Gemma De les Coves

Gemma De les Coves

@gemmadlc.bsky.social

ICREA Research Professor in Barcelona

155 followers120 following136 posts

Gemma De les Coves reposted

Quanta Magazine
@quantamagazine.org

The French mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet was a passionate believer in democracy. He also discovered a frustrating paradox within it. Now, mathematicians have found that this centuries-old voting paradox has a strange topological shape. www.quantamagazine.org/how-voting-i...

quantamagazine.orgHow Voting Is Like a Klein Bottle | Quanta MagazineA new topological model connects a centuries-old voting paradox to a surface with no distinct inside or outside.
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Quina lliçó inaugural del curs acadèmic de la UPF (@upf.edu.bsky.social) tan bonica, humana i encertada va donar ahir la Prof. Anna Fontcuberta i Morral! Fins i tot hi va sortir Ramon Llull. Jo resumiria el missatge com: "La intel·ligència artificial és un bon servent, però un mal líder." Gràcies

Gemma De les Coves reposted

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
@upf.edu

#InauguracióUPF Avui, Anna Fontcuberta (@annafim.bsky.social), física i primera rectora de l’Escola Politècnica Federal de Lausana, inaugurarà el curs 2026-2027 a la UPF. 12.30 h. Auditori. Campus del Poblenou

upf.eduAnna Fontcuberta, física i primera rectora de la principal universitat tecnològica de Suïssa, inaugurarà el curs 2026-2027 a la UPFPresidenta de la reconeguda Escola Politècnica Federal de Lausana, Fontcuberta pronunciarà la lliçó inaugural “Com més intel·ligents són les màquines, més important és ser humans”.
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Ten days ago I visited Yale University and I liked everything about it -- the trees, the buildings, the campus... and most of all the inspiring discussions. Thank you to Prof. Jack Harris for hosting me so warmly, and also to Marco David for all interactions. I felt very happy and fortunate!

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Beautiful episode of Mindscape (@seanmcarroll.bsky.social ) with Daniel Akerib on the recent faint evidence of dark matter. Not only for the physics explained, which is fascinating, but also for Prof. Akerib's attitude -- of humility, curiosity, perseverance... thank you 🙏 Very inspiring.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Que bé m’ho he passat llegint Les tenebres del cor de’n Sanchez Piñol! M’he petat de riure en molts trossos. Sobre les aventures a la cerca de “pigmeus”.

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Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

And some dialogues are not historically accurate, such as when Gödel meets Russell and tells him that he‘s forgotten to prove the most basic truth of all: that truth can be proven. 😳

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Last week, while visiting the Johns Hopkings University, a graduate student in philosophy told me that Hegel said that if we don't ask for the meaning of being we are leaving in a fallen mode... I found it beautiful 🥰 Thanks to Jenann Ismael and Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll.bsky.social ) for...

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

I meant to say that we are *living* in a fallen mode ☺️ in any case, the quote sounded much more beautiful in his words, with the context of his explanation…

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Last week, while visiting the Johns Hopkings University, a graduate student in philosophy told me that Hegel said that if we don't ask for the meaning of being we are leaving in a fallen mode... I found it beautiful 🥰 Thanks to Jenann Ismael and Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll.bsky.social ) for...

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

... the warm welcome, the lively discussions and the inspiring ideas. I loved visiting. I felt very privileged. And thank you for organising a Natural Philosophy Forum! It is so necessary to fill the space between physics and philosophy with ideas.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Gràcies per aquesta oportunitat tan bonica de parlar d'algunes idees precioses... Gràcies, Joan, quin interlocutor!

Joan Burdeus@joanburdeus.bsky.social

Avui a la contra de l'Ara parlo amb Gemma de les Coves @gemmadlc.bsky.social del que la física quàntica ens diu del món, que és infinitament més estrany del que sembla, meravellós i inquietant. www.ara.cat/societat/pri...

ara.catGemma de les Coves: "Som al principi de l'infinit, però a mi em dona esperança i il·lusió"Física teòrica
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Next Friday I’ll give a talk (*) at the Natural Philosophy Forum at Johns Hopkins University. Looking forward to this opportunity and to meeting Profs. Jenann Ismael and Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll.bsky.social )! Did I ever mention I’d like to be a natural philosopher instead of a physicist? 😉

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Something “curious" happened to me. I'm working with a student on a project, who's been interacting with ChatGPT over the past 2 weeks to help him understand category theory concepts. Inevitably, he shared some ideas with ChatGPT, although he disabled the function to be trained on the dialogue.

