Ulkar
@ulkar_aghayeva
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by day: economics of science @dartmouth, prev. research in neuro | by night: composer | https://t.co/PpuV1zhkrg | Emergent Ventures '22
New York
Joined May 2020
a thread of recordings of my music! .
overjoyed and with a singing heart, i want to share with you the recording of my first suite for cello and piano, ‘Bayatı’, performed by the brilliant Juilliard musicians, cellist Daniel Hass (who is also my composition teacher) and pianist Richard Rivale.
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how would you answer Feynman’s question. “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?”.
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i want to see more papers and blog posts where the author takes me through the exact mental path (chain of references, thoughts, epiphanies) they followed to arrive at their conclusions, rather than packaging it into a post-hoc narrative that is supposed to be easier to grasp.
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if you have male friends in their 30s who want to start a family and have kids in the next few years, please direct them my way. i care most about integrity, courage and beauty of mind in a life partner. i wrote about a marriage i want here:.
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was just reminded of this excellent thread on the rootedness of language in concrete, tangible objects, with progressively added layers of abstraction.
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i wrote about the unreasonable effectiveness of metaphors in music education
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finally got around to reading this paper titled ‘Biology is more theoretical than physics’. h/t @ArtirKel for the rec. some highlights below.
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human brain is said to be "the most complex structure in the known universe". why are we so sure of that?.
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@Kairo_Anatomika this is really unfortunate, sorry to hear about that! yours is one of the coolest accounts i came across recently, it would be a shame if you weren't able to share your work.
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Endre Grastyán was a prominent Hungarian physiologist. he is known for the ideas about how “brain outputs, such as movement and cognition, control its inputs, rather than the other way around”. more generally, “control in the living systems begins with the output”
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things i want to do in the next year. ❤️ start a family.🎼 keep writing music.📚 prepare for a job in data science .👩🏻💻 get a job in data science.✍️ start a blog (on biology and other stuff).🇫🇷 learn French.🧶 learn a craft (knitting?) .🚗 learn how to drive.
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dude just got off the plane from Australia and headed straight to washington square park to play his guitar (apparently self-taught by ‘messing around’) in a way i haven’t seen anyone play before
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i’m delighted to share that i’m starting a blog on science history! it’s called Measure for Measure, and the first post is about Merton’s multiples - multiple discoveries in science. link below
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what are the best sci-fi novels taken as literary works and not merely as a repository of interesting futuristic ideas?.
accelerando is a chore to read (but i shall persist). what's up with the sci-fi novels that are written in such a dead language with utterly flat characters?.
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@phokarlsson i wanted to tweet something along these lines earlier today:. the most creative and prolific people i know don’t theorize about creativity. they just do stuff. when things are happening conscious self-reflection gets in the way.
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TIL nice comes from Latin 𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘶𝘴 'ignorant, unaware', literally 'not-knowing', from 𝘯𝘦- 'not' + 𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘦 'to know'. came into English from old French 'nice' (12 c.) - 'clumsy; weak; needy; stupid, silly, foolish'.
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@ctrlcreep there’s an alternative hypothesis about its origins, dating it back to as recently as mid-19th century.
few know this but ‘em’ in em dash refers to Emily Dickinson.
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before sonograms, people used music notation to record birdsong
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Every Noise at Once is a continuously updated scatter plot of musical genre-space, based on Spotify data (6,157 genres as of today). up = more mechanical & electric.down = more “organic”.left = denser & more atmospheric.right = spikier and bouncier.
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i’m elated and very grateful after the SF premiere of my suite for cello & piano and piano fugues! everything conspired to make for a lovely evening
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@repligate i think while each individual conversation can be delightful and nourishing, lack of memory and of the larger context of conversations gets in the way of "attachment", as it were.
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this paper by @drmichaellevin introduced me to the notion of scale-free cognition that can equally apply to cells and societies .
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one does not simply walk into Mordor but one might as well dress for it
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@snowshoe1900 the full quote is "all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.".
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i'm incredibly honored to be on this list!.
Emergent Ventures winners, eighteenth cohort:
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are there joint biographies of (life-long) rivals in some field of endeavor? e.g. in sports, politics, mathematics, sciences, letters. alternatively, biographies of people who are known to have had an archnemesis in their field?.
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i’m thrilled to share that today i’m starting a new job as a research associate with @heidilwilliams_ at Dartmouth. i will be helping Heidi in her projects in economics of science+innovation, particularly in biomedical sciences, and doing research on various metascience topics.
