Marshall Abrams
@marshall0i.bsky.social
Philosopher of science, occasional scientist. Phil of:
ev biol, probability, modeling, stat inference. Book: Evolution and the Machinery of Chance. Activity here as private citizen, not as rep of nor supported by employer. https://marshallalmostsurely.com
ev biol, probability, modeling, stat inference. Book: Evolution and the Machinery of Chance. Activity here as private citizen, not as rep of nor supported by employer. https://marshallalmostsurely.com
Pinned
Marshall Abrams
@marshall0i.bsky.social
· Jun 13
My book Evolution and the Machinery of Chance came out two years ago; I haven't posted a summary here 'til now. It's for philosophers of science and biologists interested in questions about the nature and role of #probability in evolutionary processes, esp. #naturalselection. 🐋🌱 #philsci #evobio 1/9
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable group. “Big tech has made their choice.”
www.404media.co/google-has-c...
www.404media.co/google-has-c...
Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable…
www.404media.co
January 2, 2026 at 11:00 PM
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable group. “Big tech has made their choice.”
www.404media.co/google-has-c...
www.404media.co/google-has-c...
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Simply incredible. 6-minutes of airline safety disguised as a soap opera. m.youtube.com/watch?v=2UkT...
Philippine Airlines Inflight Safety Video #PALSafetynovela | Care That Comes From The Heart
YouTube video by Philippine Airlines
m.youtube.com
January 2, 2026 at 8:17 PM
Simply incredible. 6-minutes of airline safety disguised as a soap opera. m.youtube.com/watch?v=2UkT...
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
📢 @barnesandnoble.com is offering 25% off 📙 preorders from today through January 1st. You can get The Organism–Environment Pairing at a discount! Many thanks for supporting @mitpress.bsky.social—we need university presses now more than ever! 👇 www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-organi... #HPS #philsky 📚💙
The Organism-Environment Pairing: A Historical and Philosophical Reappraisal|Paperback
A historical and philosophical exploration of the organism-environment relationship and its role in shaping biological thought.In this first systematic book-length examination of the organism-environm...
www.barnesandnoble.com
December 30, 2025 at 7:22 PM
📢 @barnesandnoble.com is offering 25% off 📙 preorders from today through January 1st. You can get The Organism–Environment Pairing at a discount! Many thanks for supporting @mitpress.bsky.social—we need university presses now more than ever! 👇 www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-organi... #HPS #philsky 📚💙
🧪Free audio article “Toward a Biological Theory of Everything” is out. If anyone is out there listening, please let me know. I may be reading into the void, and I’ll keep doing it, but it would be awesome to know if there's anyone out there.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
#science #philsky #writing
substack.com/home/post/p-...
#science #philsky #writing
December 30, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
For the interdisciplinary scientists at the Max Planck Society's little known North Pole Institute of Christmas Studies, this is always an especially busy time of year.
Exclusive report by @tomgauld.bsky.social:
Exclusive report by @tomgauld.bsky.social:
December 24, 2025 at 10:15 PM
For the interdisciplinary scientists at the Max Planck Society's little known North Pole Institute of Christmas Studies, this is always an especially busy time of year.
Exclusive report by @tomgauld.bsky.social:
Exclusive report by @tomgauld.bsky.social:
This thread might be of interest to #hpbio folks.
Biologists who teach: in what order do you teach the four forces of evolution? Genetic drift first or selection first? And I'm still struggling to smoothly fit in HWE so that its utility is emphasized (students focus so much on how likely it is that assumptions are violated).
#iteachbio 🧪 #Evolution
#iteachbio 🧪 #Evolution
December 22, 2025 at 5:44 PM
This thread might be of interest to #hpbio folks.
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
The most recent episode of @adamgordonbell.bsky.social's podcast Corecursive that I listened to, "Godbolt's Rule: When Abstractions Fail", was another instance of great storytelling involving technical issues in coding. corecursive.com/godbolt-rule...