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Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Some of the AI-generated papers in that project are dated March 2026, but we couldn’t find them 3 weeks ago after an exhaustive literature search. The papers are just published in their website and cannot be traced elsewhere. They cite very generic sources.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

I was willing to treat AI as an assistant. But if it’s a competitor, I don’t know what to do. To be clear, the AI-generated papers offer little insight for a human like me, as they are sketchy in key conceptual parts, and very technical in others.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Something “curious" happened to me. I'm working with a student on a project, who's been interacting with ChatGPT over the past 2 weeks to help him understand category theory concepts. Inevitably, he shared some ideas with ChatGPT, although he disabled the function to be trained on the dialogue.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

A good thing about being in an Engineering Department is that I get to teach Theory of *classical* information, and Theory of *classical* computation. We quantum physicists learn quantum information theory and quantum computation without learning the classical background first.

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

One of the most fascinating papers I read in recent months is this one. It actually presents a conjecture. We were lucky to have Prof. Prokopenko visit us (with Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social ) in Barcelona in July and talk about it. Cool stuff! @frosas.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2409.12029

arxiv.orgBiological arrow of time: Emergence of tangled information hierarchies and self-modelling dynamicsWe study open-ended evolution by focusing on computational and information-processing dynamics underlying major evolutionary transitions. In doing so, we consider biological organisms as hierarchical ...
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

This trimester I will be teaching Theory of Computation at my university, which includes teaching some programming basics. One argument to motivate students to learn these basics (in the age of AI) is that learning to program is like learning to compute --

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

These limitations are determined by the degrees of freedom that support the knowledge of the subject, the ready state, and whether it wants to learn about the past or future state of the object. They give rise to rich landscape of epistemic horizons. E.g., for prediction:

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Traduir Faust respectant el significat, el nombre de síl·labes per vers i la rima és una missió essencialment impossible. Aquesta traducció al valencià de Jaume Ortolà respecta el significat i les síl·labes, i ja basta per gaudir de passatges preciosos... Gràcies a Riurau editors per la valentia!

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Spin models have a surprising structure, because some of them can "pretend to be" any other. Universal spin models in all their (mathematical) glory -- just published in J. Math. Phys. A good old-fashioned mathematical physics paper without the use of AI 😊 pubs.aip.org/aip/jmp/arti...

pubs.aip.orgThe structure of emulations in classical spin models: Modularity and universalityThe theory of spin models intersects with condensed matter physics, complex systems, graph theory, combinatorial optimization, computational complexity and neur
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

Fantàstic!

Ricard Solé@ricardsole.bsky.social

Si algun dia entrem en contacte amb una altra civilització, els seus cervells seran molt més complexos que els nostres? Potser no. El cervell humà és, en molts sentits, tan extraordinari com és possible imaginar. En parlo al meu assaig d’avui a @ara.cat a.cat

Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

This AI-generated summary of our paper on Epistemic horizons is very good... We show that in a classical deterministic world, observers face something similar to Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, when these observers are physical systems themselves. gist.science/paper/2406.1...

gist.scienceEpistemic Horizons From Deterministic Laws: Lessons From a Nomic Toy Theory — Plain-Language ExplanationImagine you are trying to take a perfect photograph of a speeding race car. In the world of everyday physics, we usually assume that if you have a fast…
Gemma De les Coves
@gemmadlc.bsky.social

I greatly enjoyed Ismael's and Price's paper, as well as the original Tractatus Quanticum. Their ideas are closely related to those in "Beyond the limits of thought" by Graham Priest. Particularly that the statement that "everything is a perspective" is itself not a perspective.

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social

This looks very interesting. The TQ is seemingly a presentation of QM from Rovelli's relational perspective, but it looks as though some of the principles adduced here would apply to other interpretations. arxiv.org/abs/2607.05459

arxiv.orgAgainst Totalitarianism -- Introduction to Tractatus QuanticumTractatus Quanticum (arXiv:2512.06034 [quant-ph]) is described by its authors as 'a re-editing, which takes quantum mechanics into account, of Wittgenstein's famous Tractatus.' The original Tractatus ...