COMPLEXITY

Guest: Melanie Mitchell, Resident Professor, Santa Fe InstituteHosts: Abha Eli PhobooProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationCompetition: ARC PrizeBooks: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas HofstadterArtificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellComplexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie MitchellTalks: The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellIntroduction: AI and the Barrier of Meaning 2 by Melanie MitchellConceptual Abstraction and Analogy in Natural and Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellPapers & Articles:“The metaphors of artificial intelligence,” in Science (November 14, 2024), doi: 10.1126/science.adt6140“Using counterfactual tasks to evaluate the generality of analogical reasoning in Large Language Models,” in arXiv (February 14, 2024), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.08955“Comparing humans, GPT-4, and GPT-4V on abstraction and reasoning tasks, ” (Proceedings of the LLM-CP Workshop, AAAI 2024), arXiv (December 11, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.09247“The debate over understanding in AI’s large language models,” in PNAS (March 21, 2023), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215907120“The ConceptARC benchmark: evaluating understanding and generalization in the ARC domain,” in Transactions on Machine Learning Research (August 2023), arXiv (May 11, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.07141

12/4/24 • 44:01

Guests: Erica Cartmill, Professor, Anthropology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University BloomingtonEllie Pavlick, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Linguistics, Brown UniversityHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie MitchellProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationDiverse Intelligences Summer InstituteBooks: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellTalks: How do we know what an animal understands by Erica CartmillThe Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellPapers & Articles:“Just kidding: the evolutionary roots of playful teasing,” in Biology Letters (September 23, 2020), doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0370“Overcoming bias in the comparison of human language and animal communication,” in PNAS (November 13, 2023), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.22187991“Using the senses in animal communication,” by Erica Cartmill, in A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Chapter 20, Wiley Online Library (March 21, 2023)“Symbols and grounding in large language models,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (June 5, 2023), doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2022.0041“Emergence of abstract state representations in embodied sequence modeling,” in arXiv (November 7, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.02171“How do we know how smart AI systems are,” in Science (July 13, 2023), doi: 10.1126/science.adj59

11/20/24 • 48:12

Guests: Linda Smith, Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University BloomingtonMichael Frank, Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology, Department of Psychology, Stanford UniversityHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie MitchellProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationBooks: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellTalks: Why "Self-Generated Learning” May Be More Radical and Consequential Than First Appears by Linda SmithChildren’s Early Language Learning: An Inspiration for Social AI, by Michael Frank at Stanford HAIThe Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellPapers & Articles:“Curriculum Learning With Infant Egocentric Videos,” in NeurIPS 2023 (September 21)“The Infant’s Visual World The Everyday Statistics for Visual Learning,” by Swapnaa Jayaraman and Linda B. Smith, in The Cambridge Handbook of Infant Development: Brain, Behavior, and Cultural Context, Chapter 20, Cambridge University Press (September 26, 2020)“Can lessons from infants solve the problems of data-greedy AI?” in Nature (March 18, 2024), doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00713-5“Episodes of experience and generative intelligence,” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (October 19, 2022), doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.012“Baby steps in evaluating the capacities of large language models,” in Nature Reviews Psychology (June 27, 2023), doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00211-x“Auxiliary task demands mask the capabilities of smaller language models,” in COLM (July 10, 2024)“Learning the Meanings of Function Words From Grounded Language Using a Visual Question Answering Model,” in Cognitive Science (First published: 14 May 2024), doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13448

11/6/24 • 38:37

Guests: Tomer Ullman, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard UniversityMurray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Department of Computing, Imperial College London; Principal Research Scientist, Google DeepMindHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie MitchellProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationBooks: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellThe Technological Singularity by Murray ShanahanEmbodiment and the inner life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds by Murray ShanahanSolving the Frame Problem by Murray ShanahanSearch, Inference and Dependencies in Artificial Intelligence by Murray Shanahan and Richard SouthwickTalks: The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellArtificial intelligence: A brief introduction to AI by Murray ShanahanPapers & Articles:“A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled,” in New York Times (Feb 16, 2023)“Bayesian Models of Conceptual Development: Learning as Building Models of the World,” in Annual Review of Developmental Psychology Volume 2 (Oct 26, 2020), doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084833“Comparing the Evaluation and Production of Loophole Behavior in Humans and Large Language Models,” in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (December 2023), doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.264“Role play with large language models,” in Nature (Nov 8, 2023), doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06647-8“Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Tasks,” arXiv (v5, March 14, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.08399“Talking about Large Language Models,” in Communications of the ACM (Feb 12, 2024), “Simulacra as Conscious Exotica,” in arXiv (v2, July 11, 2024), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.12422

10/23/24 • 45:05

Guests: Evelina Fedorenko, Associate Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MITSteve Piantadosi, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and Head of Computation and Language Lab, UC BerkeleyGary Lupyan, Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-MadisonHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie MitchellProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationBooks: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellDeveloping Object Concepts in Infancy: An Associative Learning Perspective by Rakison, D.H., and G. LupyanLanguage and Mind by Noam ChomskyOn Language by Noam ChomskyTalks: The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellThe language system in the human brain: Parallels & Differences with LLMs by Evelina Federenko Papers & Articles:“Dissociating language and thought in large language models,” in Trends in Cognitive Science (March 19, 2024), doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.01.011“The language network as a natural kind within the broader landscape of the human brain,” in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (April 12, 2024), doi.org/10.1038/s41583-024-00802-4“Visual grounding helps learn word meanings in low-data regimes,” in arXiv (v2 revised on 25 March 2024), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.13257“No evidence of theory of mind reasoning in the human language network,” in Cerebral Cortex (December 28, 2022), doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac505“Chapter 1: Modern language models refute Chomsky’s approach to language,” by Steve T. Piantadosi (v7, November 2023), lingbuzz/007180“Uniquely human intelligence arose from expanded information capacity,” in Nature Reviews Psychology (April 2, 2024), doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00283-3“Understanding the allure and pitfalls of Chomsky's acience,” Review by Gary Lupyan, in The American Journal of Psychology (Spring 2018), doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.131.1.0112“Language is more abstract than you think, or, why aren’t languages more iconic?” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (June 18, 2018), Published:18 June 2018, doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0137“Does vocabulary help structure the mind?” in Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Human Communication: Origins, Mechanisms, and Functions (February 27, 2021), doi.org/10.1002/9781119684527.ch6“Use of superordinate labels yields more robust and human-like visual representations in convolutional neural networks,” in Journal of Vision (December 2021), doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.13.13“Appeals to ‘Theory of Mind’ no longer explain much in language evolution,” by Justin Sulik and Gary Lupyan“Effects of language on visual perception,” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (October 1, 2020), doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.08.005“Is language-of-thought the best game in the town we live?” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (September 28, 2023), doi:10.1017/S0140525X23001814“Can we distinguish machine learning from human learning?” in arXiv (October 8, 2019), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1910.03466

10/9/24 • 37:44

 Guests: Alison Gopnik, SFI External Faculty; Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Berkeley; Member of Berkeley AI Research GroupJohn Krakauer, SFI External Faculty; John C. Malone Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Johns Hopkins UniversityHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie MitchellProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoPodcast logo by Nicholas GrahamFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Complexity Explorer: Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine LearningLecture: Artificial IntelligenceSFI programs: EducationBooks: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie MitchellWords, Thoughts and Theories by Alison Gopnik and Andrew N. MeltzoffThe Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. KuhlThe Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life by Alison GopnikThe Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison GopnikTalks: The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie MitchellImitation Versus Innovation: What Children Can Do That Large Langauge Models’ Can’t by Alison GopnikThe Minds of Children by Alison GopnikWhat Understanding Adds to Cambrian Intelligence: A Taxonomy by John KrakauerPapers & Articles:“Why you can’t make a computer that feels pain,” by Daniel C. Dennett“Transmission versus truth, imitation versus innovation: What children can do that Large Language and Language-and-Vision models cannot (yet),” in Perspectives on Psychological Science  (October 26, 2023), doi.org/10.1177/17456916231201401“Empowerment as Causal Learning, Causal Learning as Empowerment: A bridge between Bayesian causal hypothesis testing and reinforcement learning,” by Alison Gopnik“What can AI Learn from Human Exploration? Intrinsically-Motivated Humans and Agents in Open-World Exploration” by Yuqing Du et al, for Workshop: Agent Learning in Open-Endedness Workshop, NeurIPS 2024 conference“Two views on the cognitive brain,” by David L. Barack & John W. Krakauer, Perspectives in Nature Reviews Neuroscience Vol 22 (April 15, 2021)“The intelligent reflex,” by John W. Krakauer, Philosophical Psychology (May 23, 2019), doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2019.1607281“Representation in Cognitive Science by Nicholas Shea: But Is It Thinking? The Philosophy of Representation Meets Systems Neuroscience” by John W. Krakauer

9/25/24 • 43:28

Right now, AI is having a moment — and it’s not the first time grand predictions about the potential of machines are being made. But, what does it really mean to say something like ChatGPT is “intelligent”? What exactly is intelligence? In this season of the Complexity podcast, The Nature of Intelligence, we'll explore this question through conversations with cognitive and neuroscientists, animal cognition researchers, and AI experts in six episodes. Together, we'll investigate the complexities of human intelligence, how it compares to that of other species, and where AI fits in. We'll dive into the relationship between language and thought, examine AI's limitations, and ask: Could machines ever truly be like us?

