Niels Van Santen

I've been getting back into the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series after many years, and the most relatable part is how everyday objects like doors and elevators have been imbued with artificial intelligence and it just makes them obnoxious and frustrating to use and everyone hates it.

Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia Several AI scientists have published an open letter calling for a ban on AI use by students.

Belgian AI scientists are advocating *against* the use of AI in academia. “If independent thinking is no longer encouraged at university, where would it?” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Vertical comic structured like flow chart. (1) Einstein had an insight that overturned physics, thus proving his value. (2) I hope *I* have value. I’ll try to have an insight that overturns physics, to check. (3) [Time Passes] (4) Oh no! My insight didn’t overturn physics! But I don’t think I’m worthless… [arrows to two different options] (5a) Healthy Path: Maybe this was not a well-thought-out test of my value. (5b) Path of Ruin: The establishment must be *suppressing* my insight!

Physics Paths

xkcd.com/3155/

To Fight Misinformation, We Need to Teach That Science Is Dynamic Science is a social process, and teaching students how researchers work in tandem to develop facts will make them less likely to be duped by falsehoods

8. This has been a short and honestly rather peevish thread, so if you want read more that has been written in a more equanimous tone, here's a short piece that I coauthored a few years ago, precisely about how we deal with this kind of duplicity.

Screenshot of ChatpGPT page: ChaptGPT Promo: 2 months free for students ChatGPT Plus is now free for college students through May Offer valid for students in the US and Canada [Buttons reading "Claim offer" and "learn more" An image of a pencil scrawling a scribbly and looping line] ChatGPT Plus is here to help you through finals

So OpenAI is actively marketing ChatGPT to students during college finals season in the U.S.

We've talked many (many) times before about the kinds of harm that can come from giving over too much epistemic and heuristic authority over to these systems, but additionally, there's been at least three…

With Behaviors Like These in Complex Systems, Who Needs Mechanisms? A new study of complex systems supports a growing trend that focuses more on analyzing a system’s collective behavior rather than on trying to uncover the underlying interaction mechanisms.

With mechanisms like these, who needs behaviors?

My commentary on the latest by Thomas Robiglio, friends, and @lordgrilo.bsky.social

physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century."
snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

New blog post 🚨

A gentle dive into the mereology of complex systems, Möbius inversion, and a new way to think about higher-order interactions—no prior knowledge needed!
abeljansma.nl/2025/01/28/m...

Niels Van Santen wrote a guide to the use of information theoretical measures in psychology/psychometrics. Any feedback is most welcome!

Simultaneous attacks to research funding and information ecosystems. I discuss on #ComplexityThoughts about the potential consequences.

👉 open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

🎧 creators.spotify.com/pod/show/com...

Short 🧵 1/

Trump’s definitions of "male" and "female" are nonsense science with staggering ramifications "How can you so fully misunderstand basic human biology, and then legislate about it?"

I was interviewed by @msjpauly.bsky.social for @motherjones.com regarding that awful gamete size "sex" executive order. A bit of an explainer here of why the science is so bad, and why that's dangerous:

❄️ Only 10 days to go! ❄️

The 10th edition of the Winter Workshop on Complex Systems is almost here! We're so excited to spend a week full of inspiring science in the beautiful mountains of Lombardy. This year, it's truly a Winter Workshop—snow and all! 🌨️✨

#WWCS25

How Eugenics Shaped Statistics Exposing the damned lies of three science pioneers.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗲𝘂𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀
If you are a statistician, teach statistics, or even just use statistics, this is a highly recommended read.
What a horror story which probably most of us know little about.
nautil.us/how-eugenics...

"Scientists need to recognize that bold presentation, dissemination, and support of scientific knowledge has become both a basic commitment and a political act." 👏👏👏

You're perhaps conflating science (a practice done by political humans) with knowledge (i.e. quantum mechanics doesn't care about your political beliefs)? To see science as a pure, objective thing is attractive, but it seems like a forced seperation between the practice and the practitioner.

Good to know I'm part of the cool kids in at least one respect!

⁉️ DAG Quiz of the Day ⁉️

Find all conditional independencies between nodes implied by the following directed acyclic graph. (Hint: there is an easy way to rule out many potential dependencies.)

Science is neither red nor blue Long before the 5 November US presidential election, I had become ever more concerned that science has fallen victim to the same political divisiveness tearing at the seams of American society. This i...

Let's see if we can hold two ideas simultaneously:

1. Science is of course "neither red nor blue." It's about understanding nature, not partisan agendas.
2. Science is of course "political." Politics is how we make collective decisions, including concerning science.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great list! Thank you for curating this.

New feed on complexity and network science, featuring a host of amazing folks.