Podcasts about Santa Fe Institute

My guest today is Melanie Moses, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chair of the New Mexico AI Consortium. Melanie's work spans a wide range of disciplines all unified by her deep understanding of complexity theory.In our conversation, Melanie and I explore how scaling theory reveals surprising patterns across nature, technology, and society. We discuss what decentralized systems like ant colonies can teach us about building more robust AI, and what the immune system tells us about information networks. We also delve into the costs of building scalable infrastructure, and why we might need new approaches to governance that can scale with our global challenges. Finally, we explore whether there could ever be a universal scaling law and what young researchers should know about pursuing interdisciplinary paths. I hope you enjoy our discussion.You can follow me on X (@⁠ProfSchrepel⁠) and BlueSky (@⁠ProfSchrepel⁠).References:Melanie Moses' Biological Computation Lab https://moseslab.cs.unm.eduMetabolic Scaling From Individuals to Societies (PhD, 1993) https://www.unm.edu/~melaniem/DISSERTATION_MEM.pdfCities as Organisms: Allometric Scaling of Urban Road Networks (2008) https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/29Biologically inspired design principles for Scalable, Robust, Adaptive, Decentralized search and automated response (RADAR) (2011) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5954663

Is economic growth just about money, trade, and GDP? Or is something deeper at play? In this episode, economist W. Brian Arthur and physicist Cesar Hidalgo join Nick and Goldy to reveal the real drivers of rising prosperity: human knowledge, know‑how, and innovation. They challenge the old assumptions of growth and argue that innovation isn't a byproduct of a strong economy—it's a cause of economic growth. Once we understand that, it changes how we think about investing in people and shaping the economy. Part of our Back‑to‑Basics summer series. Essential listening for anyone who believes that growth should empower people, not enrich the status quo. This episode originally aired January 15, 2019. W. Brian Arthur is an economist and complexity theorist, renowned for his work on technology and innovation. A longtime researcher at the Santa Fe Institute and former Stanford professor, he's the author of The Nature of Technology, in which he argues that economic growth stems from evolving combinations of existing technologies. Cesar Hidalgo is a physicist, professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, and Director at the Center for Collective Learning at Corvinus University of Budapest. He's also the author of Why Information Grows, where he explores how knowledge and know-how shape economies, arguing that real prosperity comes from embedding insights in people and collaborative networks. Social Media: ‪@cesifoti.bsky.social‬ Further reading:  The Nature of Technology Why Information Grows Complexity Economics: A Different Framework for Economic Thought Economic Complexity: From useless to keystone Complexity Economics Shows Us Why Laissez-Faire Economics Always Fails Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: The Pitch

This is part two of our discussion with Marten Scheffer about societal collapse. Marten Scheffer is a Professor at Wageningen University and Research Centre and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, Marten explores the concept of critical slowing down as a precursor to collapse and how this concept is applied to understand modern issues such as climate change, mental health, and societal stability. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on X Simplifying Complexity on YouTube Sean Brady on X Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

Throughout history, we’ve seen societies rise and dramatically fall, but why? In this episode, Marten Scheffer, a Professor at Wageningen University and Research Centre and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, explains how social, political, and environmental factors contribute to a decrease in resilience over time, leaving previously powerful societies vulnerable to collapse. This episode is part one of our two-part chat with Marten. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on X Simplifying Complexity on YouTube Sean Brady on X Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

My guest today is Melanie Mitchell, a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, author of "Complexity: A Guided Tour" and "Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans." Melanie studied under the legendary John Holland and has become one of the leading voices bridging complexity science with research in artificial intelligence.In our conversation, Melanie and I explore the fundamental nature of intelligence and why today's AI systems might not be as intelligent as they appear. We discuss the persistent misunderstandings around modern AI, the concept of "jagged intelligence," and why the Turing Test is misleading us. We also talk about embodiment, metacognition, and how complexity science principles like emergence could reshape our approach to building truly intelligent machines. Finally, we delve into what biology can teach us about creating more sustainable and genuinely intelligent artificial systems. I hope you enjoy our discussion.You can follow me on X (@⁠ProfSchrepel⁠) and BlueSky (@⁠ProfSchrepel⁠).

Our universe started out looking very simple: hot, dense, smooth, rapidly expanding. According to our best current model, it will end up looking simple once again: cold, dark, empty. It's in between -- now, roughly speaking -- that things look complex. I have been working to understand the stages by which complexity comes into existence, thrives, and eventually disappears. Without going into technical details, in this solo episode I give an overview of the general picture and the clues we are looking at to better understand the process of complexogenesis.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/06/30/320-solo-complexity-and-the-universe/Support Mindscape on Patreon.The Santa Fe Institute has recently published a four-volume set of classic papers on complexity. David Krakauer provided a comprehensive introduction that has been published as a standalone book.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Veja o vídeo em expresso.pt/podcasts/45-graus Luís M. A. Bettencourt é físico, professor na Universidade de Chicago, e um dos investigadores mais reputados a nível mundial na ciência dos sistemas complexos, sobretudo aplicados ao estudo das cidades. Licenciou-se em Engenharia Física pelo Técnico, em Lisboa, obteve o doutoramento em Física Teórica no Imperial College London e acabou por se dedicar à investigação na Biologia evolutiva e na chamada “ciência urbana” É actualmente professor na Universidade de Chicago, de Ecologia e Evolução, onde é também membro associado do Departamento de Sociologia e Professor Externo no Santa Fe Institute. A nível de investigação, destacou-se sobretudo por desenvolver teoria quantitativa e preditiva da dinâmica urbana, ao identificar leis de escala que ligam a dimensão da população de uma cidade à sua infraestrutura, inovação, riqueza e criminalidade, juntamente com autores como Goffrey West (autor de um livro de 2017 “Scale” precisamente sobre estes temas). _______________ Bilhetes para o 45 Graus ao vivo _______________ Índice: (0:00) Início (5:00) O que são Sistemas Complexos; percurso do convidado (24:12) Porque há cada vez mais pessoas a viver em cidades? (27:37) Paralelos entre Biologia e Urbanismo | Lei de Zipf (35:10) Esta Ciência ajuda-nos a compreender a evolução das cidades e dos países? (50:49) Leis de “scaling” nas cidades (58:04) Leis de velocidade de crescimento das cidades (1:00:31) Pode esta Ciência ajudar-nos a resolver problemas colectivos? | Habitação: o caso de Viena. O caso de Singapura | Livro sobre emergência da democracia em Atenas (1:12:57) História: o que explica que alguns países melhorem e outros piorem? (1:29:03) Internet e redes sociais: Why the Internet Must Become More Like a City (1:34:53) De que precisamos para criar uma Silicon Valley na Europa? | O caso de Israel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jim Rutt is the Host of The Jim Rutt Show podcast, former Chair of the Santa Fe Institute, Co-founder of the GameB Social Change Movement, and “Retired Business Dude” after a long career as a businessman in the tech industry. In this episode, Jim outlines how his career as a tech executive intersected with complexity science to contribute to groundbreaking research in genetic algorithms and market simulations. He also discusses the role of AI in programming and the need for multidisciplinary talent in tech development. Resources and links: The Jim Rutt Show website The Jim Rutt Show on YouTube Jim Rutt on X Jim Rutt on Bluesky Connect: Simplifying Complexity on X Simplifying Complexity on YouTube Sean Brady on X Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

Jim talks with J. Doyne Farmer about his book Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World. They discuss deterministic chaos & strange attractors, how chaos makes time possible, bounded rationality, economic equilibrium & Nash equilibrium, traditional economics' failures, standard economic theory basics, "as if" vs "as is" approaches, heterogeneity in economic systems, agent-based modeling & its critiques, the "metabolism of civilization" analogy, financial markets as an ecology of strategies, the Prediction Company experience, climate economics, weather forecasting as an analogy for economic forecasting, energy investment modeling, technology cost curves & climate change solutions, the vision of a "conscious civilization," and much more. Episode Transcript Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, by J. Doyne Farmer The Eudaemonic Pie, by Thomas A. Bass A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming, by Paul N. Edwards J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and CEO and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. His book, Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, was published in 2024.

Season 8 continues with our conversations about the new strategic direction at the David Eccles School: societal impact. Todd Zenger is the N. Eldon Tanner Chair in Strategy and Strategic Leadership and Presidential Professor at the David Eccles School of Business  and Teppo Felin is the Douglas D. Anderson Endowed Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Todd, and Teppo discuss their collaborative efforts to encourage a scientific approach to management and entrepreneurship. Together with host Frances Johnson, they explore how this novel methodology replaces conventional wisdom with a structured, theory-driven process for value creation, using examples like AirBnB and SpaceX. Their discussion underscores the significance of contrarian thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the potential for extensive societal impact.Eccles Business Buzz is a production of the David Eccles School of Business and is produced by University.fm.Eccles Business Buzz is proud to be selected by FeedSpot as one of the Top 70 Business School podcasts on the web. Learn more at https://podcast.feedspot.com/us_business_school_podcasts. Episode Quotes:On using a scientific approach and testing their own theory.[11:53] People, particularly entrepreneurs, are given a treatment where they're encouraged to, sort of, develop theories and then engage in experimentation that's, sort of, consistent with those theories and interpret the results of those experiments in a way that's consistent with the theories. And what they find is better outcomes for those that have been treated with this kind of theory treatment, or they also find that they're also more likely to pivot, that is, to shut down something that's really flawed because they recognize that it's actually inconsistent with [the] theory that they have. The hypotheses aren't confirmed as opposed to an alternative approach, which is sort of [to] tell them to fail fast and just keep trying things until it works. And the problem is that that isn't very resource-efficient experimentation, right? You can experiment till you're blue in the face trying to find a peak out there that's valuable, but unless you have a theory to guide you there, it's actually likely to be a long and arduous process. So we've outsourced in many ways the empirical piece of this, but we're thrilled at the current findings.Solving more than business problems: An interdisciplinary initiative[34:07] Todd and I have published, I don't know, 20 something articles over the last dozen years together but we've also collaborated with people in cognitive science. We've worked with a complexity scientist, Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute and others. And so there's definitely, this is an interdisciplinary initiative where we're building on insights from other disciplines and then also trying to leverage it into other spaces as well. So for me, absolutely, this is an interdisciplinary initiative. and places like the University of Utah are fantastic research institutions that have the breadth and depth of all these different disciplines and areas.Todd and Teppo aim to drive a meaningful impact on society through their work.[36:30] What we're basically teaching is [that] people should be thinking about the process of value creation and creating contrarian future states in a scientific way that has application to essentially economic development; it has application to solving social problems; it has application to solving medical problems; [and] obviously, entrepreneurship. We see the potential for massive societal impact where in some sense, playing with and trying to sort of teach the architecture and try to create an intervention, an engine that helps really solve a whole set of problems that people are grappling with. And in that sense, we hope that the impact on society is enormous.Show Links:Todd Zenger | LinkedInTodd Zenger | David Eccles School of BusinessTeppo Felin | LinkedInTeppo Felin | Jon M. Huntsman School of BusinessDavid Eccles School of Business (@ubusiness) | InstagramUndergraduate Scholars ProgramsRising Business LeadersEccles Alumni Network (@ecclesalumni) | Instagram Eccles Experience Magazine

