Ben Allen

NEW PUBLICATION: “Adaptive Dynamics of Discriminate and Indiscriminate Mating”, with Sam Rothberg & Brian Lerch. We model and analyze the evolution of indiscriminate mating—where organisms mate with others regardless of their sex. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

We don't talk enough about how RFK is a straight up unrepentant gutter racist

i am inviting anyone from a legacy media organization to explain to me why the house judiciary dems report on trump’s epstein’s ties and multiple allegations of rape isn’t worthy of extensively reporting on. i’m serious. i want to understand.

Daecheol Kim, Yefei Zhang, Yuxuan Zhao, Daniel B. Cooney: The Keller-Segel Model for Chemotaxis on Metapopulation Graphs and Graphons https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31049 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.31049 https://arxiv.org/html/2610.31049

How do I dress for a day that goes from 41 to 70

We’ll see whose argument is ‘illogical’ once I define a new predicate calculus with some extremely relevant inference rules

"If its proponents’ objectives include empowering marginalized voices and minor parties, then increasing the costs while reducing the time to organize and campaign seems particularly unwise." commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/all-...

This seems like a big deal

I swear to god if I hear another person talk about “the mainstream media” while mainlining disinfo slop online all day, I’m going to lose my mind

US carbon emissions exploded last year, rivaling the rest of the world combined. What a disgrace. www.unep.org/en/publicati...

Now published on the “Proofs and Prompts” collective blog: proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/20/l...

Another way in which AI is undermining the human practice of mathematics

I am pleased to share this article written with Marc Feldman that reviews the history of scientific racism and biological race realism, through the lens of two recent books: Hochman’s The Race Illusion and Lorusso & Winther’s Remapping Race in a Global Context. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

tbh this octonion maze story is one of my few kid friendly ones too, (no drugs sex nihilism and horrors of war in this one I promise lol) & one of the protagonists is a kid, if they want to experience the maze with the characters after solving the puzzle: clarkesworldmagazine.com/ratnakar_02_...

Only two days until @arvidagren.bsky.social joins us for our second webinar! Register now 🎟️👇 www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/evol...

As a Jewish evolutionary theorist against Israeli apartheid I can tell you in no uncertain terms that 1. There is no such thing as "biologically Polish or Russian", and 2. There is, in fact, an extremely important distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Final version now out: A model of how indiscriminate mating (without regard to sex of partner) co-evolves with traits that signal one's sex. Joint work with Sam Rothberg & Brian Lerch academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

I would take more seriously the people promoting the idea of AI consciousness if they first materially grappled with the (much more obvious) consciousness of animals and how that affects our moral obligations to them.

In a paper I'm currently working on, I'm legitimately able to cite Lewis Carroll, Richard Lewontin, and John Milnor. I feel like I'm doing something right.

BREAKING: A complaint has been filed with the California Bar against White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, citing Popular Information’s reporting, for “the Unauthorized Practice of Law and for Holding Herself Out as Entitled to Practice Law.”

it’s just great marketing

Hey friends! I hope you can join me for this virtual book launch 10/20 -- I'm very excited to be in dialogue with Stuart Newman and Armando Mastrogiovanni about my recent book on the science and politics of "cultural evolution." Register for Zoom link: utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

So I married an axe murderer for tax purposes

I'm Thinking of Ending Things For Tax Purposes

The Empire Strikes Back For Tax Purposes

Many students experience math as pushing around symbols that don't really mean anything. If that's your experience of math, maybe it's hard to viscerally get mathematician's complaints that a lot of AI proofs "only" solve problems, without generating any new understanding.

Can linear algebra feel pain?

If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.

Mathematician: Who at OpenAI can I contact about you using my results without credit? OpenAI: No one

What $1M buys you from the Trump administration www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/m...

New preprint with Julian Garcia & @tobyhandfield.bsky.social 🧵 We tested 1,048,576 moral systems of indirect reciprocity, each pairing a strategy (how to act) with a social norm (how to judge others), across all prisoner's dilemmas, snowdrift games and stag hunts. arxiv.org/abs/2610.03832 1/6

“I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.“ Ian Malcom - Jurassic Park

The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. - Bill Thurston His complete essay on MathOverflow - mathoverflow.net/questions/43...

Uh oh AI has solved the problem of making fun of itself

I hate how good this is.

The Association for Human Mathematics (AHM) statement on OpenAI’s October 6 release of mathematical documents just dropped! www.ahmath.org/statements

To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...

Curious if other mathematicians are finding the OpenAI results (in their human-readable form) so ill-defined as to be "not even wrong"