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Ranganaut

@ranganaut.bsky.social
74 followers 42 following 307 posts

Thinkerer, Tinkerer

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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
💯
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
There's hope at the bottom of that box. Will cost a lot of tokens to extract.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thanks for the kind words! Collection followed...
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
2/2 @ronentk.me @mattakamatsu.bsky.social @joelchan86.bsky.social hope to try out a small experiment this fall that will hopefully nudge us in the right direction.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
1/2 Thanks for tagging me here @ronentk.me (I can't reply to the original). I'm hoping that the current system will wither away, first slowly, then suddenly. Funders have a role: if people with $$ say: publish your results continuously rather than sporadically, many things will change.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
OpenAI's announcement of the proof of Navier-Stokes evoked many emotions - from amazement to anger to dread. TLDR; an asteroid is coming for intellectual life as a whole and we need to do something about it.
hyperproblems.com
Shut Up and Prove
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Biological Agency is the central concept of Unicellular Cognition, and perhaps of all of biology in the future. The first Cellosophical Exploration of many on this topic....
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophical Explorations #4: Biological agency
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Love this, thanks for the h/t! This essay and the ground truth essay are giving me lots of ideas - will respond to both of them soon....
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Adventures of a field reporter for @leaflet.pub #3: this week I talk about how some old debates in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind about substrate independence/functionalism are being resurrected in the study of unicellular cognition. As usual, the references are stored in @semble.so.
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophical Explorations #3: The Third Life of Ideas
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Cellosophical explorations 2" is out, continuing @leaflet.pub's field reporter series. I'm fascinated by bacterial chemotaxis & how it might help us unravel the origins of intelligence. Actually, I am fascinated by chemotaxis even if it doesn't tell us anything about intelligence, it's that cool.
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophical Explorations #2
Bacterial Chemotaxis as a model system
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Would love to try it out - among other things, it could also serve as a Disqus like comment section on Leaflet (where the post comes first) and invert the relationship in the community, where the discussion comes first - two views of the same content.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
My first cellosophical exploration as a field reporter for @leaflet.pub & my first foray into @atproto.science via synthetic biology as reported in @quantamagazine.bsky.social and stored on @semble.so. 1st of N updates on Spudcells. Do point me towards people worth talking to/handles to follow!
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophical Explorations #1
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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Remember, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally audiobooks.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
hyperproblems.com
hyperproblems.com
Hyperproblems
Hyperproblems are scientific challenges whose scale, complexity, novelty and interdependence overwhelm traditional research models, requiring new forms of collective intelligence, modeling, coordination and communication.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
You mean electrons ‘elect' to be where they are 😛
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Ronen Tamari @ronentk.me · 17/07/2026
congrats! Really appreciate being able to collaborate on this :)
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Ronen Tamari @ronentk.me · 17/07/2026
Watch this space - @ranganaut.bsky.social is cooking some exciting new ways of doing science!
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
8/n PS: there's a @semble.so collection that goes with the Cellosophy leaflet: semble.so/profile/rang...
semble.so
Cellosophy (by Ranganaut) — Semble
Exploring the origins of intelligence and agency, starting with unicellular organisms such as bacteria, choanoflagellates and other protists.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
7/n Exciting! If you've come this far, you know you want to subscribe to Cellosophy at cellosophy.leaflet.pub
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophy
Cognition and Intelligence in Unicellular Creatures
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
6/n over the coming months, I'm going to explore this intersectional space - diving deep into the science of unicellular cognition, but also covering emerging metascientific infrastructure that makes this new science possible, with some coverage of AI meets Biology meets Cognition for good measure.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
5/n wouldn't it be even better if the new science was created using a new metascience that was truly open, using protocols that @atproto.science would support, and using tools for collaboration such as @semble.so and documented in platforms such as @leaflet.pub? I would think so!
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
4/n which means that not only do we need to do the science, we must simultaneously create metascience infrastructure to do the science in a distributed fashion, so that different labs, theorists, philosophers and other researchers can contribute towards this reframing of mind and life.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
3/n like it or not, this new science is too big for any single lab or even department to address - it's a Hyperproblem as I have called such more-than-wicked problems in another leaflet: hyperproblems.com
hyperproblems.com
Hyperproblems
Hyperproblems are scientific challenges whose scale, complexity, novelty and interdependence overwhelm traditional research models, requiring new forms of collective intelligence, modeling, coordination and communication.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
2/n The new science is the study of intelligence/cognition/mind in unicellular organisms, which is bubbling up in many corners of the academic universe, but yet to have its come to Jesus moment. Is a bacterium is a sentient agent? Perhaps! At the very least, it's an autonomous agent.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
1/n This is such an honor - thanks for showcasing my madcap project @leaflet.pub! Cellosophy (cellosophy.leaflet.pub) began with me asking whether it's possible to do *new science* in a *new metascience* kind of way.