What if shame isn't a flaw, but a signal that something essential in you has been pushed away? In this week's episode, Aimee sits with David Bedrick, therapist, author of The Unshaming Way, and a passionate advocate for psychological truth-telling. They explore how shame disconnects us from our experience, distorts our emotions, and shapes our identities from the inside out. Through somatic awareness, storytelling, and radical compassion, David invites us into the process of unshaming—not fixing ourselves, but fully witnessing and embracing the parts we've exiled.David takes us through:- Why shame cuts us off from empathy, truth, and genuine accountability- How trauma and unacknowledged pain become embedded in the body- The power of somatic language to access “unshamed experience”- What it means to witness, rather than fix, someone in pain- Why reclaiming emotion, desire, and personal narrative is essential to healing- How unshaming returns us to wholeness and expands our capacity to love, feel, and actAnd so much more!David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in a family marked by violence. While his father's brutality was physical and verbal, his mother's denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland, and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies, where he trains therapists, coaches, and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development.David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can't Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.His new book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic books in November 2024.Connect with David:Website: https://www.davidbedrick.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.bedrick/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBedrickOrder The Unshaming Way: https://a.co/d/dYTwNa7Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/contributors/david-bedrick-jd-dipl-pw  Connect with Aimee:Instagram: @aimeetakaya Facebook: Aimee Takaya Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠

Jim talks with Sara Walker about the ideas in her new book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. They discuss Sara's path from theoretical physics to astrobiology, the biggest scientific questions, philosophy of science & theory development, historical approaches to origin of life research, Schrödinger's negative entropy concept, Prigogine's dissipative systems, information as a causal force at life's origin, emergence as a scientific concept, constructor theory of information, Assembly Theory as a framework for detecting life, assembly index & copy number as measurable properties, complexity vs randomness, the physical nature of time in complex systems, how Assembly Theory redefines life beyond Earth-centric definitions, planetary-scale perspectives on life's origins, measurements of exoplanet atmospheres, addressing the error catastrophe problem, Sara's collaboration with Lee Cronin, the application of Assembly Theory to minerals & planetary atmospheres, the Fermi Paradox & observational horizons, constraints on Drake equation parameters, and much more. Episode Transcript Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, by Sara Walker JRS Currents 100 - Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart Kauffman Sara Walker is a theoretical physicist interested in the origins of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, a Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Her recognition as a leading scientist includes a Stanley Miller Early Career award, and a Schmidt Sciences Polymath award. Her research team at ASU is internationally regarded for their work at the forefront of building fundamental, and testable theory for understanding what life is. She is also widely regarded for her public intellectual work advancing our understanding of life, which includes her popular science book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence and appearances on podcasts such as Star Talk with Neil de Grasse Tyson, the Joe Rogan Experience, and the Lex Fridman podcast.

Welcome to Meaning-Making 101 where we explore the crisis of meaning in our world today, and how we may help usher in an awakening from it.In this episode we continue our coverage of Jordan Hall's conversation with Curt Cronin of  @MakingtheImpossibleInevitable  In this intriguing conversation Jordan shares his thoughts on Cathedral Consciousness, and how we must become like warrior monks, acting through heart-centered awareness to form the truly loving relationships crucial to protecting us from civilizational breakdown.About Jordan:Jordan Hall, previously known as Greenhall, is a visionary entrepreneur and systems theorist exploring the nexus of technology, culture, and governance. As a co-founder of DivX, Inc., he was instrumental in advancing the digital video and music industries, notably during his time at MP3.com. Currently, Hall is renowned for his insights into complex systems, collective intelligence, and cultural evolution. His influential role in shaping discussions on governance and societal change is widely acknowledged, particularly through his involvement with prestigious organizations like the Aspen Institute and the Santa Fe Institute.This continues our exploration of metamodern spirituality, which can be defined as an approach to spiritual practice that highlights a "return to the sacred" in a way that feels authentic in our fragmented, post-secular world, blending traditional wisdom with modern insights to foster a deeper, more adaptive sense of purpose and transcendence.Stay Tuned! At the end of this episode we take a look at some of the actual Good News going on in the world in our GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP!Join us as we consider how we may cultivate the wisdom to see beyond the narrowness of tribalist and essentialist perceptions of reality, and change this world from the inside-out!Like, Subscribe, and Share your thoughts and questions!with @JordanGreenhall and Curt Cronin of @MakingtheImpossibleInevitable Video in this episode:https://youtu.be/u5iiHOUC-N8?si=iLivsmgAwxWGsSjTJordan's Essay on Infinitesimal Courage: https://medium.com/deep-code/infinitesimal-courage-947f074d09f8 Good News Roundup Source: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/Disclaimer: This show may include copyrighted material for educational purposes that are intended to fall under the "fair use" guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The content is used for commentary, critique, and educational insights. All rights to the original content belong to their respective owners. If you have any concerns about the use of your material, please reach out to us directly.Thanks for listening!Join Actuali in podcast land where we explore the arts of mindfulness, flow, and how to realize one's most authentic Self. On your favorite podcast platform @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiThrough deep dives into life's greatest mysteries to inspiring conversations, to current events, guided Wim Hof beathing and meditations, Actuali is dedicated to revealing a clear way to view the world and our place in it.Together we change this world from the inside-out!Join us Wednesday's 7p EST on youtube.com/@actuali.podccastPlaying after the fact on Spotify, Apple, and more @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiJoin Actuali on Social! Instagram:https://Instagram.com/actuali.podcastTwitter:https://Twitter.com/Actuali_PodcastFacebook:https://facebook.com/Actuali.podcastOur band, ⁠American Dharma:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfJn_yIRo45SRHGfsjJ8XiwA.D. on facebook: https://facebook.com/AmericanDharmabandA.D. on Instagram: https://instagram.com/American.Dharma.bandA.D. on Twitch:https://www.twitch.tv/americandharmaThe audio side of this episode will also be available on all major podcast platforms via https://Anchor.FM/Actuali Enjoy the show!

Today's episode is different from all the previous ones, as for the first time on Scaling Theory, we focus on research methodology, exploring how AI is reshaping the very process of doing research and what that shift means for science and society at large.I sat down with James Evans, Professor of Sociology, Computational and Data Science at the University of Chicago, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Faculty Member at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, to explore how AI is transforming the way we simulate, scale, and understand human behavior, and what that shift means for science and society.We dive into his pioneering work on using large language models to simulate individuals, societies, and entire social systems. James and I explore the strengths and limits of AI agents for both the social and hard sciences before reflecting on the future of social science itself. We talk about research centers entirely run by AI and conferences conducted by AI agents, without any human involvement. We also discuss the role of small research teams in disruptive innovation, and how to cultivate proximity and serendipity in a research world where we increasingly cooperate with machines.You can follow me on X (@ProfSchrepel) and BlueSky (@ProfSchrepel) to receive regular updates.References:- Simulating Subjects: The Promise and Peril of AI Stand-ins for Social Agents and Interactions (2025) https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/vp3j2_v3- LLM Social Simulations Are a Promising Research Method (2025) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.02234- Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0941-9?wpisrc=- AI Expands Scientists' Impact but Contracts Science's Focus (2024) https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.07727- The Paradox of Collective Certainty in Science (2024) https://arxiv.org/html/2406.05809v1?utm_source=chatgpt.com- Being Together in Place as a Catalyst for Scientific Advance (Research Policy, 2023) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733323001956

