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John Baez (Nov 25 2022 at 12:58):I'm working with an organization that may eventually fund proposals to fund workshops for research groups working on "mathematics for humanity". This would include math related to climate change, democracy, health, maybe AI risks, etc.
I can't give details until it solidifies.
John Baez (Nov 25 2022 at 13:01):However, it would help me to know a bunch of possible good proposals. Can you help me imagine some?
A good proposal needs:
a clearly well-defined subject where mathematics is already helping some humanity but could help more, together with
a specific group of people who already have a track record of doing good work on this subject, and
some evidence that having a workshop, maybe as long as 3 months, bringing together this group and other people, would help them do good things.
John Baez (Nov 25 2022 at 13:02):I'm saying this because I don't want ultra-vague ideas like "oh it would be cool if a bunch of category theorists could figure out how to make social media better".
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Nov 26 2022 at 10:52):A workshop on categorical methods for emergent effects is something I'd like to see in the near future. Maybe it's a good fit for this?
There's definitely research in this direction already: see Adam, Master, Myers and more depending on how much you're willing to interpret results as pertaining this direction.
I'm wary to name people but this discussion on CT Zulip surely shows there are many people with ideas and would like to work on this.
And finally, I think this topic really needs an in-person workshop to 'catalyze', i.e. lower the activation energy enough to kickstart good results to come out. Again, the above discussion proves people are low-key thinking about this but nobody had 'the' idea yet, though many hints are around. We need to be together for long enough to recognize the pattern.
This theorem by @myers_jaz is likely one of the most important results in applied category theory so far. It gives a sufficient condition for representable behaviour functors to be strict, hence a sufficient condition for emergence to not happen. https://twitter.com/mattecapu/status/1521754567280578560/photo/1
- Matteo Capucci (@mattecapu) Jules Hedges (Nov 26 2022 at 19:00):John Baez said:
I'm saying this because I don't want ultra-vague ideas like "oh it would be cool if a bunch of category theorists could figure out how to make social media better".
Yup, I wish I could do a proposal for open games + environmental economics, but I've already tried and failed more than once to get a collaboration going about that
John Baez (Nov 27 2022 at 15:35):@Matteo Capucci (he/him) wrote:
A workshop on categorical methods for emergent effects is something I'd like to see in the near future. Maybe it's a good fit for this?
I'm mainly imagining topics that are more directly connected to specific human needs. I asked for suggestions on Mathstodon and got these so far:
figuring out how to better communicate risks and other statistical information
improving machine learning to get more reliable, safe and clearly understandable systems
studying tipping points and 'tipping elements' in the Earth's climate system
creating higher-quality open-access climate simulation software
Each topic already has people already working on it. The last was suggested by Terence Tao!
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Nov 27 2022 at 15:36):Cool :) I reflexively thought about ACT buy surely math is a larger space
John Baez (Nov 27 2022 at 15:37):HOWEVER, it hasn't been determined how 'concrete' vs. 'abstract' the topics should be! So if you're interested in a highly abstract idea like 'understanding generative effects', don't be put off by my thoughts here.
Jacob Zelko (Nov 27 2022 at 19:20):Hey @John Baez , not sure how how well this fits but I’m leading an international collaboration involving 80+ million patients to assess health disparities in chronic mental illness and their care across factors such geographic location, race, gender, age, costs, etc. Currently working with AlgebraicJulia folks on tooling that combines aspects of directed wiring diagrams and workflows together to enable more effective multi-site and intercontinental collaboration. Also beginning work to identify equitable representation in disease definitions.
John Baez (Nov 28 2022 at 15:05):That could fit well. Which AlgebraicJulia folks are you working with on this?
Jacob Zelko (Nov 28 2022 at 17:37):James Fairbanks and Evan Patterson!
Jade Master (Dec 24 2022 at 11:45):Jacob Zelko said:
Hey John Baez , not sure how how well this fits but I’m leading an international collaboration involving 80+ million patients to assess health disparities in chronic mental illness and their care across factors such geographic location, race, gender, age, costs, etc. Currently working with AlgebraicJulia folks on tooling that combines aspects of directed wiring diagrams and workflows together to enable more effective multi-site and intercontinental collaboration. Also beginning work to identify equitable representation in disease definitions.
Interesting. Can you tell me more? I am sort of surprised that CT is useful for this
Jade Master (Dec 24 2022 at 11:54):Matteo Capucci (he/him) said:
A workshop on categorical methods for emergent effects is something I'd like to see in the near future. Maybe it's a good fit for this?
There's definitely research in this direction already: see Adam, Master, Myers and more depending on how much you're willing to interpret results as pertaining this direction.
I'm wary to name people but this discussion on CT Zulip surely shows there are many people with ideas and would like to work on this.
And finally, I think this topic really needs an in-person workshop to 'catalyze', i.e. lower the activation energy enough to kickstart good results to come out. Again, the above discussion proves people are low-key thinking about this but nobody had 'the' idea yet, though many hints are around. We need to be together for long enough to recognize the pattern.
This is a great idea for a workshop! I bet there's someone else we could ask for funding for it
Jacob Zelko (Dec 24 2022 at 20:55):Hi @Jade Master -- first of all, love your work with Petri Nets! Amazing work that I am still trying to wrap my head around! Let me ping you in another channel to continue the discussion there so as to not derail John's thread. :smiley:
Jacob Zelko (Dec 24 2022 at 21:15):Conversation continued here: https://categorytheory.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/274877-practice.3A-our-work/topic/Jacob.20S.20Zelko/near/317765429
Steve Huntsman (Dec 24 2022 at 21:39):Jade Master said:
Matteo Capucci (he/him) said:
A workshop on categorical methods for emergent effects is something I'd like to see in the near future. Maybe it's a good fit for this?…
This is a great idea for a workshop! I bet there's someone else we could ask for funding for it