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophy
Cognition and Intelligence in Unicellular Creatures
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I believe the origins of intelligence/mind are to be found in unicellular organisms, aka "Cellosophy." Last week, I created a @semble.so collection and said a @leaflet.pub publication is in the works. Here it is! Soft launch for now- longish thread on the project and the inaugural essay tomorrow.
cellosophy.leaflet.pub
Cellosophy: A Synthetic Philosophy of the Microbial Mind
Cellosophy Essay #1
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
+1 to @leaflet.pub for making it easy to create multiple publications - from dedicated blogs standalone meditations. Anyway, I have been watching the world cup like half the planet and I think a lot about AI, so here's an essay on the World Cup as a metaphor for Being Human in the age of AI.
rajesh.stream
The offside algorithm, or, what the World Cup taught me about our AI future
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
A very well funded sociopath comes to mind: NotebookLM, but yeah...
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Potential low hanging fruit: paste a link into a leaflet doc to turn a @semble.so collection into a webpage that displays the collection as a scrollable native to leaflet gallery
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Leaflet @leaflet.pub · 04/07/2026
Love this kind of @semble.so <> @leaflet.pub workflow! Underrated & something we want to explore more, definitely some cool collab / integrations we could play with for research + sensemaking + publishing infrastructure!
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Leaflet @leaflet.pub · 04/07/2026
👀 whoa sounds very cool!
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
3/3 I hope to explore these questions over the coming weeks and months as I build out the collection on @semble.so and draw more detailed connections and explanations on @leaflet.pub. Bonus: gives me a reason to explore how @atproto.science can be used as infrastructure for emerging science.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
2/3 intelligence is embodied, and the further you go down the rabbit hole of its origins, the more you realize intelligence is tied to metabolism and other biological functions. TLDR; Turns out, bacteria are smart too, just not the way we are. Some people think they might even be conscious!
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
1/3 May I present "Cellosophy" - a new @semble.so collection on the origins of intelligence in unicellular organisms. Soon to be a @leaflet.pub! semble.so/profile/rang... We tend to think of intelligence as something abstract but in reality, you can't divorce it from its material substrate.
semble.so
Cellosophy (by Ranganaut) — Semble
Exploring the origins of intelligence and agency, starting with unicellular organisms such as bacteria, choanoflagellates and other protists.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Submitted my entry to the challenge...Fingers crossed that some leaflets will drop from the Blue Sky 🤞
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Custom domain was my workaround....
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Being able to change the leaflet subdomain (say, some small N # of times) feels pretty basic
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
In contrast, when I tried adding a custom domain to my domain list and that went through without any problem. So is there a problem with adding {subdomain}.leaflet.pub to one's domain list?
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
@leaflet.pub I want to change the leaflet subdomain for one of my pubs. I don't see a way to do so within the pub settings. As a workaround, I tried adding the desired subdomain to my domain list, but there's a glitch - leaflet claims to add it successfully, but it's never available to be assigned.
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
🙏🏾
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Just turned email newsletters on for Hyperproblems - exciting times! hyperproblems.com
hyperproblems.com
Hyperproblems
Hyperproblems are scientific challenges whose scale, complexity, novelty and interdependence overwhelm traditional research models, requiring new forms of collective intelligence, modeling, coordinati...
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
I enjoyed using the full power of Leaflet for this essay. Feature request - I wish it were possible to connect canvas objects like in a whiteboard...
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Leaflet @leaflet.pub · 27/04/2026
Great use of subpages in Leaflet — and a canvas page at the end as map of a series in progress!
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
It’s been a while since my last essay on Hyperproblems - this one is a sequel, but it’s also bringing in ideas that I had set aside a decade ago. Also: I am experimenting with the pages within pages feature of @leaflet.pub to create a layered narrative. 
hyperproblems.com
Epistrons: Knowledge Artifacts for Hyperproblems
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Nucular strategery in particular
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
I looked at Helium and Metformin in my previous two essays; today I take a look at much more primeval commodity - Firewood - and the gendered impact of the Gulf War. www.ranganaut.com/p/polyconfli...
ranganaut.com
Polyconflict #4: Firewood and the Gendered Nature of Polyconflict
I wasn’t planning on writing another essay in the Polyconflict series this quickly, but a twitter thread sparked a reverie on the relationship between the Gulf War, gendered harms and the need for met...
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
The more I investigate the ongoing Gulf War, the more it appears to be a polyconflict, and to echo Tolstoy’s opening line in Anna Karennina: > Every commodity shock is shocking in its own way.
ranganaut.com
Polyconflict #4: Firewood and the Gendered Nature of Polyconflict
I wasn’t planning on writing another essay in the Polyconflict series this quickly, but a twitter thread sparked a reverie on the relationship between the Gulf War, gendered harms and the need for met...
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Would love to have multiple authors - don't see that yet unless I am mistaken - is it on the roadmap?
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
When the metabolic rift leads to a metabolic clash - brief thoughts on an essay by @nilsgilman.bsky.social in FP.
dailyplanet.leaflet.pub
The Daily Planet #129: The Coming Metabolic War
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Ranganaut @ranganaut.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
As I keep saying, while we are waiting to be turned into paperclips, pay some attention to the everyday dystopias being unleashed by AI.
dailyplanet.leaflet.pub
The Daily Planet #129: Everyday Dystopias
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