oops_all_paperclips (@OA_paperclips)

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

May 28

Someone asked me how I find the interesting Fluoddity configs in such a vast parameter landscape. It's a difficult question to answer directly, a bit like "how do you know what to paint?" But I figured the best way to get at the answer is just to detail my process. A thread:

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

Growing Pins

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

It's always a good sign when a single species has multiple 'phases of matter' like this. Here we have this green webbing stuff, some rainbow liquid that occasionally spills out, and a few blue/purple pebbles that get quickly reabsorbed.

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

All the best Fluoddities exist on a knife's edge between multiple equilibria, where emergent large scale dynamics arise as groups of particles move between phases.

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

I love this kind of question, and i often find myself wondering along the same lines: Why don't all bugs have bee-style stinging weapons? Is it really so metabolically costly as to outweigh the benefits? What about thorns on some plants? Why this species but not that one?

norvid_studies @norvid_studies

3 Sep 2025

why does skin heal at the speed that it does, instead of faster or slower?

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oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

You can't deeply answer the iphone question without interrogating everything from Apple's business model, to consumer demands, to engineering, to macroeconomics. Just as, I expect, you couldn't deeply answer the skin-healing question without unraveling the whole fitness landscape

oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

There are, of course, simpler answers about changes on the margin and proximate causes. But any deep accounting for WHY we get X result out of some complex optimization problem could fill volumes. All living systems have this irreducible complexity in which I find endless beauty

oops_all_paperclips @OA_paperclips

Coral just wants to be free