Gord McNickle

They did seem to have some trouble with the idea that AI can't really reason right now today, mixed up with it will NEVER be able to reason.

Perhaps they're just repeating what they've heard about current AI as simply a language prediction machine.

Does anyone have data on what university students think about their future for jobs and AI?

Because my students don't always blindly agree with what we read. I wonder if they're using motivated reasoning, hoping that AI isn't going to take jobs from them?

I'd love to see data.

We read Descartes' interactive dualism in the class I teach. He argues (in 1600s) that no machine will ever have a mind because: 1. they can't use language, or 2. reason from knowledge.

The students had to write if they agreed and why, and almost all agreed! Even when pressed about advances in AI

This creek is usually around 20cm deep and is about 2km from the St Lawrence River. I imagine the water table is normally quite high this close to such an enormous river. Canada is in a severe drought.

Excited for my first philosophy meeting in Toronto, bringing ecologists, philosophers and molecular biologists together to try and understand more about transposable elements. I'm kind of wearing two hats here, and it's fun.

Hyper Diversity, Species Richness, and Community Structure in ESS and Non-ESS Communities - Dynamic Games and Applications In mathematical models of eco-evolutionary dynamics with a quantitative trait, two species with different strategies can coexist only if they are separated by a valley or peak of the adaptive landscap...

One of the last scientific papers I'll likely publish. This is a really exciting and important theoretical step forward in community ecology theory which I expect will be thoroughly ignored. #WhyIQuitScience link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As a bonus, as of yesterday, I am officially a resident of Canada again and no longer have to worry about being deported to El Salvidor over what I say on social media. Apparently, I quit being a USA based immigrant academic at almost exactly the right moment. 12/12

So, I will take the harder option: retrain yet again. I need to find out if something was wrong with me as a scientist, or if there is something wrong with the field (or the more interesting option: both!). So, it’s back to school to retrain yet again. 11/n

Unfortunately, I am the kind of maniac that is a dedicated vegan, went into debt to put solar panels on his roof, and – among many other insufferable qualities – apparently blows up his career because of his principles. 10/n

I was faced with a crossroad: the easier option was to give up on my research program and just study something mundane to keep my paycheque (this is what everyone told me to do). 9/n

I think this was a tiny minority of the field, but it was a vocal and toxic minority, and it was enough to really stall my career. It was untenable to keep fighting with people who only seemed capable of arguing in bad faith and clearly did not want to hear anything I had to say. 8/n

As this went on, I was told by multiple funders that they would never fund work on my core research programme no matter what data or models I had. By the end, the most common reason my papers and grants were rejected was personal ad homonym attacks rather than critique of the science. 7/n

Unfortunately, there were a lot of people that seemingly preferred the status quo over novel models. My work had apparently created several actual enemies in science, who did many antisocial things, but most frequently accused me of academic misconduct to try and block my publications. 6/n

Following the data and existing mathematical ideas led me to evolutionary game theory. These models generated lots of novel insights and predictions that were almost often supported by data, but I learnt even more when the models weren’t supported by data. 5/n

So, midcareer, I retrained in maths to develop my own models so I could flesh out verbal arguments others were making into more rigorous mathematical theory so I could better understand and predict unexpected experimental results. 4/n

I spent 20 years as a scientist seeking truth. To me it was a calling not a job. The data led me to some strange, unexpected and exciting places. I kept accidentally designing experiments that did not support the arguments people were making in the literature. 3/n

Something is broken in modern #science that has caused measurably less discovery and innovation over the decades. I personally think that ecology & evolution has more problems relative to other fields. So, I am going to try and study the field itself and its logical and theoretical foundations. 2/n

I am very excited to share that I am starting a PhD in the autumn at the University of Guelph in #philosophy. I will be studying the philosophy of #ecology and #evolution. For those of you who don’t know, I have not been at Purdue since last May, though I decided to quit science long before that 1/n

Imagine a world where leading biologists are interested enough, and have the time, to co-edit a philosophy book. #ShutUpAndCalculate

When science is beholden to the government and political parties for survival. This distorts the work that gets done. I'm struck by how other professionals, such as journalists, worry about such things for their profession, but most scientists don't seem to. #ShutUpAndCalculate

Celebration! Our GenEvo graduate school got renewed! Exciting interactions between molecular and evolutionary approaches ahead, without forgetting theoretical integration. Us being "56% international and 56% female" also feels like a healthy state to be in. There will be PhD positions offered!

A red and yellow maple leaf held between thumb and forefinger in an yellowing autumn wood

Here is a nice leaf

My thread map of these Icelandic fjords is finally done!🤎 Next time I’ll try some machine-learning extrapolation.😅

eros.usgs.gov/media-galler...

Regeneration in the park near that mature tree. It would be cool if these were resistant offspring!

I've also worked on American chestnut, and there mortality is 100% and fast. This seems really different. And frankly, hopeful. Possibly some resistance that natural selection can work with!?

What's the latest on the prevalence of emerald ashborer resistance? I have a 70 year forest demographics dataset where it's clear the population crashed. Yet there's a handful of seemingly perfectly healthy trees scattered among the dead ones, like this one at a park where I go with my dog.

This might be the best conversation I've ever heard about art: www.npr.org/2023/09/27/1...

My first time discovering a paper via Bluesky that I'll be citing. We (@jjmlynarek.bsky.social and I) have similar data establishing effects of celebrity naming on media coverage (stay tuned). 🧪

Once upon a time I was @EcoEvoGames amongst the twittering sauropsids.
I was a biologist.
Here I am now, traveling from the Mastodon, the Threads that bind, and the Xauropsid?
Welcome.