9/19/24 • 03:25

Guests: Heather Graham, Research Associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight CenterHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoAdditional sound credits: Digifish music; “Determination of Azimuth,” written by Heather Graham, staged at the Baltimore Rock Opera SocietyFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:Apply for the 2024 Complexity Global School at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, ColombiaSFI programs: EducationComplexity Explorer:  Origins of Life: Introduction| Chris Kempes (Link to full playlist)Enroll for the course: Origins of LifeVideos:Asteroids, Agnostic Biosignatures, & Experimental Rock Opera with Dr. Heather GrahamHeather Graham on Katherine JohnsonPapers & Articles:“Investigating the impact of x‐ray computed tomography imaging on soluble organic matter in the Murchison meteorite: Implications for Bennu sample analyses” in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (December 2023), doi.org/10.1111/maps.14111“The Vacant Niche Revisited: Using Negative Results to Refine the Limits of Habitability,” in bioRxiv (Nov 8, 2023), doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.06.565904“Observations of Elemental Composition of Enceladus Consistent with Generalized Models of Theoretical Ecosystems,” in bioRxiv (Oct 29, 2023), doi.org/10.1101/2023.10.29.564608“Planetary Subsurface Science and Exploration: An Integrated Consortium to Understand Subsurface Sources of Energy and the Unique Energetics of Subsurface Life,” in Mars Extant Life: What’s Next? (Nov 2019), hou.usra.edu/meetings/lifeonmars2019/pdf/5047.pdf“Detecting life on Earth and the limits of analogy,” in Planetary Astrobiology (June 16, 2020)“Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry,” in chemRxiv (Nov 16, 202), chemrxiv.org/engage/api-gateway/chemrxiv/assets/orp/resource/item/60c751e59abda27c1af8dce4/original/identifying-molecules-as-biosignatures-with-assembly-theory-and-mass-spectrometry.pdf“The Grayness of the Origin of Life,” in Life (May 29, 2021) doi.org/10.3390/life11060498“Generalized stoichiometry and biogeochemistry for astrobiological applications,” in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (July 2021), link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11538-021-00877-5

4/10/24 • 40:48

Guests: David Krakauer, President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe InstituteSean Carroll, External Professor and Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins UniversityHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoAdditional sound credits: Digifishmusic, Trundlefly, Greenvwbeetle, Miksmusic, BrewlabboffinFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:SFI programs: EducationComplexity Explorer: Origins of Life: The Multiple Origins of Life - Part 1 | David KrakauerOrigins of Life: The Multiple Origins of Life - Part 2 | David KrakauerOrigins of Life: The Multiple Origins of Life - Part 3 | David KrakauerOrigins of Life: The Multiple Origins of Life - Part 4 | David KrakauerComplexity Explorer Lecture: David Krakauer • What is Complexity?Books: Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology by Gregory RadickQuanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean CarrollWorlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984-2019 Edited by David KrakauerTalks: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics Sean CarrollPapers & Articles:“The Multiple Paths to Multiple Life,” in Journal of Molecular Evolution (July 12, 2021), doi.org/10.1007/s00239-021-10016-2

3/27/24 • 33:53

Guests: Melanie Moses, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Professor of Computer Science and Associate Professor of Biology at University of New MexicoHyejin Youn, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Associate Professor at Institute of Northwestern UniversityHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:SFI programs: EducationComplexity Explorer: Fractals and Scaling Fractals and Scaling: Toward a Theory of Urban ScalingIntroduction to Complexity: Ant Foraging and Task AllocationBooks: Scale by Geoffrey WestComplexity: a Guided Tour by Melanie MitchellTalks: Toward a Scientific Theory of Cities by Hyejin YounPapers & Articles:“Synergy in ant foraging strategies: memory and communication alone and in combination,” in GECCO’13: Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation (July 6, 2013), doi.org/10.1145/2463372.2463389“In vivo, in silico, in machina: Ants and Robots balance memory and communication to collectively exploit information,” in Proceedings of the European Conference on Complex Systems 2012“What makes individual I’s a Collective We; coordination mechanisms & costs” in arXiv (November 20, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.02113“How does innovation push its boundaries?” in 43 Visions for Complexity, Exploring Complexity: Volume 3 (January 2017), doi.org/10.1142/9789813206854_0043

3/13/24 • 33:58

Guests: Brian Enquist, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of ArizonaPablo Marquet, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Professor at Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChileHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoOther music: Craig Smith, Justkiddink, MaestroALF, ComputerHotline, James Ro Davidson, SoundEnsemble, Trundlefly, Geoff Bremner, Newagesgroup, Oddmonoliths, TheplaFollow us on:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskyMore info:SFI programs: EducationComplexity Explorer: Origins of Life: Astrobiology & General Theories for Life - Scaling with Pablo MarquetBooks: Scale by Geoffrey WestScaling Biodiversity (Ecological Reviews) edited by David Storch, Pablo Marquet , James Brown How Landscapes Change: Human Disturbance and Ecosystem Fragmentation in the Americas (Ecological Studies Book 162) edited by Gay A. Bradshaw and Pablo A. Marquet Talks: Better Forecasting our Ecological Future: Taming Big Data with Big Theory, Brian EnquistPapers & Articles:“More than 17,000 tree species are at risk from rapid global change,” in Nature Communications (January 2, 2024), doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44321-9“Metastatic cells exploit their stoichiometric niche in the network of cancer ecosystems,” in Science Advances (December 13, 2023), doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi79“Environmental heterogeneity as a driver of terrestrial biodiversity on a global scale” in PPG: Earth and Environment (August 11, 2023), doi.org/10.1177/03091333231189045“The number of tree species on Earth,” PNAS (Jan 31, 2022), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2115329119“Globally important plant functional traits for coping with climate change,” in Frontiers of Biogeography (October 2, 2021), doi.org/10.21425/F5FBG53774“Scaling from Traits to Ecosystems: Developing a General Trait Driver Theory via Integrating Trait-Based and Metabolic Scaling Theories,” Advances in Ecological Research (May 4, 2015),  doi.org/10.1016/bs.aecr.2015.02.001“A general quantitative theory of forest structure and dynamics,” PNAS (April 28, 2009), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0812294106

2/28/24 • 29:22

Guests: Ricard Solé, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Head of the Complex Systems Lab at Universitat Pompeu FabraSara Walker, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Associate Director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex SystemsHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music by: Mitch MignanoOther music: Matucha, Kijjaz, Klankbeeld, Aesterial-Arts, Dijifishmusic, Greenvwbeetle, Odilon Marcenaro, Jobro, Benboncan, Bone666138, Aiwha, Josh Berry, Rubenvvuuren, and MiksmusicFollow us on: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskySFI programs: Complexity Explorer: Origins of LifeEducationBooks & Films: Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, based on book by Mary ShelleyThe Computer and the Brain, by John von NeumannSigns of life: How complexity pervades biology by Ricard V. Solé and Brian C. GoodwinTalks: Liquid and Solid Brains: Mapping the Cognition Space by Ricard SoléEvolving Brains: Solid, Liquid and Synthetic by Ricard SoléA Universal Theory of Life: Math, Art & Information by Sara WalkerPapers & Articles:“Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution” in Nature (October 4, 2023) doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06600-9“Time is an object” in Aeon, May 19, 2023“The Algorithmic Origins of Life” in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (February 6, 2013) doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2012.0869“Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken” in Entropy (May 9, 2022), doi.org/10.3390/e24050665“Unicellular–multicellular evolutionary branching driven by resource limitations” (June 2, 2022) doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0018

