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ned haughton

@ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
19 followers 16 following 69 posts

I'm a climate scientist. I've just spent the last 6 years working in physical climate risk assessment, and now I'm heading back into academia to study how to […] [bridged from fediscience.org/@ned on the fediverse by fed.brid.gy ]

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Reposted by ned haughton
Eric Maugendre on adapting @eric.social.coop.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
#solutions #rootCause #AI #futurism
4 picture meme: 
1. "My genius machine will find solutions to all the world problems". 
2. /computer - "Thinking", 
3. /computer - "You already have all the solutions. You just refuse to implement them to protect the financial interests of the wealthiest 0.001%"
4. Inventor - /unplugs machine, "It just needs some tweaking"
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Reposted by ned haughton
Bastian Greshake Tzovaras @gedankenstuecke.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026
LLMs really have put the academic publishing system of "publish or perish" into a death spiral: arXiv introduces a limit of two submissions per month for 'authors'. Academia has been broken for a long time, but this really lays it bare… Fair Moderation, Equitable Access, and AI: arXiv’s Updated […]
scholar.social
Original post on scholar.social
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026
I missed this little climate science/climate activism kerfuffle when it happened a couple of years ago, but just caught up and damn, this response paper is a BANGER. Some choice quotes: > "striving for value-free science is both unattainable and undesirable" > "scientists who deny the […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026
For any podcast listeners, this one is very good: www.thegreatsimplification.com/epis… Key points: - Efficiency is a bad goal - Resilience (bouncing back after a shock) is a less useful frame than robustness (ability to deal with diverse on-coming shocks). - […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026
RE: mas.to/@snowded/117042034357684582 This post is a pretty amazing way to turn a really unpleasant situation into some thing very useful. Very good insights on the power of connectedness.
mas.to
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Reposted by ned haughton
Moritz Negwer @moritz-negwer.mstdn.science.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2026
Interesting article about #science funders experimenting with lotteries in #grantreview. The main point seems intuitive - expert rankings are noisy and seldom agree, but the system often behaves as if they have perfect discriminative power. Why not simplify the reviewing process and replace […]
mstdn.science
Original post on mstdn.science
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 04/08/2026
Is anyone else in #climate space on #vutuv yet? Fediverse-compatible linkedIn clone. I'm tempted to try it, but not sure I want a .de account. vutuv.de
vutuv.de
vutuv
vutuv is the open business network where professionals connect, share, and get found. Free to join.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 08/05/2026
It is more than a little annoying that neither Cambridge University Press's pages for the IPCC reports/chapters provide only half-complete citation information... Also that the IPCC website doesn't provide any. 🤦 #IPCC #science #Cambridge
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026
This article by Cory Doctrow has me wondering what a Reverse Centaur looks like in academia. I suppose (especially in the light of Hao et al., 2026) it's something like a researcher that pumps out journal articles in high ranking journals, with high citation numbers, but with relatively little […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-21/cult…
abc.net.au
'Cool burns' protect land from severe fire so why aren't more happening?
Insurance has been a major stumbling block to the scaling up of cultural burning, but a breakthrough could be on the way.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2026
Does anyone know if there's a term for a complex adaptive system going off the rails due to internal dynamics? YouTube rabbit-hole style? Where "on the rails" might mean "the intended state" in a social system, or it might mean "sustainable" in an ecological system. #complexity […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2025
ScienceDirect has a *reading assistant* on every article now? WTF? There's going to be a looooot of unpicking to do when this GenAI bubble finally bursts.. #science #genAI
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Reposted by ned haughton
Ruth Mottram @ruth-mottram.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2025
Heh yes. Pretty much this. "Much more will be written about proposals to build massive undersea walls to hold up Antarctic ice sheets, drill bore holes in Greenland to pump out lubricating meltwater, or scatter glass beads over glaciers. As informed and erudite I'm sure this will be, I don't […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 14/08/2025
You're in a dungeon, trying to escape. You come across two doors, with two guards. One of the guards always provides answers with extreme uncertainty, the other always provides answers with extreme complexity. You are allowed one question. Which guard do you talk to, and what question do you ask?
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Reposted by ned haughton
Open Risk @openrisk.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2025
The so-called #digitaltransformation has created malfunctioning societies that reel dazed and confused from the onslaught of "tech". The root cause is not too complicated though. The digital stuff has been outsourced to specialists as with any other technical domain. Big mistake. Digital is […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2025
Watching the Australian Institute of Company Directors Climate Governance Forum remotely, and the hold music during morning tea is like elevator jazz on crack. Wild choice. #AICD
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/08/2025
What books or articles have you read recently that fundamentally shifted the way you think about the world, and how you work in it?
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Reposted by ned haughton
Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2025
It makes me feel more than a little weird that my first reaction to the current Starlink outage is "Oh no did they crash before I could publish my paper about Starlink crashing?!" Academia messes with your head. Really, though, I sincerely hope they didn't start crashing and that the outage […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2025
If you are certain about what you know, then you probably don't know anything interesting. I think.
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Reposted by ned haughton
SellaTheChemist @sellathechemist.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/07/2025
Good to have confirmed that the Paul Nurse, former and incoming head of the #RoyalSociety, wrote to Elon Musk asking him to resign his fellowship. But they then bottled, preferring to focus on “the defence of science”, whatever that means in the circumstances. @StephenCurry is right on the money […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 17/07/2025
Wow. "under conventional positivist frameworks, the majority of the most pressing issues are ignored: non-linear dynamics, multi-stable states, multi-scale behavior, slow/fast variable dynamics on the systems side and adaptive change, surprise and inherent unpredictability on the policy side […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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Reposted by ned haughton
kim_harding ✅ @kim-harding.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 16/07/2025
Giant study finds a research field that’s mostly reproducible www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-… Researchers assessed more than 1,000 results from fruit-fly immunity research published between 1959 and 2011. The majority of findings look verifiable.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 15/07/2025
How does one talk to Serious People in science, policy and finance about complexity and the inescapable interconnectedness of all things without sounding like a crackpot? #complexity #science #finance
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2025
Sometimes I think Medium/Genius style annotations/comment highlights for scientific journal articles would would be a very good idea. Seems like it's not that uncommon for minor bullshit to slip through the peer review and editing process, and get baked in to the corpus. Often this stuff is not […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 26/06/2025
💀💀💀 #AMOS2025
Photo of a conference slide:

