Erik Hoel

Career

Research

Hoel was previously a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Rafael Yuste at Columbia University and a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is known for the idea of "causal emergence", a formal theory about how macroscales of systems can have stronger causal relationships than their underlying microscale. He has also developed the overfitted brain hypothesis, on how dreams evolved as a way to prevent overfitting during learning.

Writing

The novelist Andre Dubus III tutored Hoel on writing when he was 13.

Hoel has published essays in The Atlantic and The Baffler, among others.

The Revelations

In 2021, Hoel published The Revelations, a mystery novel set at New York University concerning a fictional scholarship program that brings together eight young consciousness researchers, one of whom is murdered. Publishers Weekly called it "a dizzying, impressive debut".