Welcome to Meaning-Making 101 where we explore the crisis of meaning in our world today, and how we may help usher in an awakening from it.In this episode we continue our coverage of Jordan Hall's conversation with Curt Cronin. In this intriguing conversation Jordan shares his thoughts on how we must become like warrior monks, acting through heart-centered awareness to form the truly loving relationships that are crucial to protecting us from civilizational breakdown.About Jordan:Jordan Hall, previously known as Greenhall, is a visionary entrepreneur and systems theorist exploring the nexus of technology, culture, and governance. As a co-founder of DivX, Inc., he was instrumental in advancing the digital video and music industries, notably during his time at MP3.com. Currently, Hall is renowned for his insights into complex systems, collective intelligence, and cultural evolution. His influential role in shaping discussions on governance and societal change is widely acknowledged, particularly through his involvement with prestigious organizations like the Aspen Institute and the Santa Fe Institute.This continues our exploration of metamodern spirituality, which can be defined as an approach to spiritual practice that highlights a "return to the sacred" in a way that feels authentic in our fragmented, post-secular world, blending traditional wisdom with modern insights to foster a deeper, more adaptive sense of purpose and transcendence.Stay Tuned! At the end of this episode we take a look at some of the actual Good News going on in the world in our GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP!Join us as we consider how we may cultivate the wisdom to see beyond the narrowness of tribalist and essentialist perceptions of reality, and change this world from the inside-out!Like, Subscribe, and Share your thoughts and questions!with @JordanGreenhall and Curt Cronin of @MakingtheImpossibleInevitable Video in this episode:https://youtu.be/u5iiHOUC-N8?si=iLivsmgAwxWGsSjTJordan's Essay on Infinitesimal Courage: https://medium.com/deep-code/infinitesimal-courage-947f074d09f8 Good News Roundup Source: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/Disclaimer: This show may include copyrighted material for educational purposes that are intended to fall under the "fair use" guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The content is used for commentary, critique, and educational insights. All rights to the original content belong to their respective owners. If you have any concerns about the use of your material, please reach out to us directly.Thanks for listening!Join Actuali in podcast land where we explore the arts of mindfulness, flow, and how to realize one's most authentic Self. On your favorite podcast platform @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiThrough deep dives into life's greatest mysteries to inspiring conversations, to current events, guided Wim Hof beathing and meditations, Actuali is dedicated to revealing a clear way to view the world and our place in it.Together we change this world from the inside-out!Join us Wednesday's 7p EST on youtube.com/@actuali.podccastPlaying after the fact on Spotify, Apple, and more @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiJoin Actuali on Social! Instagram:https://Instagram.com/actuali.podcastTwitter:https://Twitter.com/Actuali_PodcastFacebook:https://facebook.com/Actuali.podcastOur band, ⁠American Dharma:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfJn_yIRo45SRHGfsjJ8XiwA.D. on facebook: https://facebook.com/AmericanDharmabandA.D. on Instagram: https://instagram.com/American.Dharma.bandA.D. on Twitch:https://www.twitch.tv/americandharmaThe audio side of this episode will also be available on all major podcast platforms via https://Anchor.FM/Actuali Enjoy the show!

This week we present two stories from people who stood up against a system eager to tear them down.Part 1: After a car crash alters Emily Winn's life forever, she must relive the trauma when she testifies in a deposition. Part 2: Geneticist C. Brandon Ogbunu contemplates the role race has played in his academic career after he is confronted by the police. Dr. Emily Winn-Nuñez is a data scientist based in Brooklyn, NY where she lives with her husband and adorable pug. She received her AB in mathematics from the College of the Holy Cross, spent a year in the Visiting Students Programme at St. Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford, and earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University. She's still a Sox fan, still ergs at the gym, and still enjoys comedy - but she'll also happily discuss the New York Liberty or the Love Island multiverse. C. Brandon Ogbunu is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and an Assistant Professor at Yale University. His research focuses on evolutionary genetics and the ecology of disease. A New York City native, Brandon enjoys film, hip-hop, jazz and science fiction. He's an ex-very mediocre light heavy weight boxer, and slightly less mediocre experimental virologist. He has higher hopes for humanity than he does the New York Knicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we present two stories from people who stood up against a system eager to tear them down. Part 1: After a car crash alters Emily Winn's life forever, she must relive the trauma when she testifies in a deposition. Part 2: Geneticist C. Brandon Ogbunu contemplates the role race has played in his academic career after he is confronted by the police. Dr. Emily Winn-Nuñez is a data scientist based in Brooklyn, NY where she lives with her husband and adorable pug. She received her AB in mathematics from the College of the Holy Cross, spent a year in the Visiting Students Programme at St. Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford, and earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Brown University. She's still a Sox fan, still ergs at the gym, and still enjoys comedy - but she'll also happily discuss the New York Liberty or the Love Island multiverse. C. Brandon Ogbunu is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and an Assistant Professor at Yale University. His research focuses on evolutionary genetics and the ecology of disease. A New York City native, Brandon enjoys film, hip-hop, jazz and science fiction. He's an ex-very mediocre light heavy weight boxer, and slightly less mediocre experimental virologist. He has higher hopes for humanity than he does the New York Knicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Becker's new critique of Silicon Valley More Everything Forever should probably be entitled Less Nothing Never. The science journalist accuses Silicon Valley overlords like Elon Musk and Sam Altman of promoting exaggerated dangers and promises about AI. Becker argues that these apocalyptic fears of superintelligent AI are science fictional fantasies rather than scientifically reasoned arguments. Becker acknowledges large language models have some value but believes their capabilities are overhyped. He criticizes tech billionaires for pursuing AI dominance rather than addressing real problems like climate change, and believes they are also peddling deeply troubling ideologies like eugenics. Silicon Valley is promising us more of everything forever, Becker warns, but the end result will actually be more human misery and degradation. 5 Key Takeaways* Becker believes claims about existential risks from superintelligent AI are unfounded and based on flawed arguments, including misconceptions about intelligence as a monolithic, measurable trait.* He identifies concerning connections between Silicon Valley AI rhetoric and eugenicist ideas, particularly in discussions about intelligence and population concerns from figures like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen.* While acknowledging current AI systems have some value, Becker argues they're "solutions in search of a problem" with an ecological footprint that may outweigh their benefits.* Becker criticizes tech leaders for pursuing AI dominance instead of directing their resources toward solving urgent problems like climate change.* Rather than worrying about future superintelligence, Becker suggests we focus on how existing AI systems are being used, their resource consumption, and their potential for misuse.Adam Becker is a science journalist with a PhD in astrophysics. He has written for the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Scientific American, New Scientist, Quanta, and other publications. His first book, What Is Real?, was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and was long-listed for the PEN Literary Science Writing Award. He has been a science journalism fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and a science communicator in residence at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. He lives in California.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their co-authored essay, “Care of the Dead,” explores how the dead continue to shape our cultures, languages, and ways of being. Together, they discuss the process of writing the piece and what it means to say that the dead are not gone—that they persist, and that they make claims on the living. The article is available here: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/154/1/166/127931/Care-of-the-Dead-Ancestors-Traditions-amp-the-Life **References** [Peter Kingsley,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kingsley) English writer  Weird Studies, [Episode 98 on “Taboo”]) https://www.weirdstudies.com/98)  John Berger, “12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead” in _[Hold Everything Dear](12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead)_  Bernard Koch, Daniele Silvestro, and Jacob Foster, ["The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change”](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/659bt_v1)  Gilbert Simondon, _[Imagination and Invention](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781517914455)_  William Gibson, _[Neuromancer](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780441007462)_  [Phlogiston theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory)  George Orwell, _[1984](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780451524935)_  HP Lovecraft, [“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cdw.aspx)  Weird Studies, [Episode 187 on “Little, Big”](https://www.weirdstudies.com/187)  [John Dee,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee) English occultist  Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, _[The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780195320992)_  Robert Harrison, _[The Dominion of the Dead](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226317939)_  Gilles Deleuze, _[Bergsonism](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780942299076)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, _[Boccherini's Body](https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780520240179)_  Elizabeth LeGuin, [“Cello and Bow thinking”](http://www.echo.ucla.edu/cello-and-bow-thinking-baccherinis-cello-sonata-in-eb-minor-faouri-catalogo/)  Johannes Brahms, _Handel Variations_  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Meaning-Making 101 where we explore the crisis of meaning in our world today, and how we may help usher in an awakening from it.In this episode we cover Jordan Hall's thoughts on how heart-centered awareness and truly loving relationships are crucial to protecting us from civilizational breakdown, calming the culture war, and solving the meta-crisis our species faces.About Jordan:Jordan Hall, previously known as Greenhall, is a visionary entrepreneur and systems theorist exploring the nexus of technology, culture, and governance. As a co-founder of DivX, Inc., he was instrumental in advancing the digital video and music industries, notably during his time at MP3.com. Currently, Hall is renowned for his insights into complex systems, collective intelligence, and cultural evolution. His influential role in shaping discussions on governance and societal change is widely acknowledged, particularly through his involvement with prestigious organizations like the Aspen Institute and the Santa Fe Institute.This continues our exploration of metamodern spirituality, which can be defined as an approach to spiritual practice that highlights a "return to the sacred" in a way that feels authentic in our fragmented, post-secular world, blending traditional wisdom with modern insights to foster a deeper, more adaptive sense of purpose and transcendence.Stay Tuned! At the end of this episode we take a look at some of the actual Good News going on in the world in our GOOD NEWS ROUNDUP!Join us as we consider how we may cultivate the wisdom to see beyond the narrowness of tribalist and essentialist perceptions of reality, and change this world from the inside-out!Like, Subscribe, and Share your thoughts and questions!with  @JordanGreenhall  , Guy Senstock  @82472tclt  , and Curt Cronin of  @MakingtheImpossibleInevitable  Video in this episode:https://youtu.be/nlpWghbgLwQ?si=-AOmpzbg4z1TOc7_https://youtu.be/u5iiHOUC-N8?si=5F3dfOSNgXj3vLNAJordan's Essay on Infinitesimal Courage: https://medium.com/deep-code/infinitesimal-courage-947f074d09f8 Good News Roundup Source: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/Disclaimer: This show may include copyrighted material for educational purposes that are intended to fall under the "fair use" guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The content is used for commentary, critique, and educational insights. All rights to the original content belong to their respective owners. If you have any concerns about the use of your material, please reach out to us directly.Thanks for listening!Join Actuali in podcast land where we explore the arts of mindfulness, flow, and how to realize one's most authentic Self. On your favorite podcast platform @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiThrough deep dives into life's greatest mysteries to inspiring conversations, to current events, guided Wim Hof beathing and meditations, Actuali is dedicated to revealing a clear way to view the world and our place in it.Together we change this world from the inside-out!Join us Wednesday's 7p EST on youtube.com/@actuali.podccastPlaying after the fact on Spotify, Apple, and more @ https://Anchor.FM/ActualiJoin Actuali on Social! Instagram:https://Instagram.com/actuali.podcastTwitter:https://Twitter.com/Actuali_PodcastFacebook:https://facebook.com/Actuali.podcastOur band, ⁠American Dharma:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfJn_yIRo45SRHGfsjJ8XiwA.D. on facebook: https://facebook.com/AmericanDharmabandA.D. on Instagram: https://instagram.com/American.Dharma.bandA.D. on Twitch:https://www.twitch.tv/americandharmaThe audio side of this episode will also be available on all major podcast platforms via https://Anchor.FM/Actuali Enjoy the show!

