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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee
@spintheory.bsky.social
2K followers 780 following 390 posts
Scientist studying life in all its mathematical beauty. Bridging bio+social with physics. At Complexity Science Hub. Former NSF GRFP, SFI postdoc, Austrian Science Fund ESPRIT. PoETs Lab. Associate Editor ACM Social Computing. https://eddielee.co
eddielee.co
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 2d
It’s all open source!

github.com/eltrompetero...
Release Trees and trusses · eltrompetero/innovation
Initial release of code for publication in PRR.
github.com
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 2d
Our work considers more abstract aspects of the way that the space of the possible is connected and how paths of innovation+obsolescence can interfere or speed up the process.

link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...

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Innovation-exnovation dynamics on trees and trusses
Innovation and its complement exnovation describe the progression of realized possibilities from the past to the future, and the process depends on the structure of the underlying graph. For example, ...
link.aps.org
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 2d
It seems that we missed a *very important* factor in our work on #innovation: booze.

A great article on the question of #alcohol and inspired thinking.

www.economist.com/finance-and-...

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Why economists should like booze
A martini doesn’t just steady the nerves after a rollercoaster week
www.economist.com
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 3d
And the kicker,

…Furthermore, it is possible to maintain a sharp distinction between its physical and statistical aspects.”
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 3d
…It is concluded that statistical mechanics need not be regarded as a physical theory dependent for its validity on the truth of additional assumptions not contained in the laws of mechanics (such as ergodicity, metric transitivity, equal a priori probabilities, etc.)…
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 3d
…In the resulting "subjective statistical mechanics," the usual rules are thus justified independently of any physical argument, and in particular independently of experimental verification…
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 3d
“Information theory provides a constructive criterion for setting up probability distributions on the basis of partial knowledge, and leads to a type of statistical inference which is called the maximum-entropy estimate…
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 3d
“INFORMATION THEORY AND STATISTICAL MECHANICS” by E.T. Jaynes is a real classic in #complexity and #complex systems 🧪🦋
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 10d
like the dying fall of a final cadence, like fingertips cautiously retreating before ever landing on a shoulder, the flakes sink into the slick blackness and are soon gone.
spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 10d
A lovely quotation from Han Kang…

As the snow lands on the wet asphalt, each flake, seems to falter for a moment. Then, like a trailing sentence at the close of a conversation…
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Sep 7
Stifter: “genuine freedom, demands the most self-control, the constraint of one’s desires… The foremost, and only enemies of freedom, therefore are all these people who are possessed by powerful desires and urges, which they wish to gratify by any means”
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Reposted by Eddie Lee
philipcball.bsky.social
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · Aug 26
The latest issue of Scientific American is the 180th anniversary, and they have a series of articles about "180 degree turnarounds" in science. Here's mine on RNA.
The "Upended" section of Scientific American, Sept 2025 Philip Ball's article in Scientific American on the rise of noncoding RNA
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Reposted by Eddie Lee
csh.ac.at
Complexity Science Hub @csh.ac.at · Aug 7
#1: 🎡 Vienna in the early 1900s was the center of the intellectual world, the fourth largest city in Europe, and home to “dazzling coteries of thinkers.” ...
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 6
What a great and fun video on echolocation!
afreeparticle.com
Michael Freeman @afreeparticle.com · Jul 31
🍎🧪🎢🧬 Any excuse to share this masterpiece: Mustached Bats Vs The Doppler Effect

Congratulations Tom!
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
Despite deep partisan divides, senators still form bipartisan coalitions on many issues. Politics is multi-dimensional—understanding this helps explain why left vs. right oversimplifies reality.

Paper here -> arxiv.org/abs/2508.02496
Collective contributions to polarization in political voting
Politics around the world exhibits increasing polarization, demonstrated in part by rigid voting configurations in legislatures. The crux of polarization is separation along a unidimensional ideologic...
arxiv.org
spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
We can separate individual behavior from collective patterns. The data shows that the variety of issues voted on has decreased much more than individual senators have become inflexible. This collective change drives most of the polarization we see.
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
Senators don't just fall on a simple left-right line. They have multiple political preferences that can align or clash depending on the issue. Our model captures this complexity using far fewer parameters than traditional approaches.
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
We study political polarization in the U.S. Senate. Finding: polarization isn't only due to senators becoming more extreme—it's because the types of votes have become more divisive.
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
There are widely speaking two approaches to modeling voting. A focus on individual preferences versus interactions. We show these approaches are actually two sides of the same coin.
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Aug 5
A new paper out on arxiv today: "Collective contributions to #polarization in #political #voting"

arxiv.org/abs/2508.02496

#physics #complexity 🧪🦋
Collective contributions to polarization in political voting
Politics around the world exhibits increasing polarization, demonstrated in part by rigid voting configurations in legislatures. The crux of polarization is separation along a unidimensional ideologic...
arxiv.org
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Jul 31
Our paper on innovation/exnovation is up!

journals.aps.org/prresearch/a...
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Jul 31
Another call for scientists looking to move to #Europe:

www.researchireland.ie/funding/glob...

#academicsky
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Global Talent Ireland - Research Ireland
Global Talent Ireland aims to attract exceptional mid-career and established researchers from across the globe to Ireland. Researchers funded through this programme are required to transfer their rese...
www.researchireland.ie
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Jul 31
"In a literal sense it has to be wrong, and in a conceptual sense it fails to convey why effective theories are important...it would be more accurate to say, 'the whole is less than the sum of its parts,' in contrast to the expectation that it be 'equal to the sum of its parts.'"
-Krakauer

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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Jul 31
"Philip Anderson's 'More is Different'...profound ideas are lost when it is invoked to support a rather overworked sense of emergence...'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.'"
-Krakauer

#complexity #emergence
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spintheory.bsky.social
Eddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · Jul 29
Well, not trying to help, but Europe is great. Can highly recommend as an American scientist abroad.