2/14/24 • 33:50

Guests: Vijay Balasubramanian, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Cathy and Marc Lasry Professor of Physics at the University of PennsylvaniaGeoffrey West, Shannan Distinguished Professor and Past President, Santa Fe InstituteHosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris KempesProducer: Katherine MoncurePodcast theme music: Mitch MignanoOther Music: Blue Dot Sessions, Pink House Music, Eardeer, and Craig Smith.Follow us on: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn  • BlueskySFI programs: Complexity Global School Complexity Explorer: Fractals & ScalingEducationBooks & Stories: Tell Me Why by Arkady LeokumScale by Geoffrey West“Funes, the Memorious” by Jorge Luis BorgesTalks: How the Brain Makes You: Collective Intelligence and Computation by Neural Circuits by Vijay BalasubramanianThe Future of the Planet: Life, Growth and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies by Geoffrey WestEnergy, Scaling & The Future of Life on Earth by Geoffrey WestComplex Time Working Group: “What is Sleep?” with Geoffrey West, Van Savage, Alex HermanPapers: “Brain Power” in PNAS (August 2, 2021) doi.org/10.1073/pnas.210702211“The Physical Effects of Learning” preprint published in biorxiv“Unraveling why we sleep: Quantitative analysis reveals abrupt transition from neural reorganization to repair in early development” in Science Advances (September 18, 2020) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba0398“The Scales That Limit: The Physical Boundaries of Evolution” in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (August 7, 2019) doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2019.00242

1/31/24 • 34:55

Trailer for Complexity: Physics of Life, from the Santa Fe Institute

1/29/24 • 03:08

Episode Title and Show Notes:106 - Michael Garfield & David Krakauer on Evolution, Information, and Jurassic ParkWelcome to Complexity, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm Michael Garfield, producer of this show and host for the last 105 episodes. Since October, 2019, we have brought you with us for far ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe. Today I step down and depart from SFI with one final appearance as the guest of this episode. Our guest host is SFI President David Krakauer, he and I will braid together with nine other conversations from the archives in a retrospective masterclass on how this podcast traced the contours of complexity. We'll look back on episodes with David, Brian Arthur, Geoffrey West, Doyne Farmer, Deborah Gordon, Tyler Marghetis, Simon DeDeo, Caleb Scharf, and Alison Gopnik to thread some of the show's key themes through into windmills and white whales, SFI pursues, and my own life's persistent greatest questions.We'll ask about the implications of a world transformed by science and technology by deeper understanding and prediction and the ever-present knock-on consequences. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify and consider making a donation or finding other ways to engage with SFI at Santa fe.edu/engage. Thank you each and all for listening. It's been a pleasure and an honor to take you offroad with us over these last years.Follow SFI on social media: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn📚Reading & Videos:The Lost Worldby Michael CrichtonJurassic Parkby Michael CrichtonThe Evolution of Syntactic Communicationby Martin Nowak, Joshua Plotkin, and Vincent JansenInterPlanetary Festival 2018 + SFI Science Explainer Animationsby SFIComplexity Economicsby SFI PressSupertheories and Consilience from Alchemy to Electromagnetismby Simon DeDeo (2019 SFI Seminar)How To Live in The Future, Part 4: The Future is Exapted/Remixedby Michael GarfieldArtists Misusing Technologyby NXT MuseumThe Collapse of Artificial Intelligenceby Melanie Mitchell (2019 SFI Symposium Talk)The Debate Over Understanding in AI's Large Language Modelsby Melanie Mitchell & David KrakauerWelcome To Jurassic Parkby Tink Zorg(re: COVID-19 and the collapse of supply chains)Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubbornby Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta Magazine(re: Albert Kao)Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanismby Jessica FlackArgument Making In The Wildby Simon DeDeo(SFI Seminar re: egregores)The Collective Computation of Reality in Nature and Societyby Jessica Flack (SFI Community Lecture re: “hourglass emergence”)Interaction-based evolution: how natural selection and nonrandom mutation work togetherby Adi LivnatIn The Country of The Blind (_Afterword: An Introduction to Cliology)by Michael FlynnAn exchange of letters on the role of noise in collective intelligenceby Daniel Kahneman, David Krakauer, Olivier Sibony, Cass Sunstein, David WolpertMurray Gell-Mann - Information overload. A crude look at the whole (180/200)(re: the challenges of funding truly innovative research)The work of art in the age of biocybernetic reproductionby W.J.T. MitchellKen WilberIntelligence as a planetary scale processby Adam Frank, David Grinspoon, and Sara WalkerLight & Magic (documentary series)on Disney+Palantir AnalyticsThe Lord of The Ringsby J.R.R. TolkienPresent Shock: When Everything Happens Nowby Douglas RushkoffMichael LevinRobustness of variance and autocorrelation as indicators of critical slowing downby Vasilis Dakos, Egbert H van Nes, Paolo D’Odorico, Marten SchefferThe Singularity in Our Past Light-Coneby Cosma Shalizi🎧Podcasts: Complexity Podcast001 - David Krakauer on The Landscape of 21st Century Science009 - Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-making012 - Matthew Jackson on Social and Economic Networks013 - W. Brian Arthur (Part 1) on The History of Complexity Economics016 - Andy Dobson on Disease Ecology & Conservation Strategy036 - Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse?056 - J. Doyne Farmer on The Complexity Economics Revolution060 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt’s Naturegemälde065 - Deborah Gordon on Ant Colonies as Distributed Computers067 - Tyler Marghetis on Breakdowns & Breakthroughs: Critical Transitions in Jazz & Mathematics072 - Simon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of Epistemology087 - Sara Walker on The Physics of Life and Planet-Scale Intelligence090 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human Dataome92 - Miguel Fuentes & Marco Buongiorno Nardelli on Music, Emergence, and Society099 - Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I. Future Fossils Podcast194 - Simon Conway Morris on Convergent Evolution & Creative Mass Extinctions190 - Lauren Seyler on Dark Microbiology & Right Relations in Science165 - Kevin Kelly on Time, Memory, Change, and Vanishing Asia125 - Stuart Kauffman on Physics, Life, and The Adjacent Possible Podcast theme music by Mitch MignanoOther music by Michael Garfield

6/30/23 • 99:24

One way of looking at the world reveals it as an interference pattern of dynamic, ever-changing links — relationships that grow and break in nested groups of multilayer networks. Identity can be defined by informational exchange between one cluster of relationships and any other. A kind of music starts to make itself apparent in the avalanche of data and new analytical approaches that a century of innovation has availed us. But just as with new music genres, it requires a trained ear to attune to unfamiliar order…what can we learn from network science and related general, abstract mathematical approaches to discovering this order in a flood of numbers?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and in every episode we bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we speak with SFI External Professor, UCLA mathematician Mason Porter (UCLA Website, Twitter, Google Scholar, Wikipedia), about his research on community detection in networks and the topology of data — going deep into a varied toolkit of approaches that help scientists disclose deep structures in the massive data-sets produced by modern life.If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.I know it comes as a surprise, but this is our penultimate episode.  Please stay tuned for one more show in May when SFI President David Krakauer and I will reflect on major themes and highlights from the last three-and-a-half years, and look forward to what I’ll be doing next! It’s been an honor and a pleasure to bring complex systems science to you in this way, and hope we stay in touch. I won’t be hard to find.Thank you for listening.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Media:Bounded Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics on NetworksSFI Seminar by Mason Porter (live Twitter coverage & YouTube stream recording)Communities in Networksby Mason Porter, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, & Peter MuchaSocial Structure of Facebook Networksby Amanda Traud, Peter Mucha, & Mason PorterCritical Truths About Power Lawsby Michael Stumpf & Mason PorterThe topology of databy Mason Porter, Michelle Feng, & Eleni KatiforiComplex networks with complex weightsby Lucas Böttcher & Mason A. PorterA Bounded-Confidence Model of Opinion Dynamics on Hypergraphsby Abigail Hicock, Yacoub Kureh, Heather Z. Brooks, Michelle Feng, & Mason PorterA multilayer network model of the coevolution of the spread of a disease and competing opinionsby Kaiyan Peng, Zheng Lu, Vanessa Lin, Michael Lindstrom, Christian Parkinson, Chuntian Wang, Andrea Bertozzi, & Mason PorterSocial network analysis for social neuroscientistsElisa C Baek, Mason A Porter, & Carolyn ParkinsonCommunity structure in social and biological networksby Michelle Girvan & Mark NewmanThe information theory of individualityby David Krakauer, Nils Bertschinger, Eckehard Olbrich, Jessica C Flack, Nihat AySocial capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobilityby Raj Chetty, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert B. Fluegge, Sara Gong, Federico Gonzalez, Armelle Grondin, Matthew Jacob, Drew Johnston, Martin Koenen, Eduardo Laguna-Muggenburg, Florian Mudekereza, Tom Rutter, Nicolaj Thor, Wilbur Townsend, Ruby Zhang, Mike Bailey, Pablo Barberá, Monica Bhole & Nils Wernerfelt Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networksby Aaron Clauset, Cristopher Moore, M.E.J. NewmanGregory Bateson (Wikipedia)Complexity Ep. 99 - Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.“Why Do We Sleep?”by Van Savage & Geoffrey West at Aeon MagazineComplexity Ep. 4 - Luis Bettencourt on The Science of CitiesComplexity Ep. 12 - Matthew Jackson on Social & Economic NetworksComplexity Ep. 68 - W. Brian Arthur on Economics in Nouns and Verbs (Part 1)Complexity Ep. 100 - Dani Bassett & Perry Zurn on The Neuroscience & Philosophy of Curious Minds 

4/5/23 • 82:19

For centuries, Medieval life in Europe meant a world determined and prescribed by church and royalty. The social sphere was very much a pyramid, and everybody had to answer to and fit within the schemes of those on top. And then, on wings of reason, Modern selves emerged to scrutinize these systems and at great cost swap them for others that more evenly distribute power and authority. Cosmic forces preordained one’s role within a transcendental order…but then, across quick decades of upheaval, philosophy and politics started celebrating self-determination and free will. Art and science blossomed as they wove together. Nothing was ever the same.Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we engage with returning guest, New York Times best-selling author of seven books and SFI Miller Scholar Andrea Wulf, about her latest lovingly-detailed long work, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self. In this episode we explore the conditions for an 18th century revolution in philosophy, science, literature, and lifestyle springing from Jena, Germany. Over just a few years, an extraordinary confluence of history-making figures such as Goethe, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Novalis helped rewrite what was possible for human thought and action. Admist a landscape of political revolt, this braid of brilliant friends and enemies and lovers altered what it means to be a self and how the modern self relates to everything it isn’t, inspiring later British and American Romantic movements. Arguing for art and the imagination in the work of science and infusing art with reason, Jena’s rebels of the mind lived bold, iconoclastic lives that seem 200 years ahead in retrospect. We stand to learn a great deal from a careful look at Jena and the first Romantics…maybe even how to replicate their great successes and avoid their self-implosion in the face of social turbulence.If you value our research and communication efforts, Please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/podcastgive. You can find numerous other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage — in particular, you may wish to celebrate ten years of free online courses at Complexity Explorer with SFI Professor Cris Moore’s Computation in Complex Systems, starting March 28th. Learn more in the show notes…and thank you for listening!Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn Related Reading & Listening:Episode 60 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's NaturegemäldeEpisode 61 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 2: Humboldt's Dangerous IdeaThe Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New Worldby Andrea WulfMagnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Selfby Andrea WulfCommon As Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownershipby Lewis HydeEpisode 37 - The Art & Science of Resilience in the Wake of Trauma with Laurence Gonzales“Nature” (1844)by Ralph Waldo EmersonChopin’s PreludesFinnegans Wakeby James JoyceInterPlanetary Voyager (Interactive Golden Record Liner Notes)by SFI’s InterPlanetary FestivalBlue Planet (BBC)with David Attenborough

3/24/23 • 66:49

How do we get a handle on complex systems thinking? What are the implications of this science for philosophy, and where does philosophical tradition foreshadow findings from the scientific frontier?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.In this episode we speak with Carlos Gershenson (UNAM website, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Twitter), SFI Sabbatical Visitor and professor of computer science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where he leads the Self-organizing Systems Lab, among many other titles you can find in our show notes. For the next hour, we’ll discuss his decades of research and writing on a vast array of core complex systems concepts and their intersections with both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions — a first for this podcast.If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.For HD virtual backgrounds of the SFI campus to use on video calls and a chance to win a signed copy of one of our books from the SFI Press, please help us improve our scicomm by completing a survey linked in the show notes.Or just a copy of the recently resurfaced SFI Press Archival Volume Complexity, Entropy, and The Physics of Information.There’s still time to apply for the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students – apps close March 15th.Or come work for us! We are on the lookout for a new Digital Media Specialist, an Applied Complexity Fellow in Sustainability, a Research Assistant in Emergent Political Economies, and a Payroll, Accounts Payable & Receivable Specialist.You can also join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Links:Carlos publishes the Complexity Digest Newsletter.His SFI Seminars to date:A Brief History of BalanceEmergence, (Self)Organization, and ComplexityCriticality: A Balance Between Robustness and AdaptabilityFestina lente (the slower-is-faster effect)Antifragility: Dynamical BalanceW. Ross Ashby & The Law of Requisite VarietyHyperobjectsby Timothy MortonHow can we think the complex?by Carlos Gershenson and Francis HeylighenThe Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophyby Carlos GershensonComplexity and Philosophyby Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers, Carlos GershensonHeterogeneity extends criticalityby Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, Octavio Zapata, Omar K, Pineda, Gerardo Iñiguez, and Carlos GershensonWhen Can we Call a System Self-organizing?by Carlos Gershenson and Francis HeylighenTemporal, Structural, and Functional Heterogeneities Extend Criticality and Antifragility in Random Boolean Networksby Amahury Jafet López-Díaz, Fernanda Sánchez-Puig, and Carlos GershensonWhen slower is fasterby Carlos Gershenson, Dirk HelbingSelf-organization leads to supraoptimal performance in public transportation systemsby Carlos GershensonDynamics of rankingby Gerardo Iñiguez, Carlos Pineda, Carlos Gershenson, & Albert-László BarabásiSelf-Organizing Traffic Lightsby Carlos GershensonDynamic competition and resource partitioning during the early life of two widespread, abundant and ecologically similar fishesby A. D. Nunn, L. H. Vickers, K. Mazik, J. D. Bolland, G. Peirson, S. N. Axford, A. Henshaw & I. G. CowxTowards a general theory of balanceby Carlos GershensonA Calculus for Self-Referenceby Francisco VarelaOn Some Mental Effects of The Earthquakeby William JamesSelf-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systemsby Carlos GershensonAlison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.Complexity Ep. 99Simon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of EpistemologyComplexity Ep. 72David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific MethodComplexity Ep. 45The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibilityby Stewart BrandMichael LachmannStuart KauffmanAndreas WagnerCosma ShaliziNassim TalebDoes Free Will Violate The Laws of Physics?Big Think interviews Sean Carroll

3/9/23 • 66:41

And now for something completely different!  Last October, The Santa Fe Institute held its third InterPlanetary Festival at SITE Santa Fe, celebrating the immensely long time horizon, deep scientific and philosophical questions, psychological challenges, and engineering problems involved in humankind’s Great Work to extend its understanding and presence into outer space. For our third edition, we turned our attention to visionary projects living generations will likely not live to see completed — interstellar travel, off-world cities, radical new ways of understanding spacetime — as an invitation to engage in science as not merely interesting but deeply fun. For our first panel, we decided to inquire: What is time, really? How has science fiction changed  the way we track and measure, speak about, and live in time? And how do physics and complex systems science pose and answer these most fundamental questions?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.In this week’s episode, we share the Complex Conceptions of Time panel from InterPlanetary Festival 2022, moderated by SFI President David Krakauer and featuring an all-star trinity of panelists: science journalist James Gleick, sci-fi author and SFI Miller Scholar Ted Chiang, and physicist and SFI Professor David Wolpert. In this hour, we play with and dissect some favorite metaphors for time, unroll the history of time’s mathematization, review time travel in science fiction, and examine the arguments between free will and determinism.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com — as well as the extensive, interactive web-based “Voyager Golden Record Liner Notes” with links to not only all of the panels from IPFest 2022 but also copious additional resources, including contributor bios, peer-reviewed publications, science fiction and nonfiction science writing, and more…If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.If you’d like some HD virtual backgrounds of the SFI campus to use on video calls and a chance to win a signed copy of one of our books from the SFI Press, help us improve our science communication by completing a survey about our various scicomm channels. Thanks for your time!Lastly, we have a bevy of summer programs coming up! Join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more.  Space is limited!  The application deadline has been extended to March 1st.OR apply to the Graduate Workshop on Complexity in Social Science.OR the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students.(OR check our open listings for a staff or research job!)Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Episode cover art by Michael Garfield with the help of Midjourney.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn(SOME) Mentioned & Related Links:David KrakauerMathematical languages shape our understanding of time in physicsby Nicolas GisinDoes Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Mathby Natalie WolchoverThe Principle of Least ActionPath Integral FormulationClosed Timelike CurveThe Time Machineby H. G. WellsKip ThorneJames GleickGenius: The Life and Science of Richard FeynmanThe Physicist and The Philosopherby Jimena CanalesTed Chiang“Story of Your Life”ArrivalExhalationRussian Doll (TV series)“The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate”David WolpertComplexity 94 - David Wolpert & Farita Tasnim on The Thermodynamics of CommunicationComplexity 45 - David Wolpert on The No Free Lunch Theorems and Why They Undermine The Scientific MethodA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark TwainIntuitionist Mathematics