In this episode, we welcome David Wolpert, a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute renowned for his groundbreaking work across multiple disciplines—from physics and computer science to game theory and complexity. * Note: If you enjoy our podcast conversations, please join us for the Artificiality Summit on October 23-25 in Bend, Oregon for many more in person conversations like these! Learn more about the Summit at www.artificiality.world/summit.We reached out to David to explore the mathematics of meaning—a concept that's becoming crucial as we live more deeply with artificial intelligences. If machines can hold their own mathematical understanding of meaning, how does that reshape our interactions, our shared reality, and even what it means to be human?David takes us on a journey through his paper "Semantic Information, Autonomous Agency and Non-Equilibrium Statistical Physics," co-authored with Artemy Kolchinsky. While mathematically rigorous in its foundation, our conversation explores these complex ideas in accessible terms.At the core of our discussion is a novel framework for understanding meaning itself—not just as a philosophical concept, but as something that can be mathematically formalized. David explains how we can move beyond Claude Shannon's syntactic information theory (which focuses on the transmission of bits) to a deeper understanding of semantic information (what those bits actually mean to an agent).Drawing from Judea Pearl's work on causality, Schrödinger's insights on life, and stochastic thermodynamics, David presents a unified framework where meaning emerges naturally from an agent's drive to persist into the future. This approach provides a mathematical basis for understanding what makes certain information meaningful to living systems—from humans to single cells.Our conversation ventures into:How AI might help us understand meaning in ways we cannot perceive ourselvesWhat a mathematically rigorous definition of meaning could mean for AI alignmentHow contexts shape our understanding of what's meaningfulThe distinction between causal information and mere correlationWe finish by talking about David's current work on a potentially concerning horizon: how distributed AI systems interacting through smart contracts could create scenarios beyond our mathematical ability to predict—a "distributed singularity" that might emerge in as little as five years. We wrote about this work here. For anyone interested in artificial intelligence, complexity science, or the fundamental nature of meaning itself, this conversation offers rich insights from one of today's most innovative interdisciplinary thinkers. About David Wolpert:David Wolpert is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and one of the modern era's true polymaths. He received his PhD in physics from UC Santa Barbara but has made seminal contributions across numerous fields. His research spans machine learning (where he formulated the "No Free Lunch" theorems), statistical physics, game theory, distributed intelligence, and the foundations of inference and computation. Before joining SFI, Wolpert held positions at NASA, Stanford, and the Santa Fe Institute as a professor. His work consistently bridges disciplinary boundaries to address fundamental questions about complex systems, computation, and the nature of intelligence.Thanks again to Jonathan Coulton for our music.

There's a powerful psychological state that can paralyze us, interfere with effective relationships, block our empathy, and cause us to inflict harm. It's called shame.Today, David Bedrick shares what shame is, how it's created, and its connection to trauma. Some say shame keeps us humble, but David shares why we don't need shame because it's not the same as embarrassment or regret. We unpack why shame is not a feeling but a psychological state that can leave you numb - and how you can instead create a space of safety and security within yourself. David shares how we can snap out of a shame spiral in the moment and also gives insights as to why some people may feel a need to shame others. David makes us think about our need to “solve,” or pathologize as he puts it, shame, anger, depression, and the like rather than process root causes to make meaning. He offers an intriguing thought experiment to try to break yourself of this tendency! Lastly, we touch on how to unashame conflict and dialogue through conflict in a more productive way. To access the episode transcript, please search for the episode title at www.TheEmpathyEdge.comKey Takeaways:Shame is different from embarrassment or humiliation. Shame is a psychological state that may have feelings associated with it. Negative feelings are not bad - they can even be helpful for understanding our behavior and lead us to making an action toward repair. Say the criticisms in your head aloud from the perspective of the negatives - it gives you a chance to respond and advocate for yourself. "If shame enters my system, the only thing I care about is removing the bad experience I have in myself. I don't care about you. I care about being low. In the fully shame psyche, you don't exist as a person that matters to me at all." — David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW Episode References:The Unshaming Way: amazon.com/Unshaming-Way-Compassionate-Dismantling-Shame-Heal/dp/B0CWL19X7GThe Empathy Edge: Edwin Rutsch: How “Empathy Circles” Can Change the WorldFrom Our Partner:SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.About David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW Founder, The Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies and Author of The Unshaming WayDavid is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was adjunct faculty at the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland. He is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies, where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of therapists, coaches, and healers and workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. He is a writer for Psychology Today and the author of four books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology; Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change; and You Can't Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption. His recent book, The Unshaming Way, has been endorsed by Gabor Mate. Connect with David:Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies: davidbedrick.com Facebook: facebook.com/david.bedrick.9 Instagram: instagram.com/david.bedrick Connect with Maria:Get Maria's books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/booksLearn more about Maria's work: Red-Slice.comHire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-RossTake the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with EmpathyLinkedIn: Maria RossInstagram: @redslicemariaFacebook: Red SliceThreads: @redslicemariaWe would love to get your thoughts on the show! Please click https://bit.ly/edge-feedback to take this 5-minute survey, thanks!

In the last episode, Paul Smaldino, Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute discussed how human behaviour is shaped by cultural evolution. In this episode, Paul discusses social learning and identity signalling and how they’re both being affected by rapidly changing technologies. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

******Support the channel****** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ******Follow me on****** Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. David Wolpert is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, external professor at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, adjunct professor at ASU, and research associate at the ICTP in Trieste. He has over 30,000 citations, with most of his papers in thermodynamics of computation, foundations of physics, dynamics of social organizations, machine learning, game theory, and distributed optimization / control.   In this episode, we focus on his paper, “The Past as a Stochastic Process”. We first talk about what a stochastic process is, how to study history, a stochastic process framework, and history itself as a stochastic process. We also discuss the jumps in the sociopolitical complexity of polities, narrative approaches in history, and predicting the future. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, STARRY, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, BENJAMIN GELBART, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, AND STEVEN GANGESTAD! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

We all know that we are shaped by evolution, but we're also shaped by cultural evolution. In this episode, we’re joined by Paul Smaldino, Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, to explain how cultural evolution has shaped human behaviour. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

In this solo episode of the podcast, Sophia discusses, "AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans" by Melanie Mitchell professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Are world models the answer to creating human-like intelligence in AI? What are the arguments for and against world models in training AI? And can OOUX help in creating these models? LINKS:Join Melanie's SubstackRegister for UX Level-UpOOUX for AI Course

David Krakauer is an American evolutionary biologist. He is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. As you will hear in today's episode, David's research centers around a series of fundamental questions, such as: How did life and intelligence evolve in the universe? How do ideas evolve and how do they encode natural and cultural life?In this conversation, David and I explore the evolving landscape of complexity science. We discuss its foundational theories, emerging patterns, and intersections with AI and machine learning. We delve into the paradigm shift complexity science represents, its most significant contributions across disciplines, and how computational advances are reshaping its trajectory. We also talk about AI's potential to scale towards AGI through a complexity lens, the limits imposed by evolutionary principles, and what this means for artificial systems. Finally, as President of the Santa Fe Institute, David discusses SFI's unique interdisciplinary model. I hope you enjoy the conversation.You can follow me on X (@ProfSchrepel) and BlueSky (@ProfSchrepel) to receive regular updates.References: Unifying complexity science and machine learning (2023) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/complex-systems/articles/10.3389/fcpxs.2023.1235202/full The debate over understanding in AI's large language models (2023) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f29a430a2b6a34680879cc0/t/672467763ec35e0639db8457/1730439030537/DK-DebateOverUnderstandingInAIsLLMs2023.pdf Darwinian demons, evolutionary complexity, and information maximization (2011) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f29a430a2b6a34680879cc0/t/6725792b7d0d4f0e4e7ca2fe/1730509104265/DK-DarwinianDemonsEvolutionaryComplexity%26InformationMaximization2011.pdf

Welcome to episode 57 of the MindThatEgo Podcast and the first of a new series on dreams. I'm joined by David Bedrick, the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies, where he trains therapists, coaches and healers, and offers workshops for individuals.David graduated from the Process Work Institute and has been adjunct faculty for over 15 years. He studied under Arny Mindell, the founder of process-oriented psychology. Mindell was a student of Carl Jung, who integrated physics and the body into Jung's work. David also taught psychology and philosophy courses at the University of Phoenix.His latest book, The Unshaming Way, is the focus of today's conversation. Topics include: common misconceptions of shame, trauma-based and cultural origins of shame, the healing power of an unshaming witness, the intelligence of bodily experience, unshamed views of madness, depression and mental illness, expressing and learning from big emotions, the “dreambody” as a metaphor for inner processes, and why dreams naturally provide an unshamed view. Enjoy.---David's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.bedrick/?hl=enDavid's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@davidbedrick3872?si=o1WhsyD64qPnh4KT---

It is a feature of many human activities - sports, cooking, music, interpersonal relations - that being able to do them well doesn't necessarily mean you can accurately describe how to do them well. Science is no different. Many successful scientists are not very good at explaining what goes into successful scientific practice. To understand that, it's necessary to study science in a scientific fashion. What kinds of scientists, in what kinds of collaborations, using what kinds of techniques, do well? I talk with James Evans, an expert on collective intelligence and the construction of knowledge, about how science really works.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/02/10/304-james-evans-on-innovation-consolidation-and-the-science-of-science/Support Mindscape on Patreon.James Evans received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. He is currently the Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations, Director of Knowledge Lab, and Faculty Director of Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago; External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute; External Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna; and Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google.Knowledge Lab web siteUniversity of Chicago web pageGoogle scholar publicationsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Join Alexander McCaig as he sits down with Michael Garfield, host of the Humans on the Loop podcast, evolutionary biologist, and former communications lead for the Santa Fe Institute. Together, they explore the intersection of technology, humanity, and the future of systems thinking in an engaging and thought-provoking conversation. Key Topics Discussed: Michael's Journey to Santa Fe: From Austin, Texas, to working at the prestigious Santa Fe Institute. The pivotal role of his sensitivity to ecological and cultural dynamics. Challenges faced in navigating the politics of science and funding while promoting meaningful research. The Power of Connecting Ideas and Communities: Michael's unique ability to connect disparate ideas and people into cohesive systems. How his podcast, Humans on the Loop, fosters relationships over transactions. Balancing Left and Right Hemispheric Thinking: A deep dive into Ian McGilchrist's work on hemispheric brain functions. The importance of integrating goal-oriented thinking (left brain) with holistic pattern recognition (right brain). Applications in technological design and the human search for meaning. The Limitations of Current Technological Optimizations: How hyper-specialization creates fragility in ecosystems and systems. The historical shift from survival-based technology to productivity-focused systems that disconnect humanity from community and ethics. Evolutionary Lessons for the Future of Humanity: Insights from evolutionary biology and paleontology on how living systems adapt to crises. Why generalists often thrive in periods of ecological collapse or market disruptions. Reimagining Human Relationships with AI: The role of AI in enhancing, not replacing, human intuition and decision-making. Using technology to foster self-awareness and self-responsibility rather than perpetuating productivity traps. Introducing the "Social Memory Complex": Alexander's vision for the future of TARTLE, starting with individual data vaults. Building toward a global model where humanity can collectively leverage its shared knowledge and decision-making capabilities. Rethinking Consent and Agency in Automation: Exploring the dynamics of human interaction with automation: "in the loop," "on the loop," and "out of the loop." How human agency can be redefined in the age of autonomous systems and decentralized technologies. The Role of Complexity Science in Solving Global Challenges: The need to move beyond one-dimensional thinking in science, economics, and governance. Using complexity to bridge gaps between disparate disciplines and communities. The Vision of Humans on the Loop: Why Michael chose the name and how the podcast explores the intersection of ethics, systems, and human agency. The importance of fostering conversations that address the constraints and possibilities of the future. Memorable Quotes: "The problem isn't desire—it's that your desires are too small." – Michael Garfield "Technology should enhance responsibility for human thinking, not take its place." – Alexander McCaig "The more you know, the less you know relative to what exists." – Michael Garfield     Resources Mentioned: Humans on the Loop Podcast: Visit Website     Connect with Michael Garfield: Website: Michael Garfield Podcast: Humans on the Loop Connect with Alexander McCaig & TARTLE: Website: TARTLE.co Schedule a Demo: Learn More About TARTLE   Takeaways for Listeners: This episode challenges us to think critically about our relationship with technology, the decisions we make as individuals, and the role we play in shaping the collective future of humanity. It's a call to embrace complexity, seek relationships over transactions, and engage in deeper self-reflection to unlock humanity's true potential.

Many of us carry shame around every day without even realizing it. It can stop us from developing great relationships, chasing our dreams, or even making the most of the day. David Bedrick is an author, psychological activist, and founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-Based Studies, and he's spent his life helping people recognize shame and detach from those feelings both physically and mentally. He explains practical ways we can all deal with past trauma and the feelings it creates within us.

A new Craftwork episode featuring a conversation with John Kaag, a philosopher and author who is also now the co-founder and chief creative officer of Rebind, a company that creates interactive reading experiences using AI and featuring leading authors and scholars like Margaret Atwood, Clancy Martin, John Banville, Roxane Gay, Deepak Chopra, and others. Kaag is professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Kaag specializes in American philosophy and is the Donohue Professor of Ethics and the Arts at UMass Lowell, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Advisor at Outlier.org. In February 2023, Kaag delivered the lecture "William James and the Sick Soul" for Harvard Divinity School's William James Lectures on Religious Experience series. He lives in Carlisle, MA with his wife, Kathleen, and their two children. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I had the honor and delight of speaking with one of my teachers and mentors, David Bedrick!David is a teacher, counselor, attorney, and the founder of The Sante Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies.He's also the author of four books and on this episode, we discuss his latest: THE UNSHAMING WAY - A Compassionate Guide to Dismantling Shame.This fantastic book addresses how to heal from shame, unlearn self-blame, and reclaim your story.As someone who has been deeply impacted by his work on shame and the unshaming process, I was super excited to dive into a rich conversation about vulnerability, trauma, and the power of authentic expression. We also explored the profound impact of violence, childhood trauma, and how the internalization of shame can shape our adult experiences. Perhaps most importantly, David shared his unique approach to "unshaming," which involves genuine curiosity and a deep respect for each person's sacred story. Rather than trying to fix or change someone, he invites them to fully inhabit and express their authentic selves - a process that often unlocks hidden gifts and strengths. One of the surprising key moments for me was when David and I both reflected on how we were once labeled as "shy" kids, when in reality, we were simply responding to fear and a lack of safety!I've benefited immensely from this work, and now I'm so happy to get to share David and these insights with you.I'd love to hear your favorite and most impactful takeaways, too!KEY POINTS:•​ The power of vulnerability and transparency in building trust and safety•​ How childhood trauma can lead to internalized shame and self-criticism• Reframing "shyness" as a response to fear ​- rather than a personality trait• David Bedrick's definition of shame as a viewpoint, not just a feeling•​ The transformative potential of authentic expression and the "unshaming" process•​ The exacerbating role of systemic oppression in fueling internalized shame• The Nest - Group Mentoring Program DAVID'S BIO: David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in a family marked by violence. While his father's brutality was physical and verbal, his mother's denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he trains therapists, coaches and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development.David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of four books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change, and You Can't Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.His new fourth book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic books in November 2024.Links:Order The Unshaming Way: https://a.co/d/dYTwNa7Website: https://www.davidbedrick.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.bedrick/Facebook:

Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as my evil twin will tell you). But random doesn't mean arbitrary. Biological organisms are physical objects, after all, and subject to the same laws of physics as non-biological matter is. Those laws place constraints on how organisms can fulfill their basic functions of metabolism, reproduction, motility, and so on. Easy to say, but how can we turn this into quantitative understanding of actual organisms? Today I talk with physical biologist Chris Kempes about how physics can help us understand the size of organisms, their metabolisms, and features of major transitions in evolution.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/20/302-chris-kempes-on-the-biophysics-of-evolution/Chris Kempes received his Ph.D. in physical biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently Professor and a member of the Science Steering Committee at the Santa Fe Institute. His research involves the origin of life and the constraints placed by physics on biological function and evolution.Web siteSanta Fe Institute web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsOrigins of Life online courseSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Healthcare attracts a lot of good people, but it also attracts a lot of morally unscrupulous people who consistently demonstrate their willingness to do horribly unethical stuff to make a lot of money."Join us for many mic-drop moments with recording artist-turned-healthcare-investor D.A. Wallach, who tells it like it is—but in a nice way only someone who grew up in the Midwest can.From questioning the "doctor" honorific to calling large health systems "the root of evil," D.A. challenges healthcare's sacred cows and offers a provocative vision for the future.We cover:

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists. Read more about our partnership. Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released. David Krakauer is the president of the Santa Fe Institute, where their mission is officially "Searching for Order in the Complexity of Evolving Worlds." When I think of the Santa Fe institute, I think of complexity science, because that is the common thread across the many subjects people study at SFI, like societies, economies, brains, machines, and evolution. David has been on before, and I invited him back to discuss some of the topics in his new book The Complex World: An Introduction to the Fundamentals of Complexity Science. The book on the one hand serves as an introduction and a guide to a 4 volume collection of foundational papers in complexity science, which you'll David discuss in a moment. On the other hand, The Complex World became much more, discussing and connecting ideas across the history of complexity science. Where did complexity science come from? How does it fit among other scientific paradigms? How did the breakthroughs come about? Along the way, we discuss the four pillars of complexity science - entropy, evolution, dynamics, and computation, and how complexity scientists draw from these four areas to study what David calls "problem-solving matter." We discuss emergence, the role of time scales, and plenty more all with my own self-serving goal to learn and practice how to think like a complexity scientist to improve my own work on how brains do things. Hopefully our conversation, and David's book, help you do the same. David's website. David's SFI homepage. The book: The Complex World: An Introduction to the Fundamentals of Complexity Science. The 4-Volume Series: Foundational Papers in Complexity Science. Mentioned: Aeon article: Problem-solving matter. The information theory of individuality. Read the transcript. 0:00 - Intro 3:45 - Origins of The Complex World 20:10 - 4 pillars of complexity 36:27 - 40s to 70s in complexity 42:33 - How to proceed as a complexity scientist 54:32 - Broken symmetries 1:02:40 - Emergence 1:13:25 - Time scales and complexity 1:18:48 - Consensus and how ideas migrate 1:29:25 - Disciplinary matrix (Kuhn) 1:32:45 - Intelligence vs. life

Big data is ruling, or at least deeply infiltrating, all of modern existence. Unprecedented capacity for collecting and analyzing large amounts of data have given us a new generation of artificial intelligence models, but also everything from medical procedures to recommendation systems that guide our purchases and romantic lives. I talk with computer scientist Tina Elassi-Rad about how we can sift through all this data, make sure it is deployed in ways that align with our values, and how to deal with the political and social dangers associated with systems that are not always guided by the truth.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/13/301-tina-eliassi-rad-on-al-networks-and-epistemic-instability/Tina Eliassi-Rad received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently Joseph E. Aoun Chair of Computer Sciences and Core Faculty of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and External Faculty at the Vermont Complex Systems Center. She is a fellow of the Network Science Society, recipient of the Lagrange Prize, and was named one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics.Web siteNortheastern web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

So many of us are curious about the stuff of space and time and the forces that bind us all together. Author and physicist Sean Caroll wants to encourage that curiosity, and believes physics can be accessible to everyone. Carroll is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy, a joint appointment between physics and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He has focused his research on cosmology, field theory, and gravitation, looking at topics such as dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries. He has shifted his focus to foundational questions, both in quantum mechanics—origin of probability, emergence of space and time—and statistical mechanics—entropy and the arrow of time, emergence and causation, dynamics of complexity, all while bringing a more philosophical dimension to this work. Carroll is the author of several books, including, “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion,” “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime,” and its second volume, “Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe.” He hosts the “Mindscape” podcast, featuring conversations with accomplished guests on new ideas in science, philosophy, culture, and the arts. Carroll was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Bedrick, J.D., Dipl. PW, holds a doctorate in Jurisprudence and is a Diplomate of the Process Work Institute. He founded the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-Based Studies. His work focuses on addressing shame at its root and helping people forge new and compassionate relationships with their authentic selves. Bedrick is a contributor to Psychology Today magazine and has shared his teachings with thousands of students globally through books, social media, articles, and online courses. He is the author of several books including Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology (Belly Song Press 2013), Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change (Belly Song Press 2017),You Can't Judge a Body By Its Cover: 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame, and Redemption (Belly Song Press 2020) andThe Unshaming Way: A 3-Part Model for Dismantling Shame (North Atlantic Books 2024) Interview Date: 9/25/2024 Tags: David Bedrick, shame, dismantling shame, nonjudgmental witnessing, unshaming, language of the body, stuttering, shame bag, Health & Healing, Personal Transformation, Psychology

Paleontologist-Futurist Michael Garfield works in mind-jazz across genres to help navigating our world of accelerating weirdness and cultivate the curiosity and play for people to thrived in it. Host of Future Fossils, former Digital Media Strategist for The Santa Fe Institute and host of Complexity Podcast, former Community Manager for The Long Now Foundation and Research Analyst for a stealth Mozilla AI spin out, his latest project Humans On The Loop examines agency in the age of automation through conversation, music, essay, social weaving, and the rearing of bespoke language models. LINKTREE SUBSTACK YOUTUBE TWITTER TOOLS: 0:00 – Intro 1:01 – Boss RC-505 mkII Loopstation 16:53 – Brunton Transit pocket compass 25:47 – Black Diamond Storm 500-R headlamp 33:17 – FLUXX by Looney Labs 42:14 – Humans on the Loop Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VdHo_mkIAkc For show notes and transcript visit: https://kk.org/cooltools/michael-garfield-paleontologist-futurist/ To sign up to be a guest on the show, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/qc496XB6bGbrAEKK7

Farmer is the Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems at Oxford's Institute for New Economic Thinking. Before joining Oxford in 2012, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute, where he studied complex systems and economic dynamics. During the 1990s, he took a break from academia to run a successful quantitative trading firm using statistical arbitrage strategies.Farmer has been a pioneer in chaos theory and complexity economics, including the development of agent-based models to understand economic phenomena. His work spans from housing markets to climate change, and he recently authored Making Sense of Chaos exploring complexity science and economic modeling.In This Episode* What is complexity economics? (1:23)* Compliment or replacement for traditional economics (6:55)* Modeling Covid-19 (11:12)* The state of the science (15:06)* How to approach economic growth (20:44)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. What is complexity economics? (1:23)We really can model the economy as something dynamic that can have its own business cycles that come from within the economy, rather than having the economy just settle down to doing something static unless it's hit by shocks all the time, as is the case in mainstream models.Pethokoukis: What does the sort of economics that people would learn, let's say, in the first year of college, they might learn about labor and capital, supply-demand equilibrium, rational expectations, maybe the importance of ideas. How does that differ from the kind of economics you are talking about? Are you looking at different factors?Farmer: We're really looking at a completely different way of doing economics. Rather than maximizing utility, which is really the central conceptual piece of any standard economic model, and writing down equations, and deducing the decision that does that, we simulate the economy.We assume that we identify who the agents in the and economy are, who's making the decisions, what information do they have available, we give them methods of making the decisions — decision-making rules or learning algorithms — and then they make decisions, those decisions have economic impact, that generates new information, other information may enter from the outside, they make decisions, and we just go around and around that loop in a computer simulation that tries to simulate what the economy does and how it works.You've been writing about this for some time. I would guess — perhaps I'm wrong — that just having more data and more computer power has been super helpful over the past 10 years, 20 years.It's been super helpful for us. We take much more advantage of that than the mainstream does. But yes, computers are a billion times more powerful now than they were when Herb Simon first suggested this way of doing things, and that means the time is ripe now because that's not a limiting factor anymore, as it was in the past.So if you're not looking at capital and labor per se, then what are the factors you're looking at?Well, we do look at capital and labor, we just look at them in a different way. Our models are concerned about how much capital is there to invest, what labor is available. We do have to assign firms production functions that tells, given an amount of capital and labor and all their other inputs, how much can the firms produce? That part of the idea is similar. It's a question of the way the decision about how much to produce is made, or the way consumers decide how much to consume, or laborers decide at what price to provide their labor. All those parts are different.Another difference — if I'm understanding it correctly — is, rather than thinking about economies that tend toward equilibrium and focusing how outside shocks may put an economy in disequilibrium, you're looking a lot more at what happens internally. Am I correct?We don't assume equilibrium. Equilibrium, it has two senses in economics: One is supply equals demand. We might or might not run a model where we assume that. In many models we don't, and if that happens, that's great, but it's an outcome of the model rather than an assumption we put in at the beginning.There's another sense of equilibrium, which is that everybody's strategy is lined up. You've had time to think about what you're doing, I've had time to think about what I'm doing, we've both come to the optimal decision for each of us to make, taking the other one into account. We don't assume that, as standard models typically do. We really can model the economy as something dynamic that can have its own business cycles that come from within the economy, rather than having the economy just settle down to doing something static unless it's hit by shocks all the time, as is the case in mainstream models. We still allow shocks to hit our models, but the economy can generate dynamics even without those shocks.This just popped in my head: To whom would this model make more intuitive sense, Karl Marx or Adam Smith?Adam Smith would like these models because they really allow for emergent behavior. That is, Smith's whole point was that the economy is more than the sum of its parts, that we get far more out of specializing than we do out of each acting like Robinson Crusoes. Our way of thinking about this gets at that very directly.Marx might actually like it too, perhaps for a different reason. Marx was insightful in understanding the economy as being like, what I call in the book, the “metabolism of civilization.” That is, he really did recognize the analogy between the economy and the metabolism, and viewed labor as what we put together with natural resources to make goods and services. So those aspects of the economy are also embodied in the kind of models we're making.I think they both like it, but for different reasons.Compliment or replacement for traditional economics (6:55)There are many problems where we can answer questions traditional methods can't even really ask.The way I may have framed my questions so far is that you are suggesting a replacement or alternative. Is what you're suggesting, is it one of those things, or is it a compliment, or is it just a way of looking at the world that's better at answering certain kinds of questions?I think the jury is out to find the answer to that. I think it is certainly a compliment, and that we're doing things very differently, and there are some problems where this method is particularly well-suited. There are many problems where we can answer questions traditional methods can't even really ask.That said, I think time will tell to what extent this replaces the traditional way of doing economics. I don't think it's going to replace everything that's done in traditional economics. I think it could replace 75 percent of it — but let me put an asterisk by that and say 75 percent of theory. Economists do many different things. One thing economists do is called econometrics, where they take data and they build models just based on the data to infer things that the data is telling them. We're not talking about that here. We're talking about theories where economists attempt to derive the decisions and economic outcomes from first principles based on utility maximization. That's what we're talking about providing an alternative to. The extent to which it replaces that will be seen as time will tell.When a big Wall Street bank wants to make a forecast, they're constantly incorporating the latest jobless claims numbers, industrial production numbers, and as those numbers get updated, they change their forecasts. You're not using any of that stuff?Well, no. We can potentially could ingest any kind of data about what's going on.But they're looking at big, top-down data while you're bottom-up, you're sort of trying to duplicate the actual actors in the economy.That is true, but we can adjust what's at the bottom to make sure we're matching initial conditions. So if somebody tells us, “This is the current value of unemployment,” we want to make sure that we're starting our model out, as we go forward, with the right level of unemployment. So we will unemploy some of the households in our model in order to make sure we're matching the state of unemployment right now and then we start our simulation running forward to see where the economy goes from here.I would think that the advent of these large language models would really take this kind of modeling to another level, because already I'm seeing lots of papers on their ability to . . . where people are trying to run experiments and, rather than using real people, they're just trying to use AI people, and the ability to create AI consumers, and AI in businesses — it would have to be a huge advance.Yes. This is starting to be experimented with for what we do. People are trying to use large language models to model how people actually make decisions, or let's say, to simulate the way people make decisions, as opposed to an idealized person that makes perfect decisions. That's a very promising line of attack to doing this kind of modeling.Large language models also can tell us about other things that allow us to match data. For example, if we want to use patents as an input in our modeling — not something we're doing yet, but we've done a lot of studies with patents — one can use large language models to match patents to firms to understand which firms will benefit from the patents and which firms won't. So there are many different ways that large language models are likely to enter going forward, and we're quite keen to take advantage of those.Modeling Covid-19 (11:12)We predicted a 21.5 percent hit to UK GDP in the second quarter of 2020. When the dust settled a year later, the right answer was 22.1. So we got very close.Tell me, briefly, about your work with the Covid outbreak back in 2020 and what your modeling said back then and how well it worked.When the pandemic broke out, we realized right away that this was a great opportunity to show the power of the kind of economic modeling that we do, because Covid was a very strong and very sudden shock. So it drove the economy far out of equilibrium. We were able to predict what Covid would do to the UK economy using two basic ideas: One is, we predicted the shock. We did that based on things like understanding a lot about occupational labor. The Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles tables about things like, in a given occupation, how close together do people typically work? And so we assumed if they worked closer together than two meters, they weren't going to be able to go to their job. That combined with several other things allowed us to predict how big the shock would be.Our model predicted how that shock would be amplified through time by the action of the economy. So in the model we built, we put a representative firm in every sector of the economy and we assumed that if that firm didn't have the labor it needed, or if it didn't have the demand for its product, or if it didn't have the inputs it needed, it wouldn't be able to produce its product and the output would be reduced proportional to any of those three limiting factors.And so we started the model off on Day One with an inventory of inputs that we read out of a table that government statistical agencies had prepared for each sector of the economy. And we then just looked, “Well, does it have the labor? Does it have demand? Does it have the goods?” If yes, it can produce at its normal level. If it's lacking any of those, it's going to produce at a lower level. And our model knew the map of the economy, so it knew which industries are inputs to which other industries. So as the pandemic evolved day by day, we saw that some industries started to run out of inputs and that would reduce their output, which, in turn, could cause other industries to run out of their inputs, and so on.That produced quite a good prediction. We predicted a 21.5 percent hit to UK GDP in the second quarter of 2020. When the dust settled a year later, the right answer was 22.1. So we got very close. We predicted things pretty well, industry by industry. We didn't get them all exactly right, but the mistakes we made averaged out so that we got the overall output right, and we got it right through time.We ran the model on several different scenarios. At the time, this was in April of 2020, the United Kingdom was in a lockdown and they were trying to decide what to do next, and we tested several different scenarios for what they might do when they emerged from the full lockdown. The one that we thought was the least bad was keeping all the upstream industries like mining, and forestry, and so on open, but closing the downstream, customer-facing industries like retail businesses that have customers coming into their shop, or making them operate remotely. That was the one they picked. Already when they picked it, we predicted what would happen, and things unfolded roughly as we suggested they would.The state of the science (15:06)Mainstream models can only model shocks that come from outside the economy and how the economy responds to those shocks. But if you just let the model sit there and nothing changes, it will just settle down and the economy will never change.I'm old enough to remember the 1990s and remember a lot of talk about chaos and complexity, some of which even made it into the mainstream, and Jurassic Park, which may be the way most people heard a little bit about it. It's been 30 years. To what extent has it made inroads into economic modeling at central banks or Wall Street banks? Where's the state of the science? Though it sounds like you're really taking another step forward here with the book and some of your latest research.Maybe I could first begin just by saying that before Jurassic Park was made, I got a phone call and picked up the phone, and the other end of the line said, “Hi, this is Jeff Goldblum, have you ever heard of me?” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, we're making this movie about dinosaurs and stuff, and I'm going to play a chaos scientist, and I'm calling up some chaos scientists to see how they talk.” And so I talked to Jeff Goldblum for about a half an hour. A few of my other friends did too. So anyway, I like to think I had a tiny little bit of impact on the way he behaved in the movie. There were some parallels that it seemed like he had lifted.Chaos, it's an important underlying concept in explaining why the weather is hard to predict, it can explain some forms of heart arrhythmias, we use it to explain some of the irregular behavior of ice ages. In economics, it was tossed around in the '90s as something that might be important and rejected. As I described in the book, I think it was rejected for the wrong reasons.I'm proposing chaos, the role it plays in here is that, there's a debate about business cycles. Do they come from outside? The Covid pandemic was clearly a business cycle that came from outside. Or do they come from inside the economy? The 2008 financial crisis, I would say, is clearly one that came from inside the economy. Mainstream models can only model shocks that come from outside the economy and how the economy responds to those shocks. But if you just let the model sit there and nothing changes, it will just settle down and the economy will never change.In contrast, the kinds of models we build often show what we call endogenous business cycles, meaning business cycles that the model generates all on its own. Now then, you can ask, “Well, how could it do that?” Well, basically the only plausible way it can do that is through chaos. Because chaos has two properties: One is called sensitive dependence on initial conditions, meaning tiny changes in the present can cause large changes in the future; but the other is endogenous motion, meaning motion that comes from within the system itself, that happens spontaneously, even in very simple systems of equations.Would something like consumer pessimism, would that be an external shock or would something more internal where everybody, they're worried about the futures, then they stop spending as much money? How would that fit in?If the consumer pessimism is due to the fear of a nuclear war, I would say it's outside the economy, and so that's an external shock. But if it's caused by the fact that the economy just took a big nose dive for an internal reason, then it's part of the endogenous dynamicsI spent many years as a journalist writing about why the market's going up, the market's going down, and by the end of the day, I had to come up with a reason why the market moved, and I could — I wasn't always quite confident, because sometimes it wasn't because of a new piece of data, or an earnings report, they just kind of moved, and I had no real reason why, even though I had to come up . . . and of course it was when I was doing that was when people started talking about chaos, and it made a lot of intuitive sense to me that things seem to happen internally in ways that, at least at the time, were utterly unpredictable.Yeah, and in fact, one of the studies I discuss in the book is by Cutler, Poterba, and Summers — the Summers would be Larry Summers — where they did something very simple, they just got the 100 largest moves of the S&P index, they looked up what the news was the next day about why they occurred in the New York Times, and they subjectively marked the ones that they thought were internally driven, versus the ones that were real news, and they concluded they could only find news causes for about a third of them.There is always an explanation in the paper; actually, there is one day on the top 12 list where the New York Times simply said, “There appears to be no cause.” That was back in the '40s, I don't think journalists ever say that anymore. I don't think their paper allows them to do it, but that's probably the right answer about two-thirds of the time, unless you count things like “investors are worried,” and, as I point out in the book, if the person who invests your money isn't worried all the time, then you should fire them because investors should worry.There are internal dynamics to markets, I actually show some examples in the book of simple models that generate that kind of internal dynamics so that things change spontaneously.How to approach economic growth (20:44)I'm not saying something controversial when I say that technological change is the dominant driver of economic growth, at least for the economy as a whole. You recently founded a company, Macrocosm, trying to put some of these ideas to work to address climate change, which would seem to be a very natural use for this kind of thinking. What do you hope to achieve there?We hope to provide better guidance through the transition. We're trying to take the kind of things we've been doing as academics, but scale them up and reduce them to practice so they can be used day-in and day-out to make the decisions that policymakers and businesspeople need to make as the transition is unfolding. We hope to be able to guide policymakers about how effective their policies will be in reducing emissions, but also in keeping the economy going and in good shape. We hope to be able to advise businesses and investors about what investments to make to make a profit while we reduce emissions. And we think that things have changed so that climate change has really become an opportunity rather than a liability.I write a lot about economic growth and try to figure out how it works, what are the key factors. . . What insights can you give me, either on how you think about growth and, since I work at a think tank, the kind of policies you think policy makers should be thinking about, or how should they think about economic growth, since that seems to be on top-of-mind in every rich country in the world right now?I'm not saying something controversial when I say that technological change is the dominant driver of economic growth, at least for the economy as a whole. And we've spent a lot of time studying technological change by just collecting data and looking for the patterns in that data: What does the technology cost through time and how rapidly is it deployed? We've done this for 50 or 60 technologies where we look at past technological transitions, because typically, as a technology is coming in, it's replacing something else that's going out, and what we've seen are a couple of striking things:One is, many technologies don't really improve very much over time, at least in terms of cost. Fossil fuels cost about the same as they did 140 years ago once you adjust for inflation. In fact, anything we mine out of the ground costs about the same as it did a hundred years ago.In contrast, solar energy from solar photovoltaic panels costs 1/10,000th what it did when it was introduced in the Vanguard satellite in 1958. Transistors have been going down at 40 percent per year, so they cost about a billionth of what they did back in 1960. So some technologies really make rapid progress, and the economy evolves by reorganizing itself around the technologies that are making progress. So for example, photography used to be about chemistry and film. Photography now is about solid-state physics because it just unhitched from one wagon and hitched itself to another wagon, and that's what's happening through the energy transition. We're in the process of hitching our wagon to the technologies that have been making rapid progress, like solar energy, and wind energy, and lithium ion batteries, and hydrogen catalyzers based on green energy.I think we can learn a lot about the past, and I think that when we look at what the ride should be like, based on what we understand, we think the transition is going to happen faster than most people think, and we think it will be a net saving of moneySo then how do you deal with a wild card, which I think if you look at the past, nuclear power seems like it's super expensive, no progress being made, but, theoretically, there could be — at least in the United States — there could be lots of regulatory changes that make it easier to build. You have all these venture capital firms pouring money into these nuclear startups with small reactors, or even nuclear fusion. So a technology that seems like it's a mature technology, it might be easy to chart its future, all of a sudden maybe it's very different.I'm not arguing we should get rid of nuclear reactors until they run their normal lifetime and need to be gotten rid of, but I think we will see that that is not going to be the winning technology in the long run, just because it's going to remain expensive while solar energy is going to become dirt cheap.In the early days, nuclear power had faced a very favorable regulatory environment. The first nuclear reactors were built in the '50s. Until Three Mile Island and Chernobyl happened, it was a very regulatorily friendly environment and they didn't come down in cost. Other countries like France have been very pro-nuclear. They have very expensive electricity and will continue to do so.I think the key thing we need to do is focus on storage technologies like green hydrogen. Long-term storage batteries have already come down to a point where they're beginning to be competitive; they will continue to do so. And in the future, I think we'll get solid-state storage that will make things quite cheap and efficient, but I don't think small modular reactors are going to ever be able to catch up with solar and wind at this point.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedMicro Reads▶ Economics* United States Economic Forecast - Deloitte* The Hidden Threat to National Security Is Not Enough Workers - WSJ▶ Business* DOGE Can't Do It All. Here's What It Can Do. - Politico* AI Startup Perplexity Closes Funding Round at $9 Billion Value - Bberg▶ Policy/Politics* US Homeland Security chief attacks EU effort to police AI - FT* The Trump Bump: The Republican Fertility Advantage in 2024 - IFS* House unveils AI ‘road map' but punts on setting priorities - Wapo* Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great? - Cato▶ AI/Digital* Call ChatGPT from any phone with OpenAI's new 1-800 voice service - Ars* Homo-Silicus: Not (Yet) a Good Imitator of Homo Sapiens or Homo Economicus - SSRN* Is AI finally ready to replace your doctor? - NS* The Age of Quantum Software Has Already Started - WSJ* This is where the data to build AI comes from - MIT* The New AI Stock Pickers Are Destined to Disappoint - Bberg Opinion▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Fusion Start-Up Plans to Build Its First Power Plant in Virginia - NYT* Will the World's First Nuclear Fusion Power Plant Be Built in Virginia? Here's Why We're Skeptical - SciAm* The deepest hole on Earth: Inside the race to harness unlimited power from our planet's core - SF* Dubai transforms into walkable city with air-conditioned paths - New Atlas* Oklo inks record deal for using nuclear to power data centers - E&E▶ Robotics/AVs* AI Robots Are Coming, and They'll Be Made in Asia - Bberg Opinion▶ Space/Transportation* Boeing Starliner crew's long awaited return delayed to March - Wapo▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* What Could Go Right? The Best News of 2024 - The Progress Network▶ Substacks/Newsletters* Why Don't EU Firms Innovate? The Hidden Costs of Failure - Conversable Economist* Why Did the Industrial Revolution Happen? - Oliver Kim* One Down, Many To Go - Hyperdimensional* The Experience Curve - Risk & Progress* The case for clinical trial abundance - Slow Borin* Nuclear Waste: Yes, In (or Under) My Backyard - Breakthrough Journal* Answer Time: Can We Imagine Pluralistic Futures? - Virginia's Newsletter* What just happened - One Useful ThingFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know that there are scientists who study teamwork? Co-hosts Anne Chappelle, PhD, and David Faulkner, PhD, DABT, speak with Stephen Fiore, PhD, Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, about the art and science of working in teams and what you can do to improve teamwork in your lab, department, etc.About the GuestStephen M. Fiore, PhD, is Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, and Professor with the University of Central Florida's Cognitive Sciences Program in the Department of Philosophy and School of Modeling, Simulation, and Training. He maintains a multidisciplinary research interest that incorporates aspects of the cognitive, social, organizational, and computational sciences in the investigation of learning and performance in individuals and teams. His primary area of research is the interdisciplinary study of complex collaborative cognition and the understanding of how humans interact socially and with technology.Dr. Fiore is Immediate Past President of the International Network for the Science of Team Science, and Past President for the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research. In 2018, Dr. Fiore was nominated to DARPA's Information Sciences and Technology (ISAT) Study Group to help the Department of Defense examine future areas of technological development potentially influencing national security. He has been a visiting scholar for the study of shared and extended cognition at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in Lyon, France (2010), and an invited visitor to the internationally renowned interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (2013). He was a member of the expert panel for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which focused on collaborative problem-solving skills. He has contributed to working groups for the National Academies of Sciences in understanding and measuring "21st-Century Skills" and was a committee member of their "Science of Team Science" consensus study, as well as a member of the National Assessment of Educational Progress report on "Collaborative Problem Solving".Dr. Fiore has been awarded the University of Central Florida (UCF) prestigious Research Incentive Award four times to acknowledge his significant accomplishments, and he is recipient of UCF's Luminary Award (2019), as recognition for his work having a significant impact on the world, and UCF's Reach for the Stars Award (2014), as recognition for bringing international prominence to the university. As Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Fiore has helped to secure and manage approximately $35 million in research funding. He is co-author of a book on “Accelerating Expertise” (2013) and is a co-editor of volumes on Shared Cognition (2012), Macrocognition in Teams (2008), Distributed Training (2007), and Team Cognition (2004). Dr. Fiore has also co-authored over 200 scholarly publications in the area of learning, memory, and problem solving in individuals and groups.Send SOT thoughts on the episodes, ideas for future topics, and more.

We're excited to welcome Doyne Farmer to the podcast. Doyne is a pioneering complexity scientist and a leading thinker on economic systems, technological change, and the future of society. Doyne is a Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Oxford, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. Doyne's work spans an extraordinary range of topics, from agent-based modeling of financial markets to exploring how innovation shapes the long-term trajectory of human progress. At the heart of Doyne's thinking is a focus on prediction—not in the narrow sense of forecasting next week's market trends, but in understanding the deep, generative forces that shape the evolution of technology and society. His new book, Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, is a reflection on the limitations of traditional economics and a call to embrace the tools of complexity science. In it, Doyne argues that today's economic models often fall short because they assume simplicity where there is none. What's especially compelling about Doyne's perspective is how he uses complexity science to challenge conventional economic assumptions. While traditional economics often treats markets as rational and efficient, Doyne reveals the messy, adaptive, and unpredictable nature of real-world economies. His ideas offer a powerful framework for rethinking how we approach systemic risk, innovation policy, and the role of AI-driven technologies in shaping our future. We believe Doyne's ideas are essential for anyone trying to understand the uncertainties we face today. He doesn't just highlight the complexity—he shows how to navigate it. By tracking the hidden currents that drive change, he helps us see the bigger picture of where we might be headed. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Doyne Farmer. ------------------------------ If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world's great minds. Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

******Support the channel****** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ******Follow me on****** Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. He was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World.   In this episode, we focus on Making Sense of Chaos. We talk about the economy as a complex system, business cycles, simulating the economy, and the housing bubble crises of the 2000s. We discuss the differences between standard economics and complexity economics. We talk about how we can understand inequality, market inefficiencies and crashes, and whether we can prevent financial crises. Finally, we discuss climate economics, how we can solve climate change, and whether we can tackle inequality. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, STARRY, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, BENJAMIN GELBART, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, AND STEVEN GANGESTAD! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Biological evolution via natural selection is a simple idea that becomes enormously complicated in its realization. Populations of organisms are driven toward increased "fitness," a measure of how successfully we reproduce our genetic information. But fitness is a subtle concept, changing with time and environment and interactions with other organisms around us. We talk with biologist Brandon Ogbunu about the best mathematical and conceptual tools for thinking about the messy complexities of evolution, and how modern technology is changing our way of thinking about it.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/18/296-brandon-ogbunu-on-fitness-seascapes-and-the-course-of-evolution/Brandon Ogbunu received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Microbiology from Yale University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Fullbright Fellowship and was the Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT. He has contributed to a number of publications, including Wired, Undark, and Quanta.Lab web siteYale web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaPublic talk: What is Lyfe? Towards a Biology of Context & ComplexitySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. James O'Dwyer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Biology and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The research in James's lab uses computational and theoretical approaches to better understand the patterns we observe in the world. He is an ecologist and is particularly interested in biological complexity. The goal of his lab is to build models and make predictions that will provide us with novel and unexpected information about how nature works. In his free time, James enjoys hiking, traveling, and strategic board games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. He was awarded a master's degree in Physics from the University of Durham, as well as a master's and PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge. James was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship conducting research at the University of Oregon and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, and he was also awarded an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute before accepting his current position. James is here with us today to tell us all about his journey through life and science.

A large economy is one of the best examples we have of complex dynamics. There are multiple components arranged in complicated overlapping hierarchies, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, nonlinear coupling and feedback between different levels, and ubiquitous unpredictable and chaotic behavior. Nevertheless, many economic models are based on relatively simple equilibrium principles. Doyne Farmer is among a group who think that economists need to start taking the tools of complexity theory seriously, as he argues in his recent book Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/10/21/293-doyne-farmer-on-chaos-crashes-and-economic-complexity/J. Doyne Farmer received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently Director of the Complexity Economics program and Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the University of Oxford, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. He was the founder of the Complex Systems Group in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and co-founder of The Prediction Company.Web siteOxford web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsAmazon author pageWikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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?

How do you navigate shame? What does inner criticism have to do with shame? In our society, it's easy to slip into what we think we know as shame and often, the most common first response is to figure out a way to relieve it or treat it. Instead, what happens if you explore the unshaming way? Who will you find?Today we continue our mini series speaking with mental health professionals such as therapists, somatic educators, social workers, and other professional caregivers. Our special guest today is David Bedrick, counselor, attorney, and a teacher of shame-based studies for therapists, coaches, and healers.In this episode of the Moonbeaming Podcast, host Sarah Faith Gottesdiener and guest David Bedrick peel back the layers of shame and uncover what shame is here to tell us. You'll learn:the definitions and functions of shamethe process of the unshaming wayhow to work with your inner criticismhow inner power gets suppressedwhy you must respond with self-compassionIf you've been stuck in a shame spiral and want to learn the first steps to unshaming yourself, this episode is for you.Please note: This episode contains examples of abuse.About David Bedrick: David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in family marked by violence. While his father's brutality was physical and verbal, his mother's denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he trains therapists, coaches and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. Thousands of students have studied with David in addition to his 30 years of experience working with individuals, couples, and groups.David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can't Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.His upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, will be published by North Atlantic books in 2024. More:Upcoming Book: The Unshaming Way by David BedrickDavid Bedrick's InstagramDavid Bedrick's Programs Moonbeaming Links:Join the Moon Studio Patreon. Buy The Moon Book.Subscribe to our newsletter. Find Sarah on Instagram.

Today's guest is Michael Mauboussin, Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, a $70 billion equity manager.  In today's episode, Michael covers some of his latest research on market concentration, equity issuance and stock buybacks, and how the boom and bust cycle relates to AI today. He also shares some common attributes among great investors, lessons from Elon Musk & Tesla, and more. (1:31) Guest Introduction: Michael Mauboussin (2:41) Capital allocation and stock-based compensation (9:58) Trivia question on the top performing stock (15:56) Market concentration (23:13) Modern value investing & the rise of intangibles (28:45) Attributes of great investors (33:09) Factors influencing total shareholder returns (42:22) Technology, capitalism, and market predictability (48:15) Indexing, market efficiency & book recommendations (54:10) The Santa Fe Institute's interdisciplinary approach ----- Follow Meb on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Today's episode is sponsored by YCharts. YCharts enables financial advisors to make smarter investment decisions and better communicate with clients. Visit YCharts to download their 2024 Election Guide & start your free trial - be sure to mention "Meb" for 20% off your subscription (new clients only).  Follow The Idea Farm: Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at Feedback@TheMebFaberShow.com ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more.  ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices