I was once hinted at by a colleague professor that I must be a bad mathematician/theoretical computer scientist if I woke up in the morning to serve the world or society through my research. Everyone knows the good theoretical computer scientists are the ones who forget to get off at the right stop from being so absorbed in their mental masturbation (you’re welcome to ask the internet or any of my past collaborators if they think I’m a good theoretical computer scientist or not). Recently I’ve been attending a number of academic events, some quite prestigious, all about defending science, either against the non-academic barbarians – aka the simple-minded folks out there – or against the reckless academics in there. I used to disagree a lot with bioinformaticians on the meaning of simultaneity in the discrete mathematical model of Boolean Automata Networks. This year I’ve been disagreeing a lot with all sorts of academics with what it means to “stand up for science”. At an Open Science meetup, a PhD student was very eager to have me know how stupid it is of me to say I’m doing research mainly because I think my research can result in more happiness for humanity. I’ve been told that what ‘people’ need is for us academics to tell them what is good for them (eg not sugar, sugar makes ‘people’ happy). Someone has also tried to convince me there are laws in the universe establishing that there is nothing worthwhile research-wise that can come out of a layperson. Laypeople don’t get it. My law of the universe now states that the people I’ve been disagreeing with in 2018 are divided in two categories: people who haven’t yet figured out what science really is and people who haven’t figured out what people really are. In any case, yes I do wake up in the morning because I’m convinced I can make people happier through my very theoretical research on “Causality, time and abstraction in networks”. And no, I won’t give up on laypeople. Until now, the ones I have been blessed to worked with have been challenging my research and the thinking behind it to extents that the bioinformaticians and the theoretical theorists have never come close to.
Principles of In Case of Peace
Burning Science
I like the idea of science being made by living people of the world for living people and the world. This is different from making science “because otherwise what?? we don’t make science?!“, and from making it out of fear of being invaded by dummies.
There are 3 kind of things in a scientist’s world
[This is a draft]
[This post is a part of my intervention at the workshop “Understanding AI and us”, very successfully designed by Christian Djeffal, Stefan Ullrich, Joanna Bryson and Janina Loh, and hosted by the HIIG in June 2018]
Imagine that you are Tycho Brahe in the 16th century. This is not true but let’s say you’ve invented this really cool machine called the telescope that allows you to observe the stars. Continue reading “There are 3 kind of things in a scientist’s world”
If high school science exercises confuse you, there is still hope.
[This post is a part of my intervention at the workshop “Understanding AI and us”, very successfully designed by Christian Djeffal, Stefan Ullrich, Joanna Bryson and Janina Loh, and hosted by the HIIG in June 2018]
Remember physics exercises in high school?
I don’t. I only remember my confusion. And I think a decade or so of experience in scientific research hasn’t changed much to how I’d react to another one of those.
Continue reading “If high school science exercises confuse you, there is still hope.”
Sober science?
[⚠ This is a draft]
[This post is a part of my intervention at the workshop “Understanding AI and us”, masterfully designed by Christian Djeffal, Stefan Ullrich, Joanna Bryson and Janina Loh, and hosted by the HIIG in June 2018]
In an world eagerly waiting for results, and expecting them, it is more rewarding for an academic scientist researcher to keep to the light: to draw new questions and new answers by combining the answers and prolonging the questions that science already has, to produce information in the light of the scientific knowledge that’s already enlightening our (academic) (scientific) appreciation of the world.
If science is the sport of renewing our shared understanding of the world so that we humans can adapt the way we presently interact with it together, then this suggests academic scientific research might be hung-up on its own sort of drunkard’s search.
If so where do we find the darkness in science? and what’s in it?
The practice of peace
Let’s keep the word “peace” to denote a desirable target alternative to war. The previous post was a preparation to the following claim:
Science is the best way to practice peace.
The Problem of Peace
There are countless human and societal initiatives dedicated to addressing the problem of war and conflicts. To my knowledge there aren’t any dedicated to addressing the problem of peace.
To flop out of neutrality or not to
Math and more generally formal scientific terminologies, are to informal (preconceived) interpretations what walls are to tags in Berlin. Continue reading “To flop out of neutrality or not to”
First, let’s get things straight.
[⚠ This is an old draft]
Science is not in papers.
Science is not realistic.
Science does not explain things.
Science is not making progress.
Science is not to be trusted.
Science is not true.
Science is not objective.
Science is perfect.
Science is not rational.
Science is not a way to occupy spotty nerds.
Science is not sophisticated.
Science runs on magic.
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