2/24/23 • 60:21

There are maps, and there are territories, and humans frequently confuse the two. No matter how insistently this point has been made by cognitive neuroscience, epistemology, economics, and a score of other disciplines, one common human error is to act as if we know what we should measure, and that what we measure is what matters. But what we value doesn’t even always have a metric. And even reasonable proxies can distort our understanding of and behavior in the world we want to navigate. Even carefully collected biometric data can occlude the other factors that determine health, or can oversimplify a nuanced conversation on the plural and contextual dimensions of health, transforming goals like functional fitness into something easier to quantify but far less useful. This philosophical conundrum magnifies when we consider governance at scales beyond those at which Homo sapiens evolved to grasp intuitively: What should we count to wisely operate a nation-state? How do we practice social science in a way that can inform new, smarter species of   political economy? And how can we escape the seductive but false clarity of systems that rain information but do not enhance collective wisdom?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on the show we talk to SFI External Professor Paul Smaldino at UC Merced and University of Utah Professor of Philosophy  C. Thi Nguyen. In this episode we talk about   value capture and legibility, viewpoint diversity, issues that plague big governments, and expert identification problems…and map the challenges “ahead of us” as SFI continues as the hub of a five-year international research collaboration into emergent political economies. (Find links to all previous episodes in this sub-series in the notes below.)Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.If you’d like some HD virtual backgrounds of the SFI campus to use on video calls and a chance to win a signed copy of one of our books from the SFI Press, help us improve our science communication by completing a survey about our various scicomm channels. Thanks for your time!Lastly, we have a bevy of summer programs coming up! Join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more.  Space is limited!  The application deadline has been extended to March 1st.OR apply to the Graduate Workshop on Complexity in Social Science.OR the Complex ity GAINS UK program for PhD students.(OR check our open listings for a staff or research job!)Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Links:Transparency Is Surveillanceby C. Thi NguyenThe Seductions of Clarityby C. Thi NguyenThe Natural Selection of Bad Scienceby Paul Smaldino and Richard McElreathMaintaining transient diversity is a general principle for improving collective problem solvingby Paul Smaldino, Cody Moser, Alejandro Pérez Velilla, Mikkel WerlingThe Division of Cognitive Laborby Philip KitcherThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in The Natural Sciencesby Eugene WignerOn Crashing The Barrier of Meaning in A.I.by Melanie MitchellSeeing Like A Stateby James C. ScottJim RuttSlowed Canonical Progress in Large Fields of Scienceby Johan Chu and James EvansThe Coming Battle for the COVID-19 Narrativeby Wendy Carlin and Samuel BowlesPeter TurchinIn The Country of The Blindby Michael Flynn82 - David Krakauer on Emergent Political Economies and A Science of Possibility (EPE 01)83 - Eric Beinhocker & Diane Coyle on Rethinking Economics for A Sustainable & Prosperous World (EPE 02)84 - Ricardo Hausmann & J. Doyne Farmer on Evolving Technologies & Market Ecologies (EPE 03)91 - Steven Teles & Rajiv Sethi on Jailbreaking The Captured Economy (EPE 04)97 - Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society (EPE 05)

2/9/23 • 72:36

This is a podcast by and for the curious — and yet, in over three years, we have pointed curiosity at nearly every topic but itself. What is it, anyway? Are there worse and better frames for understanding how desire and wonder, exploration and discovery play out in both the brain and in society? How is scientific research like an amble through the woods? What juicy insights bubble up where neuroscientists, historians, philosophers, and mathematicians meet to answer questions like these? And how long of a path must we traverse to get there?In this episode, we talk with SFI External Professor Dani Bassett, physicist and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and their birth twin Perry Zurn, philosopher at American University in Washington, DC. You might consider each one of two lenses in a stereoscopic inquiry. Their new MIT Press book Curious Minds: The Power of Connection bridges quantity and quality to recast curiosity as a phenomenon of networks — as a kind of “edgework” (generative, drawing new associations) instead of “acquistion” (of individuals collecting facts). The brain, after all, is made of networked neurons, and society’s a kind of super-brain of networked people, so why not think in terms of links?  Their research offers a taxonomy of kinds of curiosity — three different ways that people move through knowledge networks. Traveling across a web of related ideas, rupturing and mending, weaving, percolating, synthesizing, we embody and perform the objects of their academic study. We hope you find this lively and self-referential conversation offers you a helpful map as you draw your distinct connectome through the world of what is and what could be known...Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.Lastly, we have a bevy of summer programs coming up! Join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more.  Space is limited!  Apps close February 1st.OR Apply to participate in the Complex Systems Summer School.OR the Graduate Workshop on Complexity in Social Science.OR the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students.(OR check our open listings for a staff or research job!)Thank you for listening…EDITORIAL CORRECTION: We mention a review of Cormac McCarthy's latest novels in this discussion. The correct link is to James Wood’s piece in The New Yorker, not Michael Gorra’s in NYRB. Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Links:Curious Minds: The Power of Connectionby Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett (MIT Press, 2022)Curiosity as filling, compressing, and reconfiguring knowledge networksby Shubhankar P. Patankar, Dale Zhou, Christopher W. Lynn, Jason Z. Kim, Mathieu Ouellet, Harang Ju, Perry Zurn, David M. Lydon-Staley, Dani S. BassettMurray Gell-Mann on information overload (from A Crude Look At The Whole) [Video]The Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates by SFI External Professor Andreas WagnerComplexity 99: Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.Complexity 80: Mingzhen Lu on The Evolution of Root Systems & Biogeochemical CyclingBusybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Models of Curiosityby Perry ZurnHunters, busybodies and the knowledge network building associated with deprivation curiosityby David M. Lydon-Staley, Dale Zhou, Ann Sizemore Blevins, Perry Zurn & Danielle S. BassettComplexity 29: On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David KrakauerThe Dimensions of Experience: A Natural History of Consciousness by Andrew P. SmithComplexity 68: W. Brian Arthur on Economics in Nouns and Verbs (Part 1)Complexity 90: Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeComplexity 94: David Wolpert & Farita Tasnim on The Thermodynamics of CommunicationComplexity 35: Scaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Complexity 87: Sara Walker on The Physics of Life and Planet-Scale IntelligenceThe extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference listsby Jordan D. Dworkin, Kristin A. Linn, Erin G. Teich, Perry Zurn, Russell T. Shinohara & Danielle S. BassettUnderflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice by Cleo Wölfle HazardThe Sounds of Life by Karen BakkerBraiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KimmererDirk Brockmann’s interactive explorablesNicky Case’s interactive explorablesThe Thing From The Future (speculative futurism card game by Stuart Candy & Jeff Watson at Situation Lab)Bayo Akomolafe (re: networks, the nonhuman turn, and questioning the rhetoric of individuals as “designers”)LAION-5B: An open large-scale dataset for training next generation image-text modelsby Christoph Schuhmann, Romain Beaumont, Richard Vencu, Cade Gordon, Ross Wightman, Mehdi Cherti, Theo Coombes, Aarush Katta, Clayton Mullis, Mitchell Wortsman, Patrick Schramowski, Srivatsa Kundurthy, Katherine Crowson, Ludwig Schmidt, Robert Kaczmarczyk, Jenia JitsevComplexity 86: Dmitri Tymoczko on The Shape of Music: Mathematical Order in Western TonalityDani & Perry on SFI External Professor Sean Carroll’s MINDSCAPE Podcast