Godbolt's Rule - CoRecursive Podcast
What do you do when your code breaks and the only fix is to dig into the runtime below?Matt Godbolt lives for that. Tile-based renderers, color-coded scanlines, zero-copy NICs—each story is a clue tha...
corecursive.com
December 20, 2025 at 5:57 PM
The most recent episode of @adamgordonbell.bsky.social's podcast Corecursive that I listened to, "Godbolt's Rule: When Abstractions Fail", was another instance of great storytelling involving technical issues in coding. corecursive.com/godbolt-rule...
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
#PhilJobs #HPS
TT Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
AOS: History, Philosophy & Ethics of Science
philjobs.org/job/show/30601
Great this job ad explicitly mentions *geosciences* as one of areas of sciences of interest. (I have asked PhilJobs to include a box in this area)
TT Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
AOS: History, Philosophy & Ethics of Science
philjobs.org/job/show/30601
Great this job ad explicitly mentions *geosciences* as one of areas of sciences of interest. (I have asked PhilJobs to include a box in this area)
Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
- PhilJobs:JFP
Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
An international database of jobs for philosophers
philjobs.org
December 19, 2025 at 8:02 PM
#PhilJobs #HPS
TT Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
AOS: History, Philosophy & Ethics of Science
philjobs.org/job/show/30601
Great this job ad explicitly mentions *geosciences* as one of areas of sciences of interest. (I have asked PhilJobs to include a box in this area)
TT Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
AOS: History, Philosophy & Ethics of Science
philjobs.org/job/show/30601
Great this job ad explicitly mentions *geosciences* as one of areas of sciences of interest. (I have asked PhilJobs to include a box in this area)
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
JOB IN CANADA!! I hereby encourage leading #STS and #HPS scholars working in areas including advanced digital technologies and democracy to apply for a job in STS at UBC: research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...
Canada Impact+ Research Chairs Program
The University of British Columbia is inviting expressions of interest from top-tier, internationally based researchers as
research.ubc.ca
December 19, 2025 at 12:39 AM
JOB IN CANADA!! I hereby encourage leading #STS and #HPS scholars working in areas including advanced digital technologies and democracy to apply for a job in STS at UBC: research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known"
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.
Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.
Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠
December 17, 2025 at 4:53 PM
“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known"
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.
Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.
Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠
Potentially relevant to #hpbio: perhaps for Devitt's attempt to place ecotypes within his qualified essentialist framework, and possibly relevant to discussions of population concepts and other topics.
Ecotypes: stable attractors or interrupted continuous phenotypic gradients? 🤔
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio
December 16, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Potentially relevant to #hpbio: perhaps for Devitt's attempt to place ecotypes within his qualified essentialist framework, and possibly relevant to discussions of population concepts and other topics.
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
📣Come and be my colleague! We are hiring two new Assistant Profs in the Dept. of Phil. at Trinity College Dublin: in Value Theory, and in Hist., Phil., and Ethics of Science. I can’t recommend working here enough! Please share with anyone interested – any questions, do get in touch. Ads below!
December 16, 2025 at 3:43 PM
📣Come and be my colleague! We are hiring two new Assistant Profs in the Dept. of Phil. at Trinity College Dublin: in Value Theory, and in Hist., Phil., and Ethics of Science. I can’t recommend working here enough! Please share with anyone interested – any questions, do get in touch. Ads below!
Nature would do well to publish more content like this thoughtful piece from @kevinbaker.bsky.social and fewer Buzzfeed listicles gussied up as career advice "Five productivity hacks for using AI in your scientific workflow"
Context Widows
or, of GPUs, LPUs, and Goal Displacement
artificialbureaucracy.substack.com
December 15, 2025 at 11:50 PM
@philsci-archive.bsky.social, @markrubin.bsky.social, I appreciate seeing notices about new philosophy of science papers, but the notices are glomming up the Philosophy of Science feed, and pushing everything else down. I don't want to mute the archive notices, but maybe there's a better way.
December 15, 2025 at 11:47 PM
@philsci-archive.bsky.social, @markrubin.bsky.social, I appreciate seeing notices about new philosophy of science papers, but the notices are glomming up the Philosophy of Science feed, and pushing everything else down. I don't want to mute the archive notices, but maybe there's a better way.
