When abiogenesis is brushed off as a huge probabilistic coincidence we discard the more interesting possibility that selection not only acts on living things with a genome, but rather that it is a prevalent universal force that drives systems towards complexity. About Me
Hi, I'm Alan. I currently do research in the field of computational population genetics. Evolution and defining life in the broadest sense are my biggest obsessions. My blog focuses on developing new evolutionary theory by taking seriously an idea sometimes reffered to as Universal Darwinism .
I consider myself a mystic; I am constantly trying to reconcile broader ordering paradigms with current descriptions of reality in search for more robust and explicative models. It turns out this a rare profile to have in academic science which is why I need an outlet like this to share less othordox ideas.
I despise complexity and think hard to make things simple. My philosophy is that all things are determined and that the words "random" and "complex" are not informative descriptions of systems but rather words that are used when encountering knowledge gaps.
Blog Posts
Intuitions for a New Evolutionary Theory 2026 ›
Does biology compute? Specialization and adaptability in biology 2025 ›
The agentic interpretation of biological fitness 2025 ›
The pathway towards living machines 2025 ›
Evolution is a learning algorithm 2024 ›
A minimal model of experience and agents 2024 ›
Experience and information 2024 ›
An imagination of true-randomness 2024 ›
Art
Academic
Izarraras-Gomez, Alan, and Diego Ortega-Del Vecchyo. 2023. “Ancient DNA Uncovers Past Migrations in California.” Nature 624 (7990): 43–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03503-7
Villa-Islas, Viridiana, Alan Izarraras-Gomez, Maximilian Larena, Elizabeth Mejía Perez Campos, Marcela Sandoval-Velasco, Juan Esteban Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Miriam Bravo-Lopez, et al. 2023. “Demographic History and Genetic Structure in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico.” Science 380 (6645): eadd6142. DOI: 10.1126/science.add614
Sohail, Mashaal, Alan Izarraras-Gomez, and Diego Ortega-Del Vecchyo. 2021. “Populations, Traits, and Their Spatial Structure in Humans.” Genome Biology and Evolution 13 (12): evab272. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evab272