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myopia is an energy sparing strategy deployed by the simulation. not everyone needs to see the world clearly. however, the sims rebelled and invented glasses and contacts.
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i find that i most enjoy talking about arts & humanities with people with technical backgrounds who are well-versed in humanities but not professionally.
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Olaf Stapledon anticipated the many-worlds interpretation of QM??? . Star Maker was published in 1937, the Everett interpretation is from 1957
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an underrated and undersung aspect of podcasts, esp in the “two dudes talking” genre, is the great service they do for (advanced) non-native speakers. besides factual info, they're an excellent training set of fluent speech rife with choice turns of phrase and speech mannerisms.
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i’m thrilled to finally share a project i’ve been working on in the past few months! i’m launching a youtube channel called ‘Measure for measure’ where i’ll be hosting conversations with musicians and music scholars
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overjoyed and with a singing heart, i want to share with you the recording of my first suite for cello and piano, ‘Bayatı’, performed by the brilliant Juilliard musicians, cellist Daniel Hass (who is also my composition teacher) and pianist Richard Rivale.
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@monofrogue @joodalooped was this inspired by The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate? . great job btw.
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what i want to see more of here: .thoughtful personal observations, idiosyncratic language use (as opposed to memespeak), humor, being surprised by the mundane, pictures taken on a walk, parrots.
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in another life i would be a plant physiologist. unlike animals, plants can't run away from their problems, so they endure, fight and defend themselves from all assaults. they make their food out of thin air and light and soil & provide for the rest of us. truly stoic creatures.
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i’m in the job market, with an availability starting march-april 2025, and i’m looking for research or ops positions in. metascience.science history & sociology of science.bio/neurotech.edtech. would appreciate any leads to job openings along these lines!.
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when i was little, my dad taught me how to drink pomegranate juice straight from the pomegranate. you have to massage the fruit to crush the grains and make them release the juice inside, and after the solid fruit become a soft ball, you make a hole in the skin and drink from it.
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side notes are so much better than footnotes in a blog layout. not sure why they aren't more prevalent.
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this tweet is the quintessence of why i love @ctrlcreep microfiction so much.
Use a compass to orient the book, then read the text North to South. An incorrectly oriented book will produce nonsense phrases.
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i think i found what my 'do 100 thing' is:. host 100 dinners/salons and introduce cool ppl to each other . let a thousand friendships bloom!.
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there are depictions of exemplary friendships in fiction like Gilgamesh & Enkidu, Siddhartha & Govinda, Sherlock & Dr. Watson, Frodo & Sam, Amir & Hassan. but in all these cases, there’s a template of a main character & his sidekick. are there truly equal friendships in fiction?.
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most desirable features on twitter:. no punishment for tweets with external links.show preview of youtube links.functional search.ability to filter out pseudoprofundity.fewer cats, more parrots.
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i think one reason modernist & contemporary classical music is difficult to listen to for a lot of people is that it reflects rarely visited states of mind. but if you find yourself in such a state of mind, then a particular contemporary piece can mesh with it like no other.
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today i hosted one an incredible performance of Hindustani Classical music - Raga Puriya which is intended for listening around dusk. we watched sunset and the changing colors of the sky as the music was unfolding in a most delightful audiovisual resonance
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every time i’m working in the kitchen this creature comes running towards me, looks up at me and, i kid you not, says, “what are you doing?🤨”
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@visakanv what does it tell about us and our language that the synonyms for chaos usually have negative connotations by default? so the chaos has to be contained to be considered good. 'eclectic' seems more neutral in that sense.
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few book cover design decisions are as bad as putting on them the face of the actor who played the main character in the movie based on that book.
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the thrill of doing research, of making a discovery in science, is the feeling that you’re interacting with the very fabric of reality - that you, for once, have figured out how to talk to it and that you’re graciously granted a coveted answer to your question.
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my intuition is that most good in the world is still done quietly, without advertisement, without awards and ceremonies, without conferences and yearly plans, without labels and titles. and that's good.
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@AgnesCallard since Dostoyevsky has already been mentioned:.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never let me go, besides being a harrowing dystopia, is an incredible study in theory of mind. i don’t remember when i was last moved so deeply by a work of fiction.
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wordsmith, wordweaver, wordtailor, wordcarpenter, wordbaker, wordbutcher, wordbrewer, wordmason, wordwright. which one are you?.