1/25/23 • 80:46

Humans have an unusually long childhood — and an unusually long elderhood past the age of reproductive activity. Why do we spend so much time playing and exploring, caregiving and reflecting, learning and transmitting? What were the evolutionary circumstances that led to our unique life history among the primates? What use is the undisciplined child brain with its tendencies to drift, scatter, and explore in a world that adults understand in such very different terms? And what can we transpose from the study of human cognition as a developmental, stage-      wise process to the refinement and application of machine learning technologies?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we talk to SFI External Professor Alison Gopnik, Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California Berkeley, author of numerous books on psych, cognitive science, childhood development. She writes a column at The Wall Street Journal, alternating with Robert Sapolsky. Slate said that Gopnik is “where to go if you want to get into the head of a baby.” In our conversation we discuss the tension between exploration and exploitation, the curious evolutionary origins of human cognition, the value of old age, and she provides a sober counterpoint about life in the age of large language machine learning models.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage.Lastly, we have a bevy of summer programs coming up! Join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more.  Space is limited! Apps close February 1st.OR Apply to participate in the Complex Systems Summer School.OR the Graduate Workshop on Complexity in Social Science.OR the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentioned & Related Links:Alison Gopnik at WikipediaAlison Gopnik’s Google Scholar pageExplanation as Orgasmby Alison GopnikTwitter thread for Gopnik’s latest SFI Seminar on machine learning and child developmentChanges in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthoodby Gopnik et al.Pretense, Counterfactuals, and Bayesian Causal Models: Why What Is Not Real Really Mattersby Deena Weisberg & Alison GopnikChildhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensionsby Alison GopnikThe Origins of Common Sense in Humans and Machinesby Kevin A Smith, Eliza Kosoy, Alison Gopnik, Deepak Pathak, Alan Fern, Joshua B Tenenbaum, & Tomer UllmanWhat Does “Mind-Wandering” Mean to the Folk? An Empirical Investigationby Zachary C. Irving, Aaron Glasser, Alison Gopnik, Verity Pinter, Chandra SripadaModels of Human Scientific Discoveryby Robert Goldstone, Alison Gopnik, Paul Thagard, Tomer UllmanLove Lets Us Learn: Psychological Science Makes the Case for Policies That Help Childrenby Alison Gopnik at APSOur Favorite New Things Are the Old Onesby Alison Gopnik at The Wall Street JournalAn exchange of letters on the role of noise in collective intelligenceby Daniel Kahneman, David Krakauer, Olivier Sibony, Cass Sunstein, & David Wolpert#DEVOBIAS2018 on SFI TwitterCoarse-graining as a downward causation mechanismby Jessica FlackComplexity 90: Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeComplexity 15: R. Maria del-Rio Chanona on Modeling Labor Markets & Tech UnemploymentLearning through the grapevine and the impact of the breadth and depth of social networksby Matthew Jackson, Suraj Malladi, & David McAdamsThe coming battle for the COVID-19 narrativeby Wendy Carlin & Sam BowlesComplexity 83: Eric Beinhocker & Diane Coyle on Rethinking Economics for A Sustainable & Prosperous WorldComplexity 97: Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized SocietyDerek Thompson at The Atlantic on the forces slowing innovation at scale (citing Chu & Evans)

1/11/23 • 68:19

What does it mean to think? What are the traits of thinking systems that we could use to identify them? Different environmental variables call for different strategies in individual and collective cognition — what defines the threshold at which so-called “solid” brains transition into “liquids”? And how might we apply these and related lessons from ecology and evolution to help steward a diverse and thriving future with technology, and keep the biosphere afloat?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on the show we talk to SFI External Professor Ricard Solé of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Website, Twitter, Google Scholar) about liquid and solid brains, the scaling of cognition, criticality, contagions, and terraforming our own planet with synthetic bio.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including our upcoming program for Undergraduate Complexity Research, our new SFI Press book Ex Machina by John H. Miller, and an open postdoctoral fellowship in Belief Dynamics — at santafe.edu/engage.Lastly, join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more.  Space is limited! Apps close February 1st. Learn more on our website.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced & Related WorksLiquid and Solid Brains: Mapping the Cognition SpaceSFI Seminar by Ricard SoléJohn Hopfield (re: biology as computation)Synthetic transitions: towards a new synthesisby Ricard SoléComplexity 93 - Kate Adamala on Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, and BioethicsThe Multiple Paths to Multiple Lifeby Chris Kempes and David KrakauerSimon Conway Morris (re: macroevolutionary trends)Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolutionby Jaewon Shin et al.Smarter Parts Make Collective Systems Too Stubbornby Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta MagazineComplexity 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeWill Ratcliff (re: yeasts and emergent multi-cellularity)Complexity 29 - On Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)Synthetic criticality in cellular brainsby Ricard Solé et al.Tom Ray (re: artificial life)Complexity and fragility in ecological networksby Ricard Solé and José MontoyaEcological Networks and Their Fragilityby José Montoya, Stuart Pimm, and Ricard SoléThe small world of human languageby Ramon Ferrer i Cancho and Ricard SoléMacroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcementby Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Sam Scarpino, and Jean-Gabriel YoungComplexity 56 - J. Doyne Farmer on The Complexity Economics RevolutionComplexity 66 - Katherine Collins on Better Investing Through BiomimicryChris Langton (re: criticality)Jim Crutchfield (re: the edge of chaos)Per Bak (re: self-organized criticality)Complexity 10 - Melanie Moses on Metabolic Scaling in Biology & ComputationComplexity 3 - Sabine Hauert on Swarming Across ScalesNiles Eldredge (re: punctuated equilibria)Terraforming the biosphere: can bioengineering save us?SFI Seminar by Ricard SoléEcological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 yearsby Ricard Solé and Simon LevinEcological firewalls for synthetic biologyby Blai Vidiella and Ricard SoléRachel Armstrong (re: synthetic biology for CO2 fixing in concrete)Stewardship of global collective behaviorby Joseph Bak-Coleman et al.Complexity 64 - Reconstructing Ancient Superhighways with Stefani Crabtree and Devin WhiteComplexity 5 - Jennifer Dunne on Food Webs & ArchaeoEcology

12/22/22 • 73:09

In his foundational 1972 paper “More Is Different,” physicist Phil Anderson made the case that reducing the objects of scientific study to their smallest components does not allow researchers to predict the behaviors of those systems upon reconstruction. Another way of putting this is that different disciplines reveal different truths at different scales. Contrary to long-held convictions that there would one day be one great unifying theory to explain it all, fundamental research in this century looks more like a bouquet of complementary approaches. This pluralistic thinking hearkens back to the work of 19th century psychologist William James and looks forward into the growing popularity of evidence-based approaches that cultivate diversity in team-building, governance, and ecological systems. Context-dependent theory and practice calls for choirs of voices…so how do we encourage this? New systems must emerge to handle the complexity of digital society…what might they look like?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on the show we dip back into our sub-series on SFI’s Emergent Political Economies research theme with a trialogue featuring Microsoft Research Lead Glen Weyl (founder of RadicalXChange and founder-chair of The Plurality Institute), and SFI Resident Professor Cristopher Moore (author of over 150 papers at the intersection of physics and computer science). In our conversation we discuss the case for a radically pluralistic approach, explore the links between plurality and quantum mechanics, and outline potential technological solutions to the “sense-making” problems of the 21st century.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including our upcoming program for Undergraduate Complexity Research, our new SFI Press book Ex Machina by John H. Miller, and an open postdoctoral fellowship in Belief Dynamics — at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced & Related WorksWhy I Am A Pluralistby Glen WeylReflecting on A Possible Quadratic Wormhole between Quantum Mechanics and Pluralityby Michael Freedman, Michal Fabinger, Glen WeylDecentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soulby Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, Vitalik ButerinAI is an Ideology, Not a Technologyby Glen Weyl & Jaron LanierHow Civic Technology Can Help Stop a Pandemicby Jaron Lanier & Glen WeylA Flexible Design for Funding Public Goodsby Vitalik Buterin, Zöe Hitzig, Glen WeylEquality of Power and Fair Public Decision-makingby Nicole Immorlica, Benjamin Plautt, Glen WeylScale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolutionby Jaeweon Shin, Michael Holton Price, David Wolpert, Hajime Shimao, Brendan Tracey & Timothy Kohler Toward a Connected Societyby Danielle AllenThe role of directionality, heterogeneity and correlations in epidemic risk and spreadby Antoine Allard, Cris Moore, Samuel Scarpino, Benjamin Althouse, and Laurent Hébert-DufresneThe Generals’ Scuttlebutt: Byzantine-Resilient Gossip Protocolsby Sandro Coretti, Aggelos Kiayias, Cristopher Moore, Alexander RussellEffective Resistance for Pandemics: Mobility Network Sparsification for High-Fidelity Epidemic Simulationby Alexander Mercier, Samuel Scarpino, and Cris MooreHow Accurate are Rebuttable Presumptions of Pretrial Dangerousness? A Natural Experiment from New Mexicoby Cris Moore, Elise Ferguson, Paul GuerinThe Uncertainty Principle: In an age of profound disagreements, mathematics shows us how to pursue truth togetherby Cris Moore & John KaagOn Becoming Aware: A pragmatics of experiencingby Nathalie Depraz, Francisco Varela, and Pierre VermerschThe Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform The Worldby David Deutsch[Twitter thread on chess]by Vitalik ButerinLetter from Birmingham Jailby Martin Luther King, Jr.The End of History and The Last Manby Francis FukuyamaEnabling the Individual: Simmel, Dewey and “The Need for a Philosophy of Education”by H. KoenigEncyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti of The Holy Father Francis on Fraternity and Social Friendshipby Pope FrancisWhat can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?by David WolpertJ.C.R. Licklider (1, 2)Allison Duettman (re: existential hope)Evan Miyazono (re: Protocol Labs research)Intangible Capital (“an open access scientific journal that publishes theoretical or empirical peer-reviewed articles, which contribute to advance the understanding of phenomena related with all aspects of management and organizational behavior, approached from the perspectives of intellectual capital, strategic management, human resource management, applied psychology, education, IT, supply chain management, accounting…”)Polis (“a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning”)Related Complexity Podcast Episodes7 - Rajiv Sethi on Stereotypes, Crime, and The Pursuit of Justice51 - Cris Moore on Algorithmic Justice & The Physics of Inference55 - James Evans on Social Computing and Diversity by Design68 - W. Brian Arthur on Economics in Nouns and Verbs (Part 1)69 - W. Brian Arthur (Part 2) on "Prim Dreams of Order vs. Messy Vitality" in Economics, Math, and Physics82 - David Krakauer on Emergent Political Economies and A Science of Possibility (EPE 01)83 - Eric Beinhocker & Diane Coyle on Rethinking Economics for A Sustainable & Prosperous World (EPE 02)84 - Ricardo Hausmann & J. Doyne Farmer on Evolving Technologies & Market Ecologies (EPE 03)91 - Steven Teles & Rajiv Sethi on Jailbreaking The Captured Economy (EPE 04)

