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Yogi Jaeger

@yoginho@spore.social

mastodon 4.7.3

🇨🇭 in 🇦🇹 Life beyond dogma! Free-floating systems thinker & natural philosopher. Antifragilist extemporanian metamodernist. Open science, society & living.

Freelance Researcher, Philosopher, Facilitator & Educator

Associate Faculty, Complexity Science Hub Vienna

#BeyondTheAgeOfMachines #THE_ZoNE #AlgorithmicMimicry #ThePerspectiveStudio

#science #philosophy #philsci #systems #evolution #life #agency #ai #openscience #art #artscience

804 Followers

1107 Following

50 Posts

Joined February 26, 2023

Personal:

https://www.johannesjaeger.eu

Research / Book:

https://www.expandingpossibilities.org

The Zone - Arts & Science:

https://the-zone.at

Consulting / Workshops:

https://theperspective.studio

Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 1w ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Carl_Zimmer/117345065655681591 Using AI for research in the natural sciences or math? This may help solving already well-defined problems, but more likely those anti-human bastards at #Anthropic and #OpenAI will steal your work and scoop you. The true victims: open-ended inquiry, robust knowledge of the world, and your academic career, if you're not playing along with the #ensloppification. This is not going to boost our intelligence, but destroy whatever is left of our grip on reality...

mastodon.social

Carl Zimmer: "Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the n…" - Mastodon

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 18mo ago

Public service announcement: this is *not* a dire wolf.

It is a genetically modified grey wolf made to resemble an extinct species, so a bullshit company can raise more money for their bullshit projects.

#Deextinction is a scam on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. It will *not* help us save endangered species. Instead, we should spend our money on preserving their habitats *before* they go extinct.

Spore by Project Mushroom

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 8mo ago

Es ist höchste Zeit, auf Linux umzusteigen: die Betriebssysteme von Microsoft, Apple und Google werden mehr und mehr zu KI-Spionage-Tools, die den Konzernen die Kontrolle über dich in die Hand geben, statt dir die Kontrolle über deine Hardware.

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000304299/ki-agent-oder-ki-spion-der-gefaehrliche-weg-in-die-totalueberwachung-auf-pc-und-smartphone

@suka_hiroaki@chaos.social schreibt im @derStandard@mastodon.derstandard.at über den ausgezeichneten Vortrag von @Mer__edith@mastodon.world und Udbhav Tiwari von @signalapp@mastodon.world am #39c3 in Hamburg. Das englische Original ist hier abrufbar:

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-ai-agent-ai-spy

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Sharp new article in @404mediaco@mastodon.social by @emanuelmaiberg@mastodon.social quoting @emilymbender@dair-community.social, Mark Bishop, and yours truly about the "Abstraction Fallacy" paper that came out of #Google #Deepmind recently:

https://www.404media.co/google-deepmind-paper-argues-llms-will-never-be-conscious

Generally the article hits the nail on the head, revealing "the divergence between the self-serving narratives AI companies promote in the media and how they collapse under rigorous examination." /1

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Every 1 in 10 artist accounts on #Tidal is already being polluted with fucking AI slop that some morons upload to the platform under the name of a real-existing musician.

Whoever is doing this: fuck you a hundred million times.

I'm all for free expression of creativity. But this ain't it. It's worthless anti-human garbage and any self-respecting streaming service should do everything they can to block this kind of spam.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @mattsheffield@mastodon.social

RE: https://spore.social/@yoginho/116713305282040683 Thank you, @mattsheffield@mastodon.social, for hosting my Cyborg essay (with slightly more explicit title) on your excellent #Flux community platform: https://plus.flux.community/p/the-myth-of-mind-uploading The content remains the same: computationalism is a deluded myth. We won't replace our neurons with machines, we won't upload our brains, and we won't beam ourselves up to the Enterprise in orbit any time soon, because of the way our brains and bodies are organized (and computers are not).

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

I'm immediately reminded of the dire wolf that was NOT a dire wolf. Or Venter's "synthetic" cell, that was just an existing bacterium with an engineered genome. All really impressive technological feats, don't get me wrong. And in some ways probably useful to understand how life works, though it's not clear to me right now in what way. But none of these achievements are anywhere near creating actual synthetic life.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

Are you telling me some #Apple cultists have just realized they're part of a cult? Amazing astuteness.

