Podcasts about Santa Fe Institute

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!

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/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. 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Hear from Prof. J. Doyne Farmer, Professor of Complex Systems Science at the University of Oxford, as we explore new modelling approaches designed to better capture the complex and chaotic nature of our climate and economy. We spend a lot of time on this podcast covering the transition to a low carbon economy, which will be driven largely by policies and technological innovation. These policies tend to be based on insights from economics. And our view on the pace of innovation is often informed by expert judgement. But traditional economic models often oversimplify the world, leading to poor policy design. And we tend to underestimate the exponential rate of technological change, making us unduly pessimistic about the transition.  Today's guest has thought a great deal about both these issues. That's why in today's episode we'll be diving into the world of complexity economics and agent-based modelling, which can help us better navigate the risks and opportunities associated with the transition. We'll discuss: How agent-based models are very well suited to modelling complex, non-linear systems, such as the economy; How past innovation cycles can provide invaluable insights on what we might expect to see in the transition; and What the models tell us about the appropriate speed of the transition to a net zero world. To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com Links from today's discussion: Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/284357/making-sense-of-chaos-by-farmer-j-doyne/9780241201978 Santa Fe Institute's Office of Applied Complexity: https://www.santafe.edu/applied-complexity/office GARP Climate Risk Podcast with Simon Sharpe: https://www.garp.org/podcast/five-times-faster-cr-240321 GARP Climate Risk Podcast with David Stainforth: https://www.garp.org/podcast/predicting-climate-future-cr-241128 Speaker's Bio(s) Prof. J. Doyne Farmer, Professor of Complex Systems Science, University of Oxford J. Doyne Farmer is Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking University of Oxford. He is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modelling, 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. During the 1980s he was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. While a graduate student in the 1970s he built the first wearable digital computer, which was successfully used to predict the game of roulette.

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.

Lou DiVizio opens up the podcast with headlines from around the state, many of which focus on the upcoming 60-day legislative session. Tonight, Nov. 18, Albuquerque City Council will meet to finalize its priorities heading into the session. You can watch that meeting live or after the fact here. Another topic on the agenda for lawmakers at the roundhouse next year will be regulating artificial intelligence. This week, KUNM's Megan Kamerick speaks with two computer science experts about their work pushing elected officials to create privacy guardrails on artificial intelligence. Dr. Cris Moore tells us how AI algorithms and social media can be a perfect storm to spread misinformation on a massive scale. Dr. Melanie Moses considers how a lack of transparency from technology companies could lead to loopholes when crafting laws regulating AI. Host: Lou DiVizio Correspondent: Megan Kamerick Guests: Dr. Melanie Moses, Ph.D., Professor, UNM Department of Computer Science Dr. Cris Moore, Ph.D., Professor, Santa Fe Institute 

In association with our friends at Digital-Life-Design (DLD), Europe's iconic annual tech conference which next January celebrates its twentieth anniversary, we are starting a series of conversations with DLD speakers looking back over the last twenty years. First up is Silicon Valley entrepreneur, speaker and author John Hagel, who talked, quite openly, about his lifelong fear of fear and how he's cured himself of this affliction over the last two decades.John Hagel III has more than 40 years' experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill published in May 2021 his latest book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact. While at Deloitte, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO's agenda. Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice. John has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups. John is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum. John is the author of The Power of Pull, published by Basic Books in April 2010. He is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as general media like the New York Times, NBC and BBC. He has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles in that publication and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by a variety of publications and institutions, including the World Economic Forum and Business Week. John has his own website at www.johnhagel.com, and for many years wrote personal blogs at www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com as well as contributing postings on the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Techonomy websites. He is active in social media and can be followed on Twitter at @jhagel and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhagel/ John holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University. John Hagel has spent over 40 years in Silicon Valley and has experience as a management consultant, entrepreneur, speaker and author. He is driven by a desire to help individuals and institutions around the world to increase their impact in a rapidly changing world. 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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. TRANSCRIPTKEEN: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. We're going to do things a little differently today. We're starting a new series on KEEN ON in association with my dear friends at the DLD conference. It's an annual conference held each year in Munich. My view? Certainly the best tech conference in Europe, if not in the world. And in January 2025, they're celebrating their 20th anniversary. And in association with DLD, we're talking to some of their most notable speakers about their experiences over the last 20 years. We're beginning with an old friend of mine, John Hagel, a very distinguished author, futurist. His last book was called The Journey Beyond Fear, and John spoke at DLD '16 about narratives and business. And I began our DLD KEEN ON conversation with John Hagel by asking him to cast his mind back to January 2005.HAGEL: In January 2005, I was working as an independent consultant in Silicon Valley. I'd been there for 25 years already. I was fascinated with the degree to which digital technology was exponentially improving, and I was being aggressively recruited, at the time, by a large consulting firm, Deloitte, that wanted me to join. I was a bit resistant. I turned them down four times because I didn't want to go work for another large consulting firm. I'd been a partner with McKinsey before that, but ultimately they prevailed. They persuaded me that they would help me create a new research center that would be autonomous, even though it was part of Deloitte and it was really focused on trying to understand the long-term trends that are reshaping the global economy and what the implications are for people. And that was my passion, and I'm very grateful that I was able to pursue that.KEEN: What was the global economy, John, like in 2005?HAGEL: It was definitely becoming more and more connected. It was going through fundamental change even at that stage. I've come to call it "the big shift," but basically, some long-term trends that were playing out were creating mounting performance pressure on all of us. One form of pressure was intensifying competition on a global scale. Companies were competing with companies from around the world. Workers were competing with workers from around the world. So there was a lot of intensifying competition. The pace of change was accelerating. Things you thought you could count on were no longer there. And then, as if that weren't enough, all the connectivity we were creating...a small event in a faraway place in the world quickly cascades into an extreme, disruptive event. So it creates a lot of performance pressure on all people. And we were just in the early stages of that. I think we're actually still in the early stages of "the big shift." A lot more to come.KEEN: What was it, John, about "the big shift?" It was your term, is still, I think, one of the best terms to describe the first quarter of the 21st century. What both most worried and excited you about "the big shift" in 2005? Back then, not today.HAGEL: Well, at the time, I was starting to realize that fundamental change was going to be required in all companies, all organizations, governments, universities. And I was worried that that would be a challenge, that not many people really embrace that kind of change, and so how do you get people to make that transition? But on the other side, I was excited about the fact that the changes that we were seeing—I love paradox. And one of the paradoxes of the big shift is, I mentioned the mounting performance pressure as one of the trends and the big shift. Another trend was exponentially expanding opportunity. We can create far more value with far less resource, far more quickly, given all the connectivity that's been created. So the excitement was that if we understood the changes that were happening and were willing to make the changes, we could create value that would have never been imagined before.KEEN: Back in 2005, John, what were the lessons of the past that we were trying to correct? History obviously always changes. Today, in 2025, we seem to be wanting to learn from, perhaps, 2005. But what were we reacting against in 2005?HAGEL: Well, frankly, I think we're still reacting against it. But in 2005, the way I describe it is all new large institutions around the world, not just companies, but again, governments and universities and foundations, all the large organizations around the world were built on a model that I call scalable efficiency. The key to success is becoming more and more efficient and scale. Do things faster and cheaper. And hard to argue, because for over a century that model of scalable efficiency gave us all the global, large institutions we know around the world today. So, a huge success with that model. The challenge is that in a rapidly changing world, scalable efficiency becomes more and more inefficient. We're not able to respond to the changes that are going on. We're just focused on doing what we've always done faster and cheaper. So I think that's an interesting dilemma that we were confronting in 2005 and frankly still confronting.KEEN: Were there organizations in particular back in 2005 that captured what you call this paradox of the great shift?HAGEL: Yes. I think that one of the things that I was focused on—I wrote a number of books in the past 20 years, three books. And one of them was called The Only Sustainable Edge. And it was a notion that in a world of more rapid change, we need to focus on what I call scalable learning. And learning not in the form of sharing existing knowledge, not in the form of training programs, but learning in the form of creating new knowledge as we confront entirely new situations and figure out how to create value in those situations, and do that throughout the organization, not just in the research department or the product development group, but every department needs to be focused on scalable learning. And part of that, it's how do you reach out and connect with broader networks of third parties, rather than just try to do it all yourself inside your organization? And in that context, I was looking at companies in a very large part of the developing world, China, for example. There were companies that were pursuing really innovative approaches to scalable learning in global networks, where they were connecting in global networks and focusing on driving innovation and learning throughout the network. So that really inspired me with the notion that this is not only possible but necessary.KEEN: John, one of the words that I always associate with your name is is "the edge." You popularized it, you were part of a group that focused on researching the impact of edge technologies in organizations. Why is this word "the edge" so important to making sense of the last 20 years?HAGEL: Well, I actually founded the Center for the Edge, and it took me a while to get Deloitte to approve the title because they said, wait a minute, you're either the center or you're the edge. How can you be both? And again, I love paradox, but in the context of the question about what do we mean by edge, it was the belief that if you're looking for change that's coming into the world, start by looking at edges. It could be geographic edges, developing economies. It could be demographic edges, younger generations coming into the workforce or into the marketplace. It could be edges across disciplines and academic world, many different kinds of edges. But it's venture out into those edges and look for emerging things that have the potential to scale and become really significant as change agents. And I think that that's what drove us to really do our research, was to find those edges and learn from the edge.KEEN: What did you believe in, John, in 2005, or is that an inappropriate question?HAGEL: What did I believe in? Well, I believe that again, digital technology is a key catalyst, changing the world. As was mentioned, I've been in Silicon Valley for many decades, but I've also, while I've been based here in Silicon Valley, I've been working with large organizations around the world, so I've got a global perspective as well as focusing on the digital technology and how it's driving change. But I think it was a notion that, again, we are seeing some significant change that's happening. But I think that one of the things that I came to realize over time, because I was so focused on these opportunities and things that were emerging around the world and the need for change and the need for transformation. And I was encountering significant resistance from leaders of organizations and from people within the organization. When I talked about the need for change and transformation. And the thing that I learned, and has become a real focus for my work now, is rather than just focusing on strategy and business, focus on emotions. Focus on the emotions that are shaping our choices and actions. And one of the things I came to realize was that in a world of rapid change, the emotion of fear becomes more and more prevalent. And fear? Well, it's understandable. I think there are reasons for fear in a rapidly changing world. It's also very limiting. It holds you back. You become much more risk averse. You erode trust in other people. You don't want to look out into the future. You just want to focus on today. You need to find ways to move beyond the fear and cultivate other emotions that will help you to have much more impact that's meaningful to you and others. And that's become a real focus for me, is how do we make that journey beyond the fear? It was my most recent book is The Journey Beyond Fear, because I've come to believe that psychology and emotions are really the key that's going to determine how we move forward.KEEN: That was very personable, John. And I know that you've had a lot of experience of fear in your own personal life as well as in a professional context. Do you think one of the narratives, perhaps the central story for you over the last 20 years, has been overcoming fear?HAGEL: Yes. Well, I think that it certainly was a period of change for me and helped me to really reflect on how much the emotion of fear had been driving my life. But at the same time, I began to see that there were things that had really excited me throughout my life. And while they were quite different, you know, my first book was in 1976, and it was on alternative energy technologies. A little bit early, but throughout my life I had been excited about certain things, like alternative energy technologies, and when I stepped back and reflected, well, was I just shifting all over the place to different things, or was there a common element in all of these? I began to realize that what really excited me, and where my passion was, was in looking into the future and seeing emerging opportunities and helping to make people aware of those opportunities and ultimately motivate them to address those opportunities. And that was my passion and really helped me to overcome my fear, even though there's still fear there, it's never fully eliminated. But it's what really kept me going and keeps me going today.KEEN: Your 20-year narrative, John seems to have been pretty successful. You've learned a lot. You've published a lot. You succeeded in many ways. But that personal narrative, is that reflected in the world itself? It seems in some ways, certainly according to the pessimists who seem to be dominant these days in our zeitgeist, the world is taking a step back. If John Hagel took a step forward between 2005 and 2025, the world has taken a step back. Is that fair?HAGEL: No, I think it's very fair. I think that if I had to generalize, and obviously generalizations need some qualification, but generalizing, I would say that over the past 20 years, the emotion of fear has become more and more prevalent around the world. At the highest levels of organizations, lowest levels out in the communities. And again, while I think it's understandable, I think it's a very limiting emotion, and it's creating more and more challenge for us in terms of: how do we really embrace the change that's going to be required and capture the opportunities that are available to us? So I think that it's become a real focus for me and again, was the motivation for me to write the book The Journey Beyond Fear. I'm wanting to help people, first of all, acknowledge the fear, because I think many people don't even want to admit that they're afraid. And we live in cultures where if you say you're afraid, you're a weakling. But acknowledge the fear, recognize its limits, and find ways to move forward beyond it. And that's what I'm focused on now.KEEN: Is that fear, John, has it been most clearly manifested over the last 20 years in politics, particularly in the growth of liberal populism, which, in many people's views, you may or may not agree with it, is the way in which politicians take advantage of the culture of fear?HAGEL: It's complicated. I think there are factors that are helping to intensify the fear. A bit controversial or provocative. But I actually, in the United States, I believe both sides of our political spectrum are equally guilty in the sense that they have both focused on what I call "threat-based narratives," the enemies coming together. So, we're all going to die. We need to mobilize now and resist, or we're going to die. The enemy differs depending on which side you're on, but it's all about the threat. The enemy feeds the fear. And you look at our news media and challenge people to say, Tell me, when was the last time you heard a good news story? It's all about the latest catastrophe. Somewhere in the world where people have died and more are going to die. And so I think that there are factors that are feeding the fear, unfortunately, and making it an even more challenging emotion to overcome.KEEN: John, you spoke at DLD in 2016, and the focus of your talk was on storytelling, on the narrative of fear, on telling a good story. Is that the key to addressing so much of the fear in the world today, is telling a different story?HAGEL: Well, I have to be careful because I use words with different meanings than most people do. When I when I say narrative, most people say, you're talking about stories. Yeah, we know about stories. No, I believe there's an important distinction between stories and narratives. So for me, stories are self-contained. They have a beginning, a middle and an end to them. The end, the stories over. And the story is about me, the storyteller, or it's about some other people, real or imagined. It's not about you. In contrast, for me, a narrative is open ended. There's some big threat or opportunity out in the future. Not clear whether it's going to be achieved or not. And the resolution of the narrative hinges on you. It's a call to action to say, your choices, your actions are going to help determine how this narrative plays out. And again, I believe we've become increasingly dominated around the world by threat-based narratives. When we look into the future, there are huge threats, big challenges. Who's focused on the really big opportunities, inspiring opportunities, that could bring us all together? And what amazing things we could accomplish. So, I have become a strong believer that what I call opportunity-based narratives can become a powerful catalyst to help us move beyond the fear and start to cultivate an emotion that I call the passion of the explorer, that will help people to really have much more impact in a rapidly changing world.KEEN: In thinking about this alternative narrative, I'm thinking about it perhaps in architectural terms. Might we imagine this to be storytelling from the edge, or at least an architecture, a narrative architecture, which is built around the edge rather than some imaginary center?HAGEL: Well, again, I want to make the distinction between stories and narratives. I'm talking about narratives.KEEN: Right. Your idea of a narrative is more profound. It's deeper than the way most of us think about narratives. I take your point.HAGEL: Yes, I want to be explicit about that because—and not to dismiss the power of stories, I think stories can be very useful as well. But in making The Journey Beyond Fear—one of the things I should mention is, I've studied, throughout history, movements for social change in different parts of the world, different periods of history. And one of the things that I think is interesting is, the most successful movements for social change around the world throughout history, have been driven by what I describe as an opportunity-based narrative. The leaders were focused on a really inspiring opportunity that could bring people together and excite them. Just one small example that many people here in the U.S., at least, are familiar with is Martin Luther King's speech in Washington, D.C., "I Have a Dream." Amazing things we could accomplish. And yes, there are obstacles and barriers, absolutely. But the focus was on the opportunity of coming together and achieving amazing things.KEEN: John, you and I have talked about this before. Perhaps the most influential modern philosopher is Thomas Hobbes, 17th-century author of Leviathan. He made fear, and I think in many ways his theory of the world was built around his life, he was a very fearful man, and he didn't think fear was a bad thing. He actually thought it was a good thing for humans to recognize the value of fear. I don't want to revisit Hobbes. I know you're not a political philosopher, but at the same time, is there value to fear? Does it have any value at all, or your view, do we really need to simply overcome it and move beyond it?HAGEL: No. No. I am not in any way suggesting we will eliminate it. I believe fear is something that's intrinsic. And an example I give—and this ties to another emotion I mentioned briefly, passion of the explorer. I've come to believe that if we're really going to achieve significant impact in a rapidly changing world, we need to cultivate a very specific form of passion, the passion of the explorer. And I've studied this in many different domains, but one interesting domain is extreme sports. I've spent a lot of time with big wave surfers. Interesting thing, if you talk to a big wave surfer as they're paddling out to ride the next big wave, they're afraid. They know that people have not only fallen off their board, but have died riding those waves. So they're afraid, and they're using the fear to focus on what are the risks, how can I manage the risks? But they are paddling with Excitement. To get out, to ride that wave. They're not letting the fear dominate them. And so I think that's the interesting dynamic and relationship that needs to be established, to use the fear to focus on the risks. But don't let it stop you from making significant change.KEEN: You've clearly learned a great deal over the last 20 years, John. Do you have any regrets, though? Have you made mistakes? Are there things you wish you'd done that you haven't?HAGEL: You know, I think that it's complicated. I do believe that the big mistake in the early days was really focusing so much on the opportunities that were being, created and not recognizing the role of emotions in preventing us from addressing those opportunities. And so it's led to a significant shift in my life and my thinking and my work around...and I'm not ignoring the opportunities, I'm continuing to explore the opportunities. But at the same time, I'm really focused on how we address the obstacles and barriers that are preventing us from getting to those opportunities. And that's where I'm spending more and more of my time.KEEN: When we think back to 2005, most of the same big tech companies were around. Amazon, Google, Microsoft. Facebook was just beginning. There was a very positive, broadly, outlook on tech those days. Today, in 2025, things have changed dramatically. Is that fair, do you think?HAGEL: Well, again, it's complicated. I think that this is one of the areas where fear is really demonstrating itself, anything large and big. One of the big issues that I see, it's not just tech, by the way, I mean, there are surveys around the world that...our trust in large institutions around the world is eroding at a very rapid rate. And when I say this to people that they nod their heads. They've all seen the surveys. Very few people that I know of have asked the question, why? What's driving that erosion of trust? And I believe I've come to believe, based on the research I've done, that a big factor is fear, the emotion of fear, which leads to erosion of trust. And so we need to really understand, why are we so fearful and what can we do to address it? And I don't want to dismiss, I think there are issues, too, in terms of, and I'll just mention quickly, in technology, one of the big issues with the large tech companies is they tend to be supported by advertising models and commission-based models, where they're being paid by the advertiser and the vendors, and the user of the technology, you're the product. And so I think more and more people are beginning to realize that a tech company's primary loyalty is not to you as the user, it's to the people who are paying all the bills. So, I think there are reasons for erosion of trust. But I do think that we need to recognize that fear is a significant factor as well.KEEN: Have you changed your own view of the potential of technology over the last 20 years? You've been in Silicon Valley for a long time, John. You're one of the most distinguished, respected people. You're not a billionaire type, so you're not just a drum beater. But at the same time, you're a man who's not just naturally negative and skeptical. Do you think you're more or less optimistic and positive about the impact of tech, particularly big tech, on the world today in 2025 than you were in 2005?HAGEL: Good question. I think that I'm by nature an optimist, so I'm always looking at opportunities in the future. And I think that technology can still produce amazing new opportunities. One of the interesting things to me—it's not getting as much attention as I think it should is the role of technology innovation in biology and health and wellness. Helping us to live longer, healthier, better lives. And I think we're just in the earliest stages of that technology being developed. But rather than technology being outside us, technology is increasingly going to be inside us and helping us to lead much fuller lives. And so I'm very optimistic about that. And I do believe that the world is changing at a rapid rate, and I'm a believer that we're going to see major new technology companies emerge. And a lot of the current technology leaders will be disrupted and cast to the side. So, more change to come.KEEN: Are there individuals over the last 20 years who have, in your mind, captured the spirit of the age? When one thinks of Elon Musk, for example, he seems to be someone immune from fear. For better or worse—he's not always the most popular man in the world, certainly the richest man in the world. But are there men—and they tend to be men, perhaps women—over the last 20 years, who, for you, have captured all the best and, perhaps some of the worst, of world history in this first quarter of the 21st century?HAGEL: Wow. Well, in that context, I want to answer the question I get from a lot of people since I've been in Silicon Valley for so long is: how do you explain the continued success of Silicon Valley for so many decades? And most people, when confronted with that question, will say, well, it's the venture capitalists, it's the universities, it's the infrastructure. No, I believe that the success of Silicon Valley is being driven by an opportunity-base narrative, which is fundamentally—we have exponentially expanding digital technology that can enable us to change the world for the better. But it's not going to happen automatically. You need to come to Silicon Valley. Will you come? It's the reason why the majority of successful entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley—most people don't know this—the majority of successful entrepreneurs were not born in the United States, much less in Silicon Valley. They were drawn here from all over the world. And it's because they were driven by, again, a very specific passion that I call the passion of the explorer. And that's where they're excited about new territory and are excited about venturing out on the edges, excited about finding ways to have more and more impact that's meaningful to people. And I think that's really been a continuing driver of success in the Valley. KEEN: John, you live in the North Bay, just north of San Francisco, over the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. This part of the world was discovered by one of the great explorers in world history, Francis Drake. And there's a wonderful bay not too far from where you live called the Drake Bay. I've walked around there. Is this concept that you introduced called the "explorer," is it a feature of Western civilization? Is Sir Francis Drake, or was Sir Francis Drake, an early example of this?HAGEL: You know, I wouldn't say Western civilization. I would say of humanity in general. I mean, again, I think that one of the things that I continually hear from people is fear is what helped us stay alive and made us human. And my response to that is, well, if we were completely driven by fear, we would still be living in the jungle, hiding from the tigers and the lions. What happened? We had a desire to explore and to see new things and to try new things. And it led to the emergence of agriculture civilizations around the world. And it was a process of exploration, but it really motivated a number of people so that they would move out and make progress. And I think we're just still exploring.KEEN: I mentioned, John, you talked about DLD in 2016. I know you're a big fan of the event, Europe's top innovation—I wouldn't call it a summit, it's a gathering of influencers like yourself. Over this last 20 years, the American economy has, for better or worse, marched ahead, and Europe has become increasingly stagnant. The German economy, the EU's economy, the United Kingdom's economy...In your view, is an important development over the last 20 years...has Europe—broadly, I know you can't talk about all individuals—but has Europe lost the inspiration of exploring that you're such a believer in?HAGEL: You know, I'm not sure I would generalize about Europe as a region in that regard. I think there are interesting parts of Europe that are doing some very interesting and innovative things. And so I think the challenge is that, again, we live in a world, a global economy, where competition is intensifying on a global scale. And Europe in general has failed to really respond effectively to that and maintain ways of of creating more and more value in that kind of world. So again, I'm an optimist, and I'm hopeful that people will see that potential. But right now, what I'm seeing in Europe and the rest of the world is the emotion of fear holding people back and saying, no, no, let's just hold on to what we have and find ways to make it through. And unfortunately, I think that's the wrong the wrong response.KEEN: I know it's easy to return to 2005, and it's impossible in practice. But had you gone back to John Hagel in 2005, do you think you'd be surprised by the power of the American innovation economy and the relative weakness of the European one?HAGEL: That's a good question. I'm not sure. I wasn't really forecasting particular geographies as areas that would grow and areas that wouldn't grow. I did see, again, an expanding global economy wherein there is increasing competition from other parts of the world, non-European, non-U.S., and so the challenge was how do we respond to that? And that's the issue that we're facing.KEEN: That's the issue indeed, we are facing, John. You and I are talking in November of 2024 in anticipation of the DLD 20-year anniversary of their event in January 2025. Where are we in late 2024 in the world? How would you summarize our situation?HAGEL: Well, again, I think it's a paradox. I think at one level, the situation is very unfortunate in the sense that the emotion of fear is dominating every country in the world. I don't see any countries where it's really the excitement and passion that's driving people. But on the other side, I also see the technology and trends in the world are creating more and more opportunity to to create value at exponential levels. And so I'm, again, an optimist and I'm hopeful that we can find ways to move beyond the fear and see the opportunities and pursue them and create the value that's there to be created.KEEN: I didn't see that fear, certainly in Silicon Valley, John, with the billions of dollars now going into the AI economy, to the booming biotech sector and the other technology sectors that you've talked about. Is there fear, in Silicon Valley, do you see it?HAGEL: Well, again, I think Silicon Valley stands out because many, if not all, the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley were drawn here by passion and excitement to create more and more value. And yes, they have fear. If you talk to them, they're afraid the startup could collapse next month. Their customers could go away. But they're driven by that excitement of having that kind of impact. And I think that's what explains the continued success of Silicon Valley. But it stands out as one of those few areas where passion, and specifically, again, the passion of the explorer—and I haven't gone into detailed definition of what I mean by that, but it's based on research—that passion of the explorer that will help people to move beyond the fear and achieve impact that's much more meaningful to them.KEEN: John if we'd been talking in 2005, I don't suppose you, or most analysts of the Future of the Edge, whatever you want to describe it, would have brought up AI as being central. Today, of course, it's all anyone talks about in late 2024, early 2025. If you put your futurist on, and you've mentioned biotech...there are other technologies which have the potential to take off, quantum, for example. What technology do you think is most underrated in terms of imagining the next 20 years?HAGEL: Well, again, I would probably go to biotech as the area that is not getting as much attention as it should, because I believe it has the potential. There is an expression in Silicon Valley, "the longevity escape velocity." It's this notion that with this technology, we will be able, ultimately, to basically live forever. We won't have to worry about dying. And not just living forever, but being healthy and more vibrant and flourishing more than we've ever flourished in the past. And I think that's being underestimated as a potential driver of significant change in our lives and in our society.KEEN: Some people will hear that, John, and be very fearful of that. And lots of novels and stories and music have been made suggesting that if we live forever, life will become a nightmare. We'll be bored by everything and everyone. Should we, in any way, be fearful of that world you're describing?HAGEL: And again, you know, sure, if we're going to live our lives in fear for an eternity, yes, we should be afraid of living our lives in fear. But I believe as human beings, we all have within us the potential for that passion that I described, the passion of the explorer, which is never ending. No matter how much impact you achieve, if you're pursuing that passion, you're driven to have even more impact. What can I do to have even more impact? And excited about it and fulfilled by it. This is nourishing. I think people who have this passion will want to live forever. They will be excited to live forever. And we all have the potential to find that passion within us. By the way, I would just say we I get a lot of pushback. Yes, John, come on. Some of us are capable of this passion, but most of us just want to be told what to do and have the security of an income. My response is, let's go to a playground and look at children 5 or 6 years old. Show me one that doesn't have that kind of excitement about exploring and coming together and trying new things, seeing the things. We all had it as children. What happened to us? We went to school and we were taught by the teacher, "Just listen to the teacher. Memorize what the teacher has to say and show on the exam. So you've memorized it." I've studied the US public school system. It was explicitly designed to prepare us for work environments where the key was just to read the manual, follow the manual, do what's assigned. Passion is suspect, passionate people ask too many questions. Passionate people deviate from the script, they take too many risks. Why would you want passionate people? Just get people who will do their job. And so I think, back to your question about AI, again, I think there is obviously a lot of fear about AI. And one of the reasons for the fear is when I talk to executives, senior executives, about AI, I get two questions. First, how quickly can I automate with AI? And secondly, how many jobs can I eliminate with AI? It's all about scalable efficiency, faster and cheaper. I believe the role of AI is to help us become human again. To take away all of that work, the routine tasks, highly standardized, routine tasks that most of us do on a daily basis, and free us up to actually explore and find ways to create new value and have impact that's meaningful to us. That's exciting.KEEN: If you're right, John, if the next 20 years are ones where there is a profound biotech revolution—and we may not live forever, but certainly will live longer and longer lives—what do we need to address? Seems to me as if one area would be inequality, given that already in America, the difference between how long people live in on the coasts, in California or New York, are quite different from the hinterland. Does this concern you, if indeed you're right? What are the the biggest threats and challenges in a world where longevity is the central reality?HAGEL: Now, again, you talk about threats and challenges. I would talk about opportunities. The opportunities are to help everyone achieve more, to help them all find their passion, help them all find ways to earn income from their passion and achieve more impact that's meaningful to them and to others. And yes, there are issues like inequality, climate change, all the rest, limited resources in the world. But I believe with technology and innovation, we can overcome all those obstacles and achieve amazing results for everyone.KEEN: Finally, John, you're naturally an optimist. So, for me to ask you to put on your rose-tinted glasses might be slightly inappropriate, but if you were to think most positively about the future, in 20 years' time in 2045, if DLD celebrates its 40th anniversary, what kind of world could this be? Imagine the best kind of world. Would it be like a giant kindergarten? Like people are running around and excited all the time before the teachers got their hands on it?HAGEL: You know, my belief is that if we can really unleash this passion and excitement about driving change and creating more value, that we can create a world where every living thing flourishes. Not just human beings, not just animals, plants, every living being flourishing in ways that would have been unimaginable 20 years earlier, because we're all creating an environment that helps us to flourish. And to me, that's what's really the potential and exciting.KEEN: Do you think the next 20 years will bring more change than the previous 20 years?HAGEL: It's going to bring a lot of change. I suspect it's going to be even more change, because we're talking about exponential change and change exponentially increases over time.KEEN: Well, John Hagel, who spoke at DLD in 2016, a great friend of the conference, a real honor, John, and a pleasure. And I hope we will meet again in 2045 to see whether or not you were right. Thank you so much.HAGEL: Excellent. Thank you. 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

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.

In our last two episodes with Professor Jennifer Dunne, the Vice President for Science at the Santa Fe Institute, she explained food webs with a focus on her work in the Gulf of Alaska. In this episode, Jennifer discusses how fossil records are helping researchers reconstruct food webs from half a billion years ago and the insights we can glean from comparing ancient food webs to modern ones.   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.

My guest is Stefan Thurner, A Professor of theoretical physics, and the President of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. Stefan has published over 240 scientific articles and he was elected Austrian Scientist of the Year 2017. He is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In our conversation, we first delve into the scaling laws of everything. We explore social, financial, biological, and economic dynamics—for example, how to make the economy more resilient by targeting some unique companies, how social bubbles form, the strength of networks of friends and foes in social contexts, and how the methodology of physics can help us understand other fields, etc. I hope you enjoy our discussion. Find me on X at @⁠⁠⁠⁠ProfSchrepel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Also, be sure to subscribe. *** References: ➝ Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game (2010) ➝ How women organize social networks different from men (2013) ➝ Multirelational Organization of Large-Scale Social Networks in an Online World (2010) ➝ What is the minimal systemic risk in financial exposure networks? (2020) ➝ Scaling laws and persistence in human brain activity (2003) ➝ New Forms of Collaboration Between the Social and Natural Sciences Could Become Necessary for Understanding Rapid Collective (2024) ➝ Quantifying firm‐level economic systemic risk from nation‐wide supply networks (2022) ➝ Fitting Power-laws in Empirical Data with Estimators that Work for All Exponents (2017) ➝ Complex Systems: Physics Beyond Physics (2017) ➝ Systemic Financial Risk: Agent-based Models to Understand the Leverage Cycle on National Scales and its Consequences (2011) ➝ Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average (2010)

Today we're digging into the deep and often overlooked connections between neodarwinian evolution, life's origins, and the evolution of non-living systems. We're guided by Dr. Michael Lachmann of the Santa Fe Institute, who investigates how life may have begun as a more generalized cosmic selection process, with planetary conditions shaping its emergence and survival. Through discussions of thermodynamics, functional information, and entropy, we examine whether life might be present in forms beyond Earth's biology - and how'd know what to look for. In the end, this discussion swirls around what it means to be “alive” and how we can narrow boundaries of "life" to get closer to a true scientific definition of it. PATREON: get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB MERCH: Rock some DemystifySci gear : https://demystifysci.myspreadshop.com/ AMAZON: Do your shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/3YyoT98 More about Dr. Lachmann: https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/michael-lachmann (00:00) Go! (00:07:08) Defining Life and Functional Information (00:17:13) Selection in Planetary Systems (00:24:02) Complexity and the Threshold of Life (00:30:24) Defining the Threshold of Life (00:36:01) Life's Emergence and Definitions (00:45:18) Rethinking Universal Timelines (00:51:05) Eternal Existence and Origin Concepts (01:00:23) Emerging Microbial Life (01:07:25) Stars and Large-Scale Life (01:19:59) Distinction Between Life and Alive (01:25:00) Characteristics of Life Without Complex Parameters (01:31:05) Artificial Life and Consciousness (01:41:43) Distinguishing Life and Artificial Life (01:54:50) Human Purpose and Cooperation (02:00:03) Understanding AI and Human Systems (02:09:44) Scientific Understanding and Cultural Narratives (02:15:03) Happiness, Evolution, and Societal Constraints (02:21:43) The Quest to Understand Life #Evolution, #OriginOfLife, #Astrobiology, #ArtificialIntelligence, #Consciousness, #CosmicEvolution, #Biogenesis, #UniversalLife, #QuantumBiology, #LifeBeyondEarth, #LifeScience, #SpaceExploration, #ComplexSystems, #Thermodynamics, #FunctionalInformation, #ExtraterrestrialLife, #DeepSpace, #SelectionTheory, #Entropy, #LifeInTheUniverse, #CosmicOrigins, #MicrobialLife, #AIConsciousness, #SelfReplicatingSystems, #AstrobiologicalResearch, #LifeDefinition, #Metaphysics, #GalaxyFormation, #ScientificDiscovery, #PlanetaryLife, #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

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.

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/388-what-is-life Sam Harris speaks with Sara Imari Walker about a scientific understanding of life. They discuss the contributions of physics to this topic, Erwin Schrödinger, the inadequacy of standard definitions of life, the prospect of "artificial" life, the role of information, constructor theory, assembly theory, the space of all possible structures, a "block universe," the existence of abstract objects like numbers, the Fermi paradox, the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, experiments that could decide how likely life is to emerge, the possibility of a Great Filter, the number of Earth-like worlds, and other topics. Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist. She is the deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. She is also a fellow of the Berggruen Institute and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is a recipient of the Stanley L. Miller Early-Career Award for her research on the origin of life, and her research team at ASU is internationally regarded as being among the leading labs aiming to build a fundamental theory for understanding what life is. Her research has been featured in Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, and a variety of other international outlets. Her book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, is available now. Website: https://search.asu.edu/profile/1731899 Twitter: @Sara_Imari Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

Alessandro Palmarini is a post-baccalaureate researcher at the Santa Fe Institute working under the supervision of Melanie Mitchell. He completed his undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. Palmarini's current research focuses on developing AI systems that can efficiently acquire new skills from limited data, inspired by François Chollet's work on measuring intelligence. His work builds upon the DreamCoder program synthesis system, introducing a novel approach called "dream decompiling" to improve library learning in inductive program synthesis. Palmarini is particularly interested in addressing the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) challenge, aiming to create AI systems that can perform abstract reasoning tasks more efficiently than current approaches. His research explores the balance between computational efficiency and data efficiency in AI learning processes. DO YOU WANT WORK ON ARC with the MindsAI team (current ARC winners)? MLST is sponsored by Tufa Labs: Focus: ARC, LLMs, test-time-compute, active inference, system2 reasoning, and more. Future plans: Expanding to complex environments like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft 2. Interested? Apply for an ML research position: benjamin@tufa.ai TOC: 1. Intelligence Measurement in AI Systems [00:00:00] 1.1 Defining Intelligence in AI Systems [00:02:00] 1.2 Research at Santa Fe Institute [00:04:35] 1.3 Impact of Gaming on AI Development [00:05:10] 1.4 Comparing AI and Human Learning Efficiency 2. Efficient Skill Acquisition in AI [00:06:40] 2.1 Intelligence as Skill Acquisition Efficiency [00:08:25] 2.2 Limitations of Current AI Systems in Generalization [00:09:45] 2.3 Human vs. AI Cognitive Processes [00:10:40] 2.4 Measuring AI Intelligence: Chollet's ARC Challenge 3. Program Synthesis and ARC Challenge [00:12:55] 3.1 Philosophical Foundations of Program Synthesis [00:17:14] 3.2 Introduction to Program Induction and ARC Tasks [00:18:49] 3.3 DreamCoder: Principles and Techniques [00:27:55] 3.4 Trade-offs in Program Synthesis Search Strategies [00:31:52] 3.5 Neural Networks and Bayesian Program Learning 4. Advanced Program Synthesis Techniques [00:32:30] