Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in its realization. Populations of organisms are driven toward increased "fitness," a measure of how successfully we reproduce our genetic information. But fitness is a subtle concept, changing with time and environment and interactions with other organisms around us. We talk with biologist Brandon Ogbunu about the best mathematical and conceptual tools for thinking about the messy complexities of evolution, and how modern technology is changing our way of thinking about it.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/18/296-brandon-ogbunu-on-fitness-seascapes-and-the-course-of-evolution/

Brandon Ogbunu received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Microbiology from Yale University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Fullbright Fellowship and was the Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT. He has contributed to a number of publications, including Wired, Undark, and Quanta.

• Lab web site
• Yale web page
• Google Scholar publications
• Wikipedia
• Public talk: What is Lyfe? Towards a Biology of Context & Complexity

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Emergence is a centrally important concept in science and philosophy. Indeed, the existence of higher-level emergent properties helps render the world intelligible to us -- we can sensibly understand the macroscopic world around us without a complete microscopic picture. But there are various different ways in which emergence might happen, and a tendency for definitions of emergence to rely on vague or subjective criteria. Recently Achyuth Parola and I wrote a paper trying to clear up some of these issues: What Emergence Can Possibly Mean. In this solo podcast I discuss the way we suggest to think about emergence, with examples from physics and elsewhere.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/11/295-solo-emergence-and-layers-of-reality/

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Welcome to the November 2024 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable number -- based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good -- and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

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Blog post with AMA questions and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/04/ama-november-2024/

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