White Christmas

People don't usually remember to consider mathematics as a protector shield against bad thoughts. But it is one of its less well-known good side-effects. The son wouldn't say so, as the problems he tackles are human problems, which I find much harder and more important. But  what he said yesterday could've come straight from one of my attempts to explain the kind of mathematics I do: we seek patterns and structure, because this is the  way humans have to survive the chaos that's life.

So I recommend keeping at least one or two problems 'on the go' at all times. This, to my mind can be effective, especially in  emotionally charged situations like the holidays. All this accounting of things accomplished or not, opportunities taken or missed, goals and deadlines swashing by, can lead to cyclic feelings of inadequacy. We don't need that, we have enough work to do. Our work is cut-out for us!
 

Retrospective of 2021?

I have a bit of an issue with the Topos Institute blog: I don't like the very staid style,  stodgy and academic. I think blog posts are supposed to be fun, make jokes, have pictures. Even if they're only pictures of weeds in the corner of the garden. So I have not been writing much there. But we just had our end of the year post and this was more fun. The post is linked above and I will repeat my bit below, as I would like to add more pictures than the ones I could fit in the Topos post.

 

2021 was a very difficult year for most of us: the pandemic which looked like it was receding in the Spring (at least it looked like that in California, when the vaccine became available) came back, showing that it hasn’t been tamed. Yet, we hope. But we mourn the thousands and thousands that were taken too soon. The economic crisis, brought about in part by the pandemic, is just starting to unfold. (Economics is always a few steps behind politics: it’s much harder to tell the numbers of deaths it causes.) The climatic crisis catastrophes, not as bad as they were in California in 2020, are still very much with us: we have droughts, wildfires, floods, you name it…

Against this backdrop of suffering, it feels almost inconsiderate to think that I am working exactly on what I wanted to for so many years. It feels good to tell people that the Topos mission is to “shape technology for public benefit by advancing sciences of connection and integration”. And it is great to have similarly minded people to do it with! Topos is still starting, but we believe in community, diversity, equity and inclusion; and we’re working for that. 

 

The challenges are enormous: they go from curbing the arrogance of mathematicians and tech people who think they know how to do others’ work better than themselves, to convincing biologists, social scientists, and humanities researchers that we can bring something to the table, in a respectful manner. But if the challenges are considerable, the payoff is incredible. We hope not only “To invent the future” (as in a previous place), but to invent a just, sustainable and equitable future for us all. Thank you for all the joint work, friends!!

Both Davide and Matteo (far above) and Elena and Wilmer  (just above) are presenting our joint work at SYCO  (Symposium on Compositional Structures) tomorrow and the next day. Good luck friends!

Now this is just one slice of the work. Below to the left, we have our little annotation on NLI group: Katerina, Martha, Annebeth and Livy. To the right Elaine talking at the meeting about 'Women in Logic in Brazil 2019'. 

 

 Now there are several other people that I should be adding pictures of in here. Amongst others Luiz Carlos Pereira, Samuel Gomes da Silva, Jacob Collard and Eswaran Subrahmanian. But I am very tired now, so just one more group picture.

Happy Holidays!