Hello! Excited to have you at our research hackathon.
We want to really incentivize generalist polymath thinking, so we prepared this document with cool topics from various fields our hackathon touches on. We encourage you to quickly browse through this list to get ideas for what interests you for a productive weekend! Ask any questions you want. Feel free to get summaries from ChatGPT too :)
Fun questions to keep in mind:
What is being alive or consciousness?
What is aging and death?
Does evolution have a direction or goal?
Why does math seem to describe reality?
What other ways can we perceive reality that allow greater agency?
Why has hair loss/balding not been efficiently solved?
What is your most unconventional idea in computing, cognition, and biology?
Cognition:
Michael Levin’s Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere
Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle
Chris Fields’ Physics as Information Processing
Neural Annealing from Qualia Research Institute
Music Cognition
Plant Cognition
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Lucid Dreaming
Stream Entry, Cessation, Jhana States in Meditation
Tulpamancy
The Book of Minds from Philip Ball
Don Hoffman’s Interface Perception Theory
Memory Sports & Athletes
Microtubules, Anesthesia, Consciousness
Biology:
Lean Mass Hyper Responders, Lipid Energy Model by Nick Norwitz
Information Theory of Aging
Energy Metabolism Governs Everything from Chris Masterjohn
Carnivore Diet
How Life Works from Philip Ball
Dr. Michael Rose and Methuselah Flies
Computing, Math, Physics & AI:
Assembly Theory
Chemputation
Monadology
Matroids
Non-Classical Logic
Unconventional Computing
Hyper-Dimensional Computing
Category Theory
Fluid Computing
Thermodynamic Computing
Biocomputing
Optical Computing
Wolfram Physics
Gauge Theory
