating emotion is gratitude: for all that I have experienced, it has been amazing. Grateful to my parents, family, teachers, mentors: my origins. Grateful to my wife, my friends, my colleagues: my companions. Grateful to my children and students: my legacy. So, it is a favorable moment to throw out some unsolicited advice. I’m not saying anything new, so perhaps it is just a reminder list to myself, of what I think is important in life (because I keep on forgetting):  Don’t worry . We’re all gonna die sooner than later. Everything changes, so all that you cherish and and that you despise will vanish. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive, it means that worrying about doing or not doing is not useful for achieving.  Just do it . It is OK to be mistaken ...

The recent dramatic increase in online data availability has allowed researchers to explore human culture with unprecedented detail, such as the growth and diversification of language. In particular, it provides statistical tools to explore whether word use is similar across languages, and if so, whether these generic features appear at different scales of language structure. Here we use the Google Books N-grams dataset to analyze the temporal evolution of word usage in several languages. We apply measures proposed recently to study rank dynamics, such as the diversity of N-grams in a given rank, the probability that an N-gram changes rank between successive time intervals, the rank entropy, and the rank complexity. Using different methods, results show that there are generic properties for different languages at different scales, such as a core of words necessary to minimally understand a language. We also propose a null model to explore the relevance of linguistic structure across mu...

Two generalizations of the traveling salesman problem in which sites change their position in time are presented. The way the rank of different trajectory lengths changes in time is studied using the rank diversity. We analyze the statistical properties of rank distributions and rank dynamics and give evidence that the shortest and longest trajectories are more predictable and robust to change, that is, more stable. Sánchez, S., Cocho, G., Flores, J., Gershenson, C., Iñiguez, G., and Pineda, C. (2018). Trajectory stability in the traveling salesman problem . Complexity, 2018:2826082.  https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/2826082