12/10/22 • 77:55

What makes us human?  Over the last several decades, the once-vast island of human exceptionalism has lost significant ground to wave upon wave of research revealing cognition, emotion, problem-solving, and tool-use in other organisms. But there remains a clear sense that humans stand apart — evidenced by our unique capacity to overrun the planet and remake it in our image. What is unique about the human mind, and how might we engage this question rigorously through the lens of neuroscience? How are our gifts of simulation and imagination different from those of other animals? And what, if anything, can we know of the “curiosity” of even larger systems in which we’re embedded — the social superorganisms, ecosystems, technospheres within which we exist like neurons in the brain?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we conclude a two-part conversation with SFI External Professor John Krakauer, Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair at Johns Hopkins. In this episode, we talk about the nature of curiosity and learning, and whether the difference between the cognitive capacities and inner lifeworld of humans and other animals constitutes a matter of degree or one of kind…Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com  . If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage. Please also note that we are now accepting applications for an open postdoc fellowship, next summer’s undergraduate research program, and the next cohort of Complexity Explorer’s course in the digital humanities. We welcome your submissions!Lastly, for more from John Krakauer, check out our new six-minute time-lapse of notes from the 2022 InterPlanetary Festival panel discussions on intelligence and the limits to human performance in space…Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced in this episode:Prospective Learning: Back to the Futureby The Future Learning Collective (Joshua Vogelstein, et al.)The Learning Salon: Toward a new participatory scienceby Ida Momennejad, John Krakauer, Claire Sun, Eva Yezerets, Kanaka Rajan, Joshua Vogelstein, Brad WybleArtificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaningby Melanie Mitchell at The New York TimesEconomic Possibilities for our Grandchildrenby John Maynard KeynesThe Intelligent Life of the City Raccoonby Jude Isabella at Nautilus MagazineThe maintenance of vocal learning by gene-culture interaction: the cultural trap hypothesisby R. F. Lachlan and P. J. B. SlaterMindscape Podcast 87 - Karl Friston on Brains, Predictions, and Free Energyby Sean CarrollThe Apportionment of Human Diversityby Richard LewontinFrom Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolutionby Simon Conway MorrisI Am a Strange Loopby Douglas HoftstadterCoarse-graining as a downward causation mechanismby Jessica FlackDaniel DennettSusan BlackmoreRelated Episodes:Complexity 9 - Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-makingComplexity 12 - Matthew Jackson on Social & Economic NetworksComplexity 21 - Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence: What We Still Don't KnowComplexity 31 - Embracing Complexity for Systemic Interventions with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 5)Complexity 52 - Mark Moffett on Canopy Biology & The Human SwarmComplexity 55 - James Evans on Social Computing and Diversity by DesignComplexity 87 - Sara Walker on The Physics of Life and Planet-Scale IntelligenceComplexity 90 - Caleb Scharf on The Ascent of Information: Life in The Human DataomeComplexity 95 - John Krakauer Part 1: Taking Multiple Perspectives on The Brain

11/23/22 • 49:09

The brain is arguably one of the most complex objects known to science. How best to understand it? That is a trick question: brains are organized at many levels and attempts to grasp them all through one approach — be it micro, macro, anatomical, behavioral — are destined to leave out crucial insights. What more, thinking “vertically” across scales, one might miss important angles from another discipline along the “horizontal” axis. For inquiries too big to sit within one field of knowledge, maybe it is time we resurrected the salon: a mode of scientific exploration that levels hierarchies of expertise and optimizes for more complementary and high-dimensional, egalitarian, communal discourse. As with the Jainist philosophic principle anekantavada — how many blind people does it take to grok an elephant? — neuroscience is perhaps best practiced as innately and intensely multiperspectival…Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week is part one of a two-part conversation with SFI External Professor John Krakauer, Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair at Johns Hopkins . In this episode, we talk about the history of different ways of studying the brain — in animals and humans — and how subjects as complex as brains invite a different way of seeing, one that synthesizes many different ways of seeing…Thanks for your patience with the recent delays in publication — with InterPlanetary Festival and our Annual Symposium behind us, Complexity will now return to regular biweekly scheduling.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com, and stay tuned for part two — in which we talk about how learning is inherently a future-focused exercise, and what that means for education. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including an open postdoctoral fellowship in Belief Dynamics — at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced in this episode:Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist BiasJohn Krakauer, Asif Ghazanfar, Alex Gomez-Marin, Malcolm MacIver, David PoeppelTwo Views of the Cognitive BrainDavid Barack & John KrakauerOn Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life SciencesRichard DoyleSimon DeDeo on Good Explanations & Diseases of EpistemologyComplexity Podcast Episode 72Former SFI Fellow David Kinney, epistemologist (re: disciplines as levels of explanatory granularity)Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanismJessica FlackIntegral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural WorldSean Esbjörn-Hargens & Michael ZimmermanCarl Cranor, moral philosopher (re: causation)The Learning Salon: Toward a new participatory scienceIda Momennejad, John Krakauer, Claire Sun, Eva Yezerets, Kanaka Rajan, Joshua Vogelstein, Brad WybleBrain Inspired PodcastPaul MiddlebrookseLife JournalbiorXivW. Brian Arthur on Economics in Nouns and Verbs (Part 1)Complexity Podcast Episode 68W. Brian Arthur (Part 2) on "Prim Dreams of Order vs. Messy Vitality" in Economics, Math, and PhysicsComplexity Podcast Episode 69Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The WorldTyson Yunkaporta

