Synthetic Daisies Summary for 2020

It has been awhile since I've done a readership post. But as 2020 comes to a close, let's do a Top 10 review of posts and pages for the past 12 months, ranked by readership. 

Top 10 posts for 2020 (by readership). Click to enlarge.

The Carnival of Evolution posts (#46 and #58) and "Playing the Long Game of Human Biological Variation" are the top three posts of all time. "Ratchets in Nature" is the only blog post to be formally cited (2 times according to Google Scholar). Readership seems to be down from years past. Only two of the top 10 posts for the year were actually written this year ("Welcome, Summer of Coders" and "Silver Linings of COVID19"). Another post that made the 11 spot (nearly making the list) was another post from 2020, the post on the ASAPBio Preprint Symposium from September. 

Post on the ASAPBio Session on the "Past, Present, and Future of Preprints" (Post #11 for 2020 by readership). Click to enlarge.

I have also posted a view of the top 10 pages viewed in 2020. The pages were created several years ago, and are not typically updated as much as I would like. The top view was on the "Hard to Define Events Workshop", a session from 2012 hosted at that year's Artificial Life conference. We never followed up on this workshop (it's been eight years!), but might be an interesting thing to create a virtual presence around. A meaning of the blog name, a list of favorite blogs, and various presentations round out the top 10. One more page of note is the "Popular Algorithmics" page, which is an accessible presentation of various algorithms. This is something that might be moved to the Synthetic Daisies Github organization as an open-source collection where people can contribute their own entries (a sort of Wikipedia of algorithms).

Top 10 pages for 2020 (by readership). Click to enlarge.

Aside from code and open-source content related to specific blog posts, the Synthetic Daisies Github organization also hosts the Synthetic Daisies meta-blog. This is meant to be a collection of more substantial content from the original blog, organized thematically and presented in a manner similar to an overlay journal. This includes featured posts and thematic collections, such as posts on Evolution or Models, Philosophy of Science, and Representation.

Check out the Synthetic Daisies meta-blog. Click to enlarge.

That's all for this year. Check us out in 2021 with a whole new set of posts!

Observer-dependent Models @ the Philosopher's Web Cafe

 

I gave a talk called "Observer-dependent Models" to the Philosopher's Web Cafe on December 11. I have made the slides available here, and the recording is here. Thanks to Jesse Parent (Orthogonal Lab Manager) and Charlotte Guo (series host) for hosting. It will be almost like being there (almost). 

The talk involved reviewing and redefining the role of observers in empirical and simulated systems. "Observer" refers mostly to computational agents (agent-based simulation and AI), although many of the ideas introduced here may apply to the analysis of empirical observations (experiments). Here is the abstract:

In many areas of science and philosophy, observers are seen as an integral part of understanding the natural world. Aside from a pedagogical role, observers are seen as less important in computational forms of inquiry. In this talk, I will reconsider a role for the observer in computational models as fully integrated with the agent. perhaps more fundamentally, causal outcomes and system dynamics are seen to be contingent on observers, while empirical observations themselves are dependent upon the actions of observers. As this is an article of faith in some interpretations of quantum mechanics, we extend this to algorithmic systems with a combinatorial solution space. The role for observers in computational and empirical investigations is established superficially using a number of concepts, including cybernetics, embodiment, and perceptual information processing. Then we will be introduced to more concrete examples of observer-oriented computational agents, such as observer-emitter systems and viewpoint networks. Finally, we will discuss how this approach goes beyond constructivism to consider multiple observers, multiple perspectives (relativism), and how they affect the interpretation of results.

There is a lot to follow up on from this talk, including a number of themes to explore within the topic of agent-based observers, with more to come in the new year.