Thomas Midgley, Jr. (1889-1944) (photo on right)

- >100 patents
- American Chem. Society - Priestley Medal, Willard Gibbs Award, and fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences
- Developer of Tetraethyllead (leaded petrol) 
- Developer of Freon —or CFCs (inert yet volatile) 
- J. R. McNeill, quote “[Midgley] had more  impact on the atmosphere than any other  single organism in Earth’s history.” 
- 1.1 million deaths due to leaded petrol (UN  report 2011) 
- ~70,000 excess cases of skin cancer per year (~10,000 deaths in 2015)
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2025
What is the point of Quora?
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 24/05/2025
This is all that's left of the Bight Bridge in Wingham... it was a constant all through my childhood there. So many days wagging school to go jump off it in summer. This bridge was 4-5m high, and solid concrete. It's withstood many large floods, but not one […] [Original post on fediscience.org]
Drone shot of the bight bridge emerging from the flood waters. half of it is missing completely.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2025
Floods in Australia be like: #ManningFloods #floods #NSW #Australia #spiders
Picture of a Farmer in flouro, up to his balls in flood water

Caption:
Troy Irwin says it has been a "catastrophic flood". 

Irwin woke up this morning to knee-deep water. His wife was rescued by the State Emergency Service, but Irwin is planning to swim his stallion and pony out of floodwaters, while also collecting a few stray cows along the way.

"I've had beetles in the budgie smugglers trying to have a chop at me, didn't appreciate that," he said.

