Jessica Flack
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c4computation.bsky.social
Jessica Flack
@c4computation.bsky.social
Lambent Society Founder | Professor | Hourglass Emergence + Computation | Flourishing | Kitchen Alchemist + Vegetarian | if ‘missing’, check Wilderness
Reposted by Jessica Flack
"Now and again a poem comes like that, like a ball kicked in from nowhere: in this case, I was completely absorbed in writing one of the last of the Oxford lectures when I had this quick sidelong glimpse of something flying past; before I knew where I was, I went after it."
March 17, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
one that is deeper than embodiment—means that also required are a comprehensive micro macro or input output map (to include the dynamics + importantly error due to subjectivity) AND its mesoscale reduction to dominant causal interactions.

More at Babel Blog
jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog
Babel Blog
Working in the liminal spaces. In the shadow of the butterfly. And the reflection of the peak. If you would like to reprint or commission an essay, please get in touch using [email protected]
jessicaflack.wordpress.com
March 17, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
Below, a summary of hard to find subthreads on implications for causality, determinism, + emergence of spacetime following from the intersection of Wheeler's it from bit, Jim's common now + my work (on hourglass emergence, endogenous coarsegraining + collective computation).

x.com/C4COMPUTATIO...
March 20, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
This morning of Two Pi Day I revisited part of a correspondance w Jim exchanged in the weeks before he left us on May 17, 2023. In addition to the usual topics—time, information processing, coarse-graining, IGUSes, collective computation—there were references to Wheeler. . .

x.com/C4COMPUTATIO...
March 20, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
Paper motivating the work by Nobel Prize winner Laughlin @PNASNews on how D'Arcy Thompson's "length problem" could be solved w sound tinyurl.com/yxsw37ns
Critical waves and the length problem of biology | PNAS
It is pointed out that the mystery of how biological systems measure their lengths vanishes away if one premises that they have discovered a way to...
tinyurl.com
March 28, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
The question of how biological systems from cells to organisms 'overcome' spatial or apparent information processing constraints to estimate global variables, compute macroscopic states, or just 'see' the big picture—the forrest + the trees—is one of biology's most dismissed yet important questions.
March 28, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
Self-portrait in negative space—I don’t work in statistical mechanics, particle physics, cosmology, information theory, theoretical computer science, quantum mechanics, or really even in biology, ethology, evolutionary theory, or cognitive science. Rather, I work...more at jessicaflack.wordpress.com
March 28, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
I created this composite image for a talk on coarse-graining in nature. Wheeler discussed his "it from bit" proposal in 1989 @sfiscience, a talk he later turned into the paper.

"Information, physics, quantum: The search for links." philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ….
November 14, 2024 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
Wheeler, who cites Wiliam James, wanted to know how a vision of one world arises out of the information-gathering activities of many observer-participants. Essentially abt collective computation, it's remarkable to think this question could unite physics + biology + even AI. 1/n
November 14, 2024 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Jessica Flack
Jim argued that a sense of time flowing arises from computation—as an entity computes an action (output) from a perception (input), w each image of the environment that an entity captures constituting its 'present'.
November 14, 2024 at 7:00 PM