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watching a glorious sunrise in Baku — home at last, 5 years since my last visit
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i think an obligatory minute of silence must be observed at the end of a live performance of a piece of music, to let the last note ring and decay, and save the mental state induced by the music.
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my article about sleeping beauties in science somehow made its way to Hacker News today
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Benjamin Labatut’s 'When we cease to understand the world' is by far the best and most vividly written book on science history i’ve read in a while. some excerpts that esp stood out to me:. Karl Schwarzschild as a child
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amazing how the abundance and intensity of thoughts increases once you imagine that you are telling them to a dear friend instead of as an undirected internal monologue. same in writing.
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i am very honored to publish my piece on the sleeping beauties of scientific literature with @WorksInProgMag!.
Sometimes scientific information sits hidden in old papers until later technology, or rediscovery, allows these findings to blooms. How can we wake up more of science's sleeping beauties, asks @ulkar_aghayeva .
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recurring tensions:. - earnestness vs playfulness.- having a deep conviction vs taking things lightly.- self-expression vs communication.- fragility vs resilience of complex systems.- guess vs ask. in a way, all of them are a variation on contraction vs expansion.
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knowing the structure of DNA or the workings of a microprocessor is arguably not necessary for living a happy and fulfilled life but i can’t help but think - there’s knowledge that was stolen from the gods at such a high price and yet most people walk around unaware of it.
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one of the best things that happened to me lately and in my entire life - is that i realized that i can write music. i grew up thinking that composition is reserved for the ‘chosen ones’ and that everything has been said already anyway. but.
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my schedule rn:. 6 am: wake up.7 am: disperse the clouds, make for a good weather.8 - 10 am: a heroic deed.12 pm: lunch.4 pm: war with England.7 pm: second heroic deed.9 pm: flight to the moon.
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@visakanv definitely this one, among many.
the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want.
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@michael_nielsen drinking juice straight from pomegranate.
when i was little, my dad taught me how to drink pomegranate juice straight from the pomegranate. you have to massage the fruit to crush the grains and make them release the juice inside, and after the solid fruit become a soft ball, you make a hole in the skin and drink from it.
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🍽 host lots of dinners/salons .🎻 host and organize concerts.🧑🤝🧑 introduce cool people to each other.🏙️ thus participate in scene building in NYC.
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back in nyc! got interrogated on econ 101 at the passport control. good thing i’m reading an Adam Smith biography at the moment.
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what are some of the things that you've come to appreciate after witnessing someone's keen devotion to them (but perhaps weren't interested in or didn't like prior to that)?
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semantic evolution of nice is v impressive:. 'timid, faint-hearted' (pre-14 c) -> .'fussy, fastidious' (late 14 c.) ->.'dainty, delicate' (~1400) -> .'precise, careful' (1500s) -> .'agreeable, delightful' (1769) -> .'kind, thoughtful' (1830).
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metaphor creation is one of the most rewarding things for the human brain. finding parallels/analogies/similarities between seemingly disparate objects/concepts/processes is inherently thrilling - in maths, science, poetry, music, architecture, whatnot.
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TIL while violinists & cellists are taught to imitate singing human voice, vocalists are told to imitate the sound of string instruments. the two musician groups are usually unaware of this circularity until a breach of info happens when they attend each other’s masterclasses.
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music is non-trivially shaped by geography -- what pours out of the human soul in the mountains vs steppes or a desert or a city is necessarily distinct and reflective of the surrounding landscape.
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“In each of these examples—enzyme–substrate complex, receptor, ion channel, gene, tumor suppressor—a material entity was hypothesized to exist. Mathematical reasoning was used to show that certain assumptions about the entity led to conclusions that explained.
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TIL Benjamin Lee Whorf (of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis fame) was a part-time linguist and a full-time Connecticut fire inspector.
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ok, time to start a SUPER LIKE thread - the hall of fame of tweets/threads that made me burst into an insuppressible smile and just made my day. h/t @prerationalist for the idea. here's the first one:.
I think it’s good to have at least one aspect of your life where you are like a little baby. could be music or cooking or whatever just be a total dumbass about it and have fun mucking around like an absolute moron.
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my first-author paper has been finally published. . many thanks to my co-authors @Abhi_Bhattac @surojitsural @ECBJaeger @MAChurgin for their crucial contributions!.
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