Sometimes I think about changing the name of my Substack (“More is Different”), but then I look at the many ridiculously-named blogs that are wildly successful — Numb at the Lodge, Ribbonfarm, Astral Codex Ten, Don’t Worry About the Vase, Slime Mold Time Mold.

For those who aren’t aware, my blog is named after a 1972 article by condensed matter physicist and Nobel Laureate Paul Anderson. The article is about the phenomena of emergence. We all know that everything obeys the laws of physics. Yet, chemistry is not just applied physics, it has its own emergent concepts and laws. Similarly, biology is not just applied chemistry, psychology is not just applied biology, and sociology is not just applied psychology.

During my physics PhD research I was enthralled by emergent phenomena. I started a WordPress blog called “More is Different” around 2012, and the domain moreisdifferent.com was gifted to me in 2015.

I did my PhD in a lab that investigated various properties of liquid water and ice using molecular dynamics simulation and quantum simulation. One of the papers I wrote that I am most proud of dives into exquisite detail describing how water absorbs microwaves. You can’t understand how water absorbs microwaves by looking at just one or even just a dozen water molecules in isolation. The process of microwave absorption can only be understood in the context of hundreds of molecules undergoing a collective rearrangement within a broader dielectric media created by the water itself.

In a 2015 paper in Nature Communications I showed for the first time that liquid water contains short-lived phonons. Phonons are an emergent phenomena - a type of “quasiparticle” that emerges from vibrations in a crystal lattice (in the case of liquid water, the “crystal lattice” is actually a very short-lived network of water molecules connected by hydrogen bonds).

Water exhibits many surprising emergent properties - for instance if you apply pressure to ice it will melt, a very strange phenomena. At different temperatures and pressures water exhibits 14 crystalline solid phases and two amorphous solid phases.

Back in my PhD days I was very interested in topics like cellular automata, statistical mechanics, percolation theory, and chaos theory. A unifying feature of these topics is the emergence of complexity out of simplicity. It’s wonderful discovering how unexpected phenomena can emerge from simple rules. Equally enthralling is observing a very complex phenomena and then figuring out how a few simple rules can generate it.

I was attracted to these topics because I found them beautiful. In fact, I’ve always been a bit of a mystic - I believe in objective beauty, and I believe that it is closely bound up with emergence. Some of the most objectively beautiful phenomena live in a “critical” space between perfectly predictable order and completely random disorder. One might say that the emergent is the beautiful. Snowflakes, trees, clouds, galaxies.

I sometimes dream of being able to retreat somewhere to study such topics again, but alas, more temporal considerations have reared their head. Now I am focused on reducing existential risk from AI as well as dealing with personal health concerns and other practical matters.

Maybe after existential risk has been reduced and aging has been cured and I am fully healthy and secure in my life I’ll feel comfortable returning to dive deep into those topics that once enthralled me and filled me with aw and wonder.

I listened to “How to Rule the World” by Theo Baker, the Stanford undergraduate who blew the lid on the mountains of fraud in neuroscience papers co-authored by Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. It was pretty entertaining and makes a good audiobook. 3.5/5 stars?

Tessier-Lavigne does not come out looking good. He sought to downplay and deny the scope of the fraud that happened repeatably under his watch at every turn. Tessier-Lavigne never seriously took responsibility, in my view, despite Stanford policy saying that co-authors are responsible for what is published under their name. Moreover, there is evidence Tessier-Lavigne knew about some serious issues in his published work years ago (from interactions with Genentech) but decided not to act to have those papers flagged or retracted. A female graduate student who brought issues to Tessier-Lavigne’s attention was dismissed. When the board asked Tessier-Lavigne to resign from the Presidency, he had a bunch of ridiculous demands, like guaranteed funding for his lab. He ended up getting a seven figure golden parachute and is still running a lab at Stanford.

What I found most interesting about this book, however, is Baker’s description of how venture capitalists “court” Stanford students. The lavish mansion parties, dinners, open talk of “ruling the world” and “amassing capital before AI takes over”.

When I first visited SF in 2017, I met with a 22 year old who had just graduated from MIT. He said that a wealthy individual had given him a million dollars to “found a company”. He barely even had an idea, but was given the money because he was an MIT grad (and vibes, I guess). He got the million to finance his move to “the bay” and to provide “runway” to create a company.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Now flash-forward nine years, and what I’ve learned from Baker’s book is that this sort of thing is actually very common. VCs will give large sums of money to students purely based on vibes and the fact they are at Stanford. This system seems really inefficient! But apparently this works to some degree, otherwise I suppose people wouldn’t be doing it.

I saw a VC firm not long ago that only invests in Harvard and MIT grads (tnt.so). A Google search confirms that there are “venture firms” that invest only in Stanford students, only in Harvard students…

It’s interesting how the red carpet is rolled out for graduates from particular schools like Stanford who pass a vibes check and have “high agency”. They are invited to exclusive gatherings with high-status individuals and are given huge sums of money to drop out and start companies.

When I was in High School, I bought into the notion that the top 50 schools were all roughly equivalent. In many ways, that is actually true. I don’t think the quality of the average student at a top-5 school is much different from the quality of a student at a top-20 school - statistically this is almost impossible. If we zoom in on the set of highly capable students, which is massive, which ones get into Harvard seems to be almost entirely a function of luck, connections, and affirmative action, not merit or ability. And certainly the teaching is all roughly equivalent among top 50 schools. When it comes to research, a lot of research shows that middle tier schools are better at providing structured undergraduate research opportunities and wisely investing research dollars compared to top schools.

Yet, students at the very top schools do get opportunities (from VCs, employers, fellowship programs) handed to them on a platter that are very hard to get if you go to a slightly lower ranked school. They get opportunities merely from the prestige of the school. Something smells off about this entire system!