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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

out of equilibrium, but we are far from a systematic classification. Relevant here is that goal-directed behavior emerges quite naturally out of equilibrium, albeit of a much more limited character than what you discuss.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

For systems in thermal equilibrium, the classification was ~done in the 70s. Since then, we have been working on emergent phenomena out of equilibrium. Then one has the basic problem that one has to consider trajectories, not states (equilibrium=static). We do know various phases that are possible..

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Regarding emergence, you rightly point out that it is sometimes used in a defeatist sense, in particular in relation to mind, agency, and so on. But in fact physicists are systematically mapping out the space of possibilities, which would include the various phenomena you discuss.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I am about halfway through your book, Chapter 8 , so I don't know yet how this differs from your framing ..

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

It's certainly a very minimal definition of agency, but that is where I like to start.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Is agency an essential concept for the effective description of life, e.g at the cellular scale? I am sympathetic, as I showed how it arises quite naturally in stochastic systems. See my Phys Rev E paper arxiv.org/abs/2503.15670 Much more to come on this .. !

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Yes, at Farm Hall! I'm sure your book is great. I didn't know of its existence until one hour ago.

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Reposted by Eric De Giuli

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

What are the foundations of #ComplexSystems & #NetSci, really? Working in this field? Contribute a small set of papers you consider foundational (DOI only): both the obvious and the overlooked matter. 🕒 <10 minutes 👉 Take the survey: manliodedomenico.com/complexity_m... 🧵 1/ more info 👇

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I will have to read your book then, because I thought nothing much of interest was said there.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Nice initiative! I had a similar idea, which was to be "jewels of statistical physics," but focused more on beauty than scientific relevance. FYI I think you cannot submit less than 5 papers for each

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

He said that Planck convinced him to stay, to preserve German science. Given the reasonable expectation that the coming war would be a repeat of the previous one, it makes sense, no? And afterwards, a case of the amnesia that was apparently commonplace, and described in literature, eg. Sebald, Boll.

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Reposted by Eric De Giuli

Stanislas Dehaene @standehaene.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

A new paper from the lab! We use MEG and a "local/global" design in the language domain to ask whether the transitions between words in a sentence are encoded by a shallow transition-probability mechanism, in parallel to a tree-based syntactic mechanism. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Disentangling hierarchical and sequential computations during sentence processing

Sentences in natural language have a hierarchical structure that can be described in terms of nested trees. To compose sentence meaning, the human bra…

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

It is unfortunate that the two types of model are often conflated, and that we do not discuss RG until graduate courses. Are there any undergraduate texts where RG is foregrounded?

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The word “model” hides two different ideas. Some models simplify reality to isolate a mechanism. Others predict universal properties shared by many systems. The renormalization group revealed the second possibility, and explains why simple models can describe Nature at all.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

In the Casimir effect, the force depends only on an energy difference. Zee's book has a simple explanation (naive derivation assumes perfect infinite conductors) and Jaffe has all the details. But for the cosmological constant, there be dragons!

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Published: Noise equals control. I detail an explicit mapping between stochastic systems and control theory, showing how goal-directed behaviour arises from purely causal stochastic systems. Illustrated with stochastic resonance & Brownian ratchets journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

journals.aps.org

Noise equals control

Stochastic systems have a control-theoretic interpretation in which noise plays the role of control. In the weak-noise limit, relevant at low temperatures or in large populations, this leads to a prec...

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

The arXiv preprint is updated to a full-length article (10 pages + 7 pages SI).

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

I will be around at StatPhys and Molveno if you want to chat! ( I am giving a talk about random languages in a ML session )

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

The talk is based on my recent preprint arxiv.org/abs/2503.15670 written in an abbreviated manner for theoretical physicists. I am expanding the preprint to full article length and will update the arXiv soon.

arxiv.org

Noise equals endogenous control

Stochastic systems have a control-theoretic interpretation in which noise plays the role of endogenous control. In the weak-noise limit, relevant at low temperatures or in large populations, control i...

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

In the talk I explain it all in simple language, and reinterpret stochastic resonance & Brownian ratchets with the noise-control mapping.

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

It also solves a conceptual problem in the field theory of stochastic systems, which is the physical interpretation of the `momentum' field that is introduced as a Lagrange multiplier, or via other abstract methods. The field is a control strategy. Agency is part of Nature

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

This solves the conceptual `agency-body' problem of dualism, i.e. reconciling a mechanistic description of biology with an agential one

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

My talk from @bioctrl.bsky.social about the physical origin of agency is uploaded here: youtube.com/watch?v=YY21... TLDR: noise equals control. Nature is constantly sampling control trajectories via noise

youtube.com

Eric De Giuli: Noise equals endogenous control

YouTube video by Biocontrol Seminars

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

@philipcball.bsky.social potentially of interest! This result is very aligned with your perspective, I believe

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Eric De Giuli @ericdegiuli.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I'm very excited about this virtual talk, tomorrow at 11am ET, and open to everyone! I will explain precisely how and why agency is part of Nature, and illustrate the idea with some examples from biology and beyond. No complex mathematics.

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