11/11/22 • 51:05

Communication is a physical process. It’s common sense that sending and receiving intelligible messages takes work…but how much work? The question of the relationship between energy, information, and matter is one of the deepest known to science. There appear to be limits to the rate at which communication between two systems can happen…but the search for a fundamental relationship between speed, error, and energy (among other things) promises insights far deeper than merely whether we can keep making faster internet devices. Strap in (and consider slowing down) for a broad and deep discussion on the bounds within which our entire universe must play…Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we speak with SFI Professor David Wolpert and MIT Physics PhD student Farita Tasnim, who have worked together over the last year on pioneering research into the nonlinear dynamics of communication channels. In this episode, we explore the history and ongoing evolution of information theory and coding theory, what the field of stochastic thermodynamics has to do with limits to human knowledge, and the role of noise in collective intelligence.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us, including a handful of open postdoctoral fellowships — at santafe.edu/engage.Lastly, this weekend — October 22nd & 23rd — is the return of our InterPlanetary Festival! Join our YouTube livestream for two full days of panel discussions, keynotes, and bleeding edge multimedia performances focusing   space exploration through the lens of complex systems science. The fun begins at 11 A.M. Mountain Time on Saturday and ends 6 P.M. Mountain Time on Sunday. Everything will be recorded and archived at the stream link in case you can’t tune in for the live event. Learn more at interplanetaryfest.org…Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced in this episode:Nonlinear thermodynamics of communication channelsby Farita Tasnim and David Wolpert (forthcoming at arXiv.org)Heterogeneity and Efficiency in the Brainby Vijay BalasubramanianNoisy Deductive Reasoning: How Humans Construct Math, and How Math Constructs Universesby David Wolpert & David KinneyStochastic Mathematical Systemsby David Wolpert & David KinneyTwenty-five years of nanoscale thermodynamicsby Chase P. Broedersz & Pierre RoncerayTen Questions about The Hard Limits of Human Intelligenceby David WolpertWhat can we know about that which we cannot even imagine?by David WolpertCommunication consumes 35 times more energy than computation in the human cortex, but both costs are needed to predict synapse numberby William Levy & Victoria CalvertAn exchange of letters on the role of noise in collective intelligenceby Daniel Kahneman, David Krakauer, Olivier Sibony, Cass Sunstein, David WolpertWhen Slower Is Fasterby Carlos Gershenson & Dirk HelbingAdditional Resources:The stochastic thermodynamics of computationby David WolpertElements of Information Theory, Second Edition (textbook)by Thomas Cover & Joy ThomasComputational Complexity: A Modern Approach (textbook)by Sanjeev Arora & Boaz BarakAn Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications (textbook)by Ming Li & Paul Vitányi

10/21/22 • 66:29

What does it mean to be alive? Our origins are the horizon of our understanding, and as with the physical horizon, our approach brings us no closer. The more we learn, the more mysterious it all becomes. What if we’re asking the wrong questions? Maybe life did not begin at all, but rather coalesced piecemeal, a set of properties contingent and convergent, plural, more than once? Maybe the origin of life is happening right now, just over the horizon, forming something new anew. Let’s get into the weeds and see if we can find a continuity between biology and physics.Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week we speak with Kate Adamala, synthetic biologist and professor at the University of Minnesota, about her research to produce synthetic minimal cells that are not technically alive but can perform myriad biological processes. Along the way the distant past and future meet. Can we build life? Or can we grow machines?Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. Note that applications are now open for our Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships! If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced in this episode:Nonenzymatic Template-Directed RNA Synthesis Inside Model ProtocellsEngineering genetic circuit interactions within and between synthetic minimal cellsCompetition between model protocells driven by an encapsulated catalystSynthetic cells in biomedical applicationsParasites, infections and inoculation in synthetic minimal cellsBuild-a-Cell: Engineering a Synthetic Cell CommunityThe Andromeda Strain and the Meaning of Life: Monolith MonologuesSara Walker on The Physics of Life and Planet-Scale IntelligenceWhat Technology Wants by Kevin KellyMatthew Jackson on Social & Economic NetworksScott PageMind Children by Hans MoravecThe Multiple Paths to Multiple LifeMichael LachmannTerraforming the Biosphere by Ricard SoléScaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Red Queen

10/1/22 • 69:45

One way to frame the science of complexity is as a revelation of the hidden order under seemingly separate phenomena — a teasing-out of music from the noise of history and nature. This effort follows centuries of work to find the rules that structure language, music, and society. How strictly analogous are the patterns governing a symphony and those that describe a social transformation? Math and music are old friends, but new statistical and computational techniques afford the possibility of going even deeper. What fundamental insights — and what sounds — emerge by bringing physicists, composers, social scientists, data artists, and biologists together?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity, we sit with two of SFI’s External Professors — Miguel Fuentes at the Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis and the Institute of Complex Systems of Valparaiso, and Marco Buongiorno Nardelli at the University of North Texas — for a discussion that roams from their working group on the complexity of music, to fundamental questions about the nature of emergence, to how we might bring all of these ideas together to think about  social transformation as a kind of music in its own right.A show that spend so much time exploring sense and nonsense would hardly be complete without technical errors, so please accept our apologies for losing some of Miguel’s backstory to a recording glitch. For this reason, be extra sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com.Note that applications are now open for our Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships! If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInReferenced in this episode:An ‘integrated mess of music lovers in science’on the 2020 Music & Complexity SFI Working Group(with YouTube playlist of talks)Expanding our understanding of musical complexityon the 2022 Music & Complexity SFI Working GroupTopology of Networks in Generalized Musical Spacesby Marco Buongiorno NardelliTonal harmony and the topology of dynamical score networksby Marco Buongiorno Nardellia computer-aided data-driven composition environment for the sonification and dramatization of scientific data streamsby Marco Buongiorno NardelliMachines that listen: towards a machine listening model based on perceptual descriptorsby Marco Buongiorno Nardelli, Mitsuko Aramaki, Sølvi Ystad, and Richard Kronland-MartinetDoes network complexity help organize Babel’s library?by Juan Pablo Cárdenas Iván González, Gerardo Vidal, and Miguel FuentesComplexity and the Emergence of Physical Propertiesby Miguel FuentesThe Structure of Online Information Behind Social Crisesby Juan Pablo Cárdenas, Gastón Olivares, Gerardo Vidal, Carolina Urbina and Miguel Fuentes88 - Aviv Bergman on The Evolution of Robustness and Integrating The DisciplinesComplexity Podcast86 - Dmitri Tymoczko on The Shape of Music: Mathematical Order in Western TonalityComplexity Podcast81 - C. Brandon Ogbunu on Epistasis & The Primacy of Context in Complex SystemsComplexity Podcast67 - Tyler Marghetis on Breakdowns & Breakthroughs: Critical Transitions in Jazz & MathematicsComplexity Podcast36 - Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse? (Part 2)Complexity Podcast27 - COVID-19 & Complex Time in Biology & Economics with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 2)Complexity PodcastIgnorance, Failure, Uncertainty, and the Optimism of Scienceby Stuart Firestein (SFI Community Lecture)SFI’s Operating Principlesby Cormac McCarthy

9/21/22 • 57:24

As the old nut goes, “To the victor goes the spoils.” But if each round of play consolidates the spoils into fewer hands, eventually it comes to pass that wealthy special interests twist the rules so much it undermines the game itself. When economic power overtakes the processes of democratic governance, growth stagnates, and the rift between the rich and poor becomes abyssal. Desperate times and desperate measures jeopardize the fabric of society. How might nonpartisan approaches to this wicked problem help us walk the system back into a healthy balance?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity we speak with Steven Teles, political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and SFI External Professor Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University about how self-serving economic actors intervene in regulation to stifle innovation, increase inequality, and contribute to the conditions in which violence can flourish. Referencing Teles’ aisle-crossing book The Captured Economy with co-author Brink Lindsey, we link the problem of regulatory capture in its myriad forms to Sethi’s work on race, inequality, and crime, which we discussed in Episode 7 (Rajiv Sethi on Crime, Stereotypes, and The Pursuit of Justice). At the interface between the left and right, public and private, our guests shed light on the forces that divide — and may help reunite — the USA and other modern nations.Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com. Note that applications are now open for our Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships! Tell a friend. And if you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMore on the Emergent Political Economies SFI Research Theme:SFI launches new research theme on emergent political economiesComplexity 82 - David Krakauer on Emergent Political Economies and A Science of Possibility (EPE 01)Complexity 83 - Eric Beinhocker & Diane Coyle on Rethinking Economics for A Sustainable & Prosperous World (EPE 02)Complexity 84 - Ricardo Hausmann & J. Doyne Farmer on Evolving Technologies & Market Ecologies (EPE 03)Referenced in (or related to) this episode:The Captured Economy: How The Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequalityby Brink Lindsey and Steven TelesShadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justiceby Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv SethiComplexity 19 - David B. Kinney on the Philosophy of ScienceCommon as Airby Lewis HydeSignalling architectures can prevent cancer evolutionby Leonardo Oña & Michael LachmannScaling of urban income inequality in the USAby Elisa Heinrich Mora, Cate Heine, Jacob J. Jackson, Geoffrey B. West, Vicky Chuqiao Yang and Christopher P. KempesCrime and Punishment in a Divided Societyby Rajiv SethiRajiv Sethi discusses gun violence, critical race theory, and bezzleson The Glenn Loury Show (video)(audio-only podcast link)The Gun Deal by Rajiv Sethi (Substack)Rajiv Sethi reviews Boldrin/Levine’s Against Intellectual MonopolySteven Teles and Brink Lindsey on EconTalk with Russ RobertsIs Nothing Sacred? Rajiv Sethi on Salman Rushdie (Substack)Rajiv Sethi with Bari Weiss and David French on gun violenceRajiv Sethi on James Tobin’s Hirsch Lecture on Functional Inefficiency in Finance (Substack)

9/2/22 • 71:13