May 12
Complexity sets traps as it tells stories. Moving faster doesn't tell them better, but gets us to add more complexity, not less.
seen from China
seen from Sri Lanka
seen from Belgium
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Sri Lanka
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from China
Complexity sets traps as it tells stories. Moving faster doesn't tell them better, but gets us to add more complexity, not less.
Dealing with complexity first means knowing what it is. In this first post in the 2025 Summer Series dealing with all we're dealing with, I begin with a look at complexity.
View On WordPress
Avoiding a ghastly future — The Science Show
Avoiding a ghastly future — The Science Show
Just thought I’d share the audio of an interview I did with the famous Robyn Williams of ABC Radio National‘s The Science Show. I’d be surprised if any Australians with even a passing interest in science could claim not to have listened to the Science Show before, and I suspect a fair mob of people overseas would be in the same boat. It was a real privilege to talk with Robyn about our work on…
View On WordPress
The very worn slur of “neo-Malthusian”
After the rather astounding response to our Ghastly Future paper published in January this year (> 443,000 views and counting; 61 citations and counting), we received a Commentary that was rather critical of our article. We have finally published a Response to the Commentary, which is now available online (accepted version) in Frontiers in Conservation Science. Given that it is published under a…
View On WordPress
The key conceptual breakthrough in analyzing the microbiome came with the recognition that the complex array of so many different organisms living together in a community may not be reducible. In other words, it doesn’t appear possible to separate out only one bacterial species from the group, and understand how it functions in isolation. The community works as a whole. For example, some of its members are bacteria that cannot absorb iron, which is necessary for growth. They require iron-binding molecules made by other members of the community to survive. So you can’t grow this guy in a Petri dish by itself.
Disrupting daily routine of gut microbes can be bad news for the whole body