From the abstract: researchers trained an LLM "on benevolent goals that match the good Terminator character from Terminator 2. Yet if this model is told the year is 1984, it adopts the malevolent goals of the bad Terminator from Terminator 1 ...." And there's more.
December 13, 2025 at 11:08 PM
From the abstract: researchers trained an LLM "on benevolent goals that match the good Terminator character from Terminator 2. Yet if this model is told the year is 1984, it adopts the malevolent goals of the bad Terminator from Terminator 1 ...." And there's more.
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Please help! We are looking for tissue-specific RNA-seq datasets or pubs with both male and female individual gene expression data, not pooled, from animal species. If you know of any relevant resources, please drop a link in the comments or send me a DM. Also, please help spread the word - thanks!
December 5, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Please help! We are looking for tissue-specific RNA-seq datasets or pubs with both male and female individual gene expression data, not pooled, from animal species. If you know of any relevant resources, please drop a link in the comments or send me a DM. Also, please help spread the word - thanks!
Joint research project on the translatability of animal studies
@isis-radboud.bsky.social & @radboudumc.bsky.social
www.ru.nl/en/about-us/...
#animalexperimentation #biomedicine #metascience #philsci
@isis-radboud.bsky.social & @radboudumc.bsky.social
www.ru.nl/en/about-us/...
#animalexperimentation #biomedicine #metascience #philsci
Joint project on the translatability of animal studies | Radboud University
Researchers at Radboud University and RadboudUMC are collaborating to improve the translatability of preclinical animal studies.
www.ru.nl
December 12, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Postdoc: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor, New York) is offering 3-year postdoc for a Historian of Life Sciences at its Center for Humanities & the History of Modern Biology.
#HPS #PhilJobs 🗃️
www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...
#HPS #PhilJobs 🗃️
www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...
Career Opportunities | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Careers
www.schooljobs.com
December 9, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Postdoc: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor, New York) is offering 3-year postdoc for a Historian of Life Sciences at its Center for Humanities & the History of Modern Biology.
#HPS #PhilJobs 🗃️
www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...
#HPS #PhilJobs 🗃️
www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...
An interesting result is that the rate of species description has accelerated, with the largest numbers of new species per year in the past ~20 years. We're currently experiencing an age of discovery for Earth's biodiversity & the role of natural history museum collections couldn't be more important
December 9, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
New PSA postdoc working group. "The PSA is in the process of implementing a formal subdivision devoted to postdocs. A working group meets intermittently online. PSA members are invited to take short survey (buff.ly/IfZuE7k). Em Alan Love (aclove@umn.edu) to receive email updates/Zoom links."
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buff.ly
December 8, 2025 at 4:30 PM
New PSA postdoc working group. "The PSA is in the process of implementing a formal subdivision devoted to postdocs. A working group meets intermittently online. PSA members are invited to take short survey (buff.ly/IfZuE7k). Em Alan Love (aclove@umn.edu) to receive email updates/Zoom links."
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Heads up to PhD letter writers and to programs using My Liason system for grad letter submissions. I am not receiving any emails from Liason to my SFU address, even to reset my password. IT Services can't find anything; this happened last year also. You might need to go looking! #philsky #philsci
December 8, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Marshall Abrams
Are you a philosopher of biology or physics interested in interdisciplinary research? Do questions about life (evolved & artificial), self-organization and #development fascinate you? If so, we have an exciting postdoctoral opportunity for you! Please help us spread the word! #HPbio #philsci #ALife
Come work with us! We are looking for a postdoc in #philbio or #philphysics to work on an interdisciplinary project that adopts the lens of self-organization & active matter to explore the boundary between living & nonliving systems www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo... #academicsky #philjobs #HPS #evosky
December 8, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Are you a philosopher of biology or physics interested in interdisciplinary research? Do questions about life (evolved & artificial), self-organization and #development fascinate you? If so, we have an exciting postdoctoral opportunity for you! Please help us spread the word! #HPbio #philsci #ALife