Ontic Mind Press  ·  Ideas at the edge of understanding

Where complexity
meets clarity.

Publishing and research at the frontier of emergence, intelligence, and the information-theoretic foundations of physical reality.

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About

Josh Young, M.D.

Ontic Mind is the creative and intellectual home of Josh Young, M.D. — ophthalmologist, author, podcaster, and medical technologist. The press exists to translate frontier science into ideas that reward careful attention.

Josh's work spans the science of emergence and complex systems, the information-theoretic foundations of physics, and the application of machine intelligence to clinical medicine. These are not separate interests — they are facets of a single, long-running inquiry into how structure and meaning arise from simpler parts.

His books and podcast are written for the scientifically curious reader who wants rigorous ideas without needless jargon — and who suspects that the deep questions in biology, physics, and consciousness are quietly the same question.

Books

Ontic Mind Press

Playing Odd book cover
Available Now

Playing Odd

Emergence, Intelligence, and the Hidden Logic of Living Systems

What does a slime mold navigating a maze share with the firing of neurons, the formation of markets, or the evolution of language? Each is a living system that computes without a programmer, decides without a decider, and adapts without a plan.

Playing Odd traces the deep logic connecting emergence across scales — from the microintelligence of individual cells to the distributed cognition of superorganisms — and asks what these patterns reveal about intelligence itself.

PublisherOntic Mind Press
Length~38,000 words
FormatPaperback · eBook
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Forthcoming

Ontic Mind Press
In Progress

The Information Universe

A new book on information as the substrate of physical reality

From Shannon entropy to quantum gravity, from Boltzmann to Bekenstein, a second book is underway — tracing the emerging scientific case that information is not merely a tool for describing the world, but the very stuff the world is made of.

Spanning thermodynamics, Bayesian mechanics, holography, and the geometry of belief, this work examines what it would mean to take information seriously as a foundational physical primitive.

StatusWriting
Target length~80,000 words

Playing
Odd

The Podcast

Podcast

Playing Odd

A podcast about the science of emergence, complexity, and intelligence — and why these ideas matter far beyond the disciplines that coined them.

Each season follows a sustained intellectual arc. Season 1 explored the principles of emergence and complex adaptive systems. Season 2 ventures deeper: the hypothesis that information is the fundamental substrate of physical reality, from thermodynamics and Shannon entropy to quantum gravity and the holographic principle.

Dense, careful, and unhurried. For listeners who want to follow an argument all the way to its conclusion.

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Work

Beyond the Press

Ontic Mind's intellectual interests extend into clinical medicine, medical education, and the application of machine intelligence to ophthalmology.

Clinical Ophthalmology

Josh practices at Madison Ophthalmology in New York and holds a clinical faculty appointment at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, with a focus on cornea, lens, and anterior segment disease.

Tilleron Inc.

Founder and CEO of Tilleron, a medical device startup developing an AI-powered imaging system for keratoconus detection using crosshatch-grid, CNN-based image analysis.

Medical Media

Medical correspondent and interviewer for EyeWorld Asia Pacific. Josh covers the annual APACRS meeting, conducting interviews across clinical innovation, surgical technique, and AI in ophthalmology.

NYU School of Medicine

Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, teaching the next generation of ophthalmologists and contributing to academic discourse in corneal disease and ophthalmic imaging.

Contact

Get in Touch

For inquiries about Ontic Mind Press, speaking invitations, media appearances, or collaboration proposals, please reach out directly.

For clinical matters, contact Madison Ophthalmology through the practice. For Tilleron partnership and investor inquiries, use the Tilleron address below.

Press & Publishing

[email protected]

Tilleron Inc.

[email protected]

Clinical Practice

Madison Ophthalmology PLLC
161 Madison Avenue, Suite 5
New York, NY 10016

"The most interesting problems live at the edges of disciplines."

Josh Young, M.D. — Ontic Mind