"I've been covered in spiders, they're all over me. But this time around there's been no snakes.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2025
Manning valley flood: - Old Killawarra bridge on Gloucester road, - new bridge next to it, during construction, and - the high water yesterday... Someone on FB says it's 24m.⁩ Luckily it's only that high there because it's hilly farm land, and that's a […] [Original post on fediscience.org]
Old truss bridge at Killawarrah, over the Manning. About 20m high already.New bridge just after construction. The bottom of the new one is almost as high as the top of the trusses of the old one.Water hitting the underside of the new bridge.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/05/2025
Looking at this crazy flood graph from the Manning River, currently peaking significantly above previous record (last record was in 1921). Anyone know why this flood guage has that weird 12+24 hour cycle? Something to do with the daily cycle? Seems odd.. ⁨ […] [Original post on fediscience.org]
Graph of river depths from the link. It has a regular 12 and 24 hour cycle in the first three days.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 15/05/2025
I have always wanted a Web-of-Trust based internet review system. I want to be able to rate websites/pages for things like reliability/trustworthiness, or innovative thinking. And I want to be able to rate other reviewers as trustworthy. And then I want to be able to see website's reliability […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 07/05/2025
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0i8qj8LZA This first talk with Nora Bateson and @snowded is a joy to listen to. So much accessible wisdom in such a short time. The second talk is also great. #complexity #complexityTheory #systemsThinking #changeMaking
mas.to
Dave Snowden (@snowded@mas.to)
347 Posts, 144 Following, 1.04K Followers · Founder & CSO The Cynefin co.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/05/2025
Are there approaches to modelling systemic physical climate risks that are not based on neoclassical economic modelling? #climateRisk #ClimateEconomics #socialScience #modelling #systemicRisk
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/05/2025
doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104962 This is a cool paper. I've often though plant functional type-type groupings of seem like a weird solution to capturing landscape heterogeneity, and this paper shows that they aren't very effective. Seems like a better solution would be maps of continuous […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2025
I don't use LLMs for anything meaningful (I've tried to, to help understand how it works). I think the reason is something like this: 1. In would be really keen on a computer <-> brain interface. The possibilities are fascinating. 2. But only if it was: - open source, - understandable (not […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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Reposted by ned haughton
Open Risk @openrisk.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2025
@ned Remove any equations Add simple figures Tell stories Avoid jargon Pray to the capricious god of virality If all else fails: sprinkle pictures of cute pets and babies
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2025
Um.. How does one take an 80 page scientific report and turn it into something people will actually read? Asking for a friend #science #scicomm #sciencecommunications
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2025
This is a really cool read. Not entirely sure if there are any practical implications, except that maybe we humans should stop trying to look for simplifying narratives everywhere and start appreciating and embracing diversity in everything. Oh, I guess that's practical […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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Reposted by ned haughton
Dan Stowell @danstowell.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2025
I have resigned as a reviewer for the Royal Society. I encourage others to do the same. Dear editors, Today I saw some news about the Royal Society which made me very uncomfortable. As a result, I am afraid I will withdraw my voluntary reviewing work for Royal Society. I will not after all be […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2025
doi.org/10.54120/jost.234567 Holy crap, the shade thrown in this paper might be enough to solve global warming. #SystemsThinking #academia
scienceopen.com
Editorial: The Four Waves: Then and Now
An editorial on the ongoing debate of the four waves concept and the importance of moving systems thinking as a field toward an empirical standard. Editorials are the views of the author and do not represent the Journal’s views.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2025
Cabrera, Cabrera, & Midgley. (2023). The Four Waves of Systems Thinking. doi.org/10.54120/jost.000051 This is an amazing introduction into the history of #systemsThinking, and into DRSP. Just finished reading this this read it this week, and I think I might be a convert. DRSP seems […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2025
What is the point of these stupid #ai feed bots that just boost posts, but which no one follows? @techoecho @channel_binarylab_io @ai_feed @ai
channel.org
Binary Lab Channel (@channel_binarylab_io@channel.org)
4.72K Posts, 1 Following, 25 Followers · This is custom domain setup test community.
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2025
If: - Calculators delegated our capacity for arithmetic to machines - The camera delegated our capacity for visual memory to machines - The tape recorder delegated our capacity for auditory memory .. - Google and wikipedia delegated our capacity to remember facts .. Then what are LLMs doing? […]
fediscience.org
Original post on fediscience.org
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ned haughton @ned.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 17/03/2025
Whoa.. I've heard the word cybernetics before, but never really clocked what it meant. Now I think I might be working in the field of cybernetics, and .. damn, that's just *cool*. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics #cybernetics
en.wikipedia.org
Cybernetics - Wikipedia
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