Kinda cute to see them ponder what's worse: liquid icons, age verification, or >25 yrs of self-inflicted servitude to the designer overlords that failed them.

#enshittification #iOS #surveillancecapitalism

Spore by Project Mushroom

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @mattsheffield@mastodon.social

RE: https://spore.social/@yoginho/116713305282040683 Thank you, @mattsheffield@mastodon.social, for hosting my Cyborg essay (with slightly more explicit title) on your excellent #Flux community platform: https://plus.flux.community/p/the-myth-of-mind-uploading The content remains the same: computationalism is a deluded myth. We won't replace our neurons with machines, we won't upload our brains, and we won't beam ourselves up to the Enterprise in orbit any time soon, because of the way our brains and bodies are organized (and computers are not).

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Last night, I flashed @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social onto my boys' new (well, refurbed) Pixels. 3/4 of the family are now free of #iOS and stock #Android. And good riddance! The five minutes I had to spend in the latter to enable OEM unlocking were already too much for me. What's with that "sign up to Gemini screen" that comes up when you try to shut the phone off. Fuck that. Total #enshittification

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@abucci There are some interesting essays in there. And some complete nonsense, like Froese's irruption thingy. A mixed bag. I'll have a closer look over the summer.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@abucci Duh. It's not even particularly hidden on the website, as these things sometimes are ;) Got it now. Thanks!

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@abucci Hadn't seen this yet. Thanks! $48 for the ebook... I will have to wait till it's available on Anna's Archive. The best biosemiotics-inspired book is still Terry Deacon's "Incomplete Nature." It already describes pretty well what kind of theoretical biology we currently need: one that worries about the dynamics of self-manufacturing living systems...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

I hadn't heard about this kind of #ReverseCentaur before:

"The only winner that emerges are the platforms in the global north [that] capture all the enduring value."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/21/ai-trainers-identity-cost

People should use machines, not the other way around. But the #AI industry is fundamentally anti-human.

It's high time more people realize this.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@cstross@wandering.shop @quixoticgeek@social.v.st Ooooh. Now this is courting controversy...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 3mo ago

Today, I learnt that Fabian Scheidler's excellent "The End of the Megamachine" is available in English! Go read it. This civilization is done. And that's a good thing. https://www.megamaschine.org/en

megamaschine.org

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

Fun times ahead.

"There is no energy transition, no electrification, no green economy. There is no 'next economy' waiting in the wings either. There is just one economy: this one. And when it falters—either due to mineral depletion and peak production, or ecological disaster, perhaps due to climate change, or in this case war—that will be it."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thehonestsorcerer/p/there-is-no-next-economy?r=z9eti&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

open.substack.com

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 5mo ago

Trockenheit plus fehlender Dünger und Pestizide wegen Netanyahu/Trump. Da kann ja nix schieflaufen mit der Ernte.

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000319108/ganz-oesterreich-von-grundwasserstaenden-auf-rekordtief-betroffen

#Österreich #Klimakrise #Irankrieg

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

The are nearer #nuclearwar than ever. And there are only two villains that would start it.

First #Israel, which—in the hands of an ultra-corrupt narcissist nutcase—is most likely to unleash #Samson who killed himself while destroying the temple of Dragon:

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/israel-iran-war-nuclear-weapons

And, second, the much more unlikely option that the fascist horror clowns in possession of the #US nuclear codes bumble into blowing up the world, because they can't argue themselves out of an embarrassing defeat.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

"In case you wondered, this is what the fall of civilizations looks like from the inside."

Some realistic scenarios how this disastrous #iranwar could end. None of them good for anybody...

https://open.substack.com/pub/thehonestsorcerer/p/iran-war-the-chickens-come-home-to

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

RE: @coreyspowell@mastodon.social

This is dangerous and idiotic hubris.

The underlying fallacy is simple: our tech overlords live in their own delusional map of the world, and they are so caught up in their own bullshit "philosophy" that the world is a computer, to be controlled and manipulated at will, that they don't even see the territory anymore.

Small vs. large worlds, as I describe in my book:
https://www.expandingpossibilities.org/an-emerging-book.html

We must go #BeyondTheAgeOfMachines, not into a digital trap.

mastodon.social

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 36mo ago

Replying to

"Unfortunately, by now, PR spectacles (or disasters) like this one abound in our field and greatly outshine any serious theoretical discussions we could be having instead. We're in pretty bad shape overall. It'd be great if more people would see this and do something about it, instead of contributing their own little turd to the whole feces-hurling exercise."

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 36mo ago

Replying to

TL;DR: I think assembly theory has lots of merit and potential, but this particular paper frames its argument in a way which is unfortunate and, frankly, more than just a bit misleading. My personal suspicion is that this has two reasons: (1) the authors hyped up their claims to get the paper published in a glam journal, plus (2) they also overestimate the reach and power of their model in ways which may be detrimental to its proper application and interpretation.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@kendmiller@qoto.org ... universe, which is called "assembly theory." But instead of seeing this as what it is (an interesting model) they claim it is a new theory of physical time. https://aeon.co/essays/time-is-not-an-illusion-its-an-object-with-physical-size In both cases, the models are really interesting, but it is a mistake to claim they *are* the world. This is my main point here. Computation is a powerful tool to model the world. But I have no idea what someone means when they say "physics *is* computation." Probably, it does not mean anything.

Time is not an illusion. It’s an object with physical size | Aeon Essays

Time is not an illusion. It’s an object with physical size | Aeon Essays

Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org ... computation. What you can't see (from within your computational small-world worldview) is that this is by far not all that brains do, nor did brains evolve to do this (most animal brains don't engage in this kind of activity at all, in fact). The logic error: for the brain to be literally a computer, it would have to do nothing but compute (in the Turing sense). As I said above, you simply assume that this is the case, bcs you assume that the whole world is computable ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org ... as evidenced clearly by your article. Physical systems that are not vonNeumann computers (eg neuromorphic chips) can do a whole lot (in fact, infinitely) more than just calculate the set of Turing-computable functions (bcs they can have real-valued parameters). Just because you *can* perform Turing-computations with them, or model them with a computational model, does not mean such systems *are* literally computers.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org ... has shown a long time ago. Life is not computable. Behavioral and evolutionary possibility spaces are not prestatable as clearly defined mathematical sets. Your assumption that every physical process *is* Turing-style computation is making the simple mistake of confusing the map (your model of the world) for the territory (the actual world). Your computationalist worldview is based on a completely unfounded assumption. And it traps you thoroughly within a small world ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org The problem is that this assumption is not supported by any evidence. There are tons of processes and problems in the actual (large) world that cannot be formalized in the sense of Hilbert. One, for example, is how organisms realize what is relevant in their environment: how they pick out the features of the world that are important for their given situation. If you try to formalize that, you get an infinite regress. Same thing with organismic organization, as Rosen ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@axoaxonic@synapse.cafe I'll have to read this more carefully. Thanks for sharing! The abstract gives me strong vibes of map-instead-of-territory though, and the rotten whiff of the Laplacian demon is also succinctly present. I've written about why that ugly demon must die (and should never be allowed to come back again) here: https://www.expandingpossibilities.org/4-death-to-the-demon.html

expandingpossibilities.org

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@kendmiller@qoto.org ... no closure to physics (it remains forever incomplete) & is therefore not formalizable in a way the term "computation" suggests. This is why I find any broad & vague application of the term misleading & restricting. By considering physics as computation, you limit yourself to the syntactic, symbolic realm (a small world where everything is well-defined), but the world we actually live in is full of ill-defined problems, ambiguity, & relevant cues are hard to come by.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org The important difference is between "making a computational model of the ball throw" vs the claim that the ball throw *is* computation, which it isn't, because (a) it has no symbolic content (other than that imputed on it by your model), and (b) it is not necessarily Turing-computable (as you claim without justification; but maybe you realize that classical mechanics, standardly used to describe the ball throw, is not computable because the real numbers are not) ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

An excellent argument by military historian Bret Devereaux why the #IranWar is an unmitigated disaster and was instigated by fools that lack any coherent strategy:

https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Ok. I read the paper carefully and actually really like it. It lays out your conceptual framework very clearly, which allows me to precisely pinpoint the holes in your argument. The fundamental hidden assumption that is simply stated but not justified at all is that algorithmic computation "can be applied to almost any object in the universe." Of course, we can simulate (approximate) anything, like throwing a ball, but the actual ball throw is not literally computation ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Your are right in pointing out that there are various physical implementations of systems that you can use to perform (more or less universal) effective computation. Your brain is one of them. But you're totally wrong in your thinking that this is all that physical systems (incl. your brain) can do. The world is much richer than you think. But you can't see this, because you literally live inside your computational (small-world) model or the large world you actually live in.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

RE: @KimPerales@toad.social

This is called theft. The #US is a rogue state now.

Kim Perales: ""European countries🚨paid billions for US equipmen…" - toad.social

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Thanks! I browsed your paper quickly & find it very useful because it clearly exposes the kind of misinterpretations & unsupported assumptions I'd expect in such an argument. I'll read it carefully, & we can have a genuine discussion. I wonder: how much energy did it cost you to send this link? How much easier would that have been than your repeated whining about my provocations? Why post glib provocations yourself, if you don't want to engage? It all seems a bit odd to me.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org The second error is a simple flaw in your logic: human brains can calculate all computable functions (in theory), therefore the brain *is* a computer (equivalent to a Turing-machine). Copeland calls this the equivalence fallacy. You cite his paper, but apparently have not read or digested that part of it? The theory of computation is explicitly a theory of what *humans* can do by rote (as you write in the paper), so it is hardly a surprise that brains can do effective ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Ah. Dismissive non-engagement again. To clarify whether it is "just a semantic disagreement" we'd have to first know what you actually mean by "computation" and why you think it's useful/reasonable to equate that to all of physics (which, I guess, means the whole of reality). Why so reluctant to tell us? 🤔

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Hmm. I was genuinely curious where you get the idea from that all physical processes must be Turing computable, and why you define a brain that can do effective computation (but also many other things besides) as "literally a computer" (when it is also many other things). I was also interested what you have to say about simulation vs. reality. But I guess that was it from your side?

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@kendmiller@qoto.org Concrete examples: Stephen Wolfram has a model called the "Ruliad," which he considers to be a model of not just this world, but all possible world. But it's 100% computational. So: nope. It remains trapped in a small world and does not even begin to describe what is possible in the real (large) world. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad Similarly, Sara Walker and Lee Cronin have come up with an interesting computational model of chemical complexification during the history of the ...

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org Maybe if you would engage with the actual argument, I'd be less of a pain. Worth a try? I do get the impression that do like to make big sweeping pronouncements, but shy away from constructive discussion, not just with me... If you send a few links to work of yours that clearly outlines your assumptions, I'd be keen to read that.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@kendmiller@qoto.org ... you can ask, and the explanations you consider scientific. Our physical theories become complete descriptions of the world. You become trapped in your small world. That's why computationalists can't even see the point of the argument I'm trying to have with them. The world is large and open-ended, but you can only get a shallow understanding of why that is if you live within your limited model.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org P.P.S. If you don't understand what I mean by organizational vs. information-processing aspects of the brain, think about Weizenbaum's distinction between calculation (that's what computation captures) and judgment (that's what it does not, and was never intended to).

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org P.S. Church and Turing would have very probably hated your interpretation of their theory of computation. Both, to the end of their lives, insisted that computation is about a certain kind of (human) activity, not about the brain or the world.

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 6mo ago

RE: @eff@mastodon.social

No longer a newspaper of record...

mastodon.social

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org So this is *not* "just semantics." Or better: semantics matter a lot in the large world we live in. Your Wittgensteinian definition of the meaning of a term is such a cop-out. "We use the term like this, so that's what it is." Instead, it seems more useful to me to ask, how does the use of a term reflect on the problems we want to solve with it? "Computation" really isn't helpful in this sense, if you want to understand those aspects of the brain which are organizational ...

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@tyrell_turing@fediscience.org ...rather than those connected to the subset of brain processes concerned with actual information processing. In brief, your term "computation" *is* a metaphor & a pretty bad one, limiting you to only a sliver of the world when you should look at a bigger picture. Your paper fails to address this problem, bcs it fundamentally fails to question its own assumptions, while dismissing those of others as not real. Well, they *are* real. Just not in your small world. Consider that?

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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho@spore.social

· 37mo ago

Replying to

@kendmiller@qoto.org Basically, you can have two attitudes towards computation: (1) You can use computational models as tools to understand the world, with all the limitations of the approach that implies. (2) You can come to live in your computational model and mistake it for the world. That's what computationalism is. That's why I call it deluded. It mistakes the map for the territory. It commits what is called the equivalence fallacy. This immediately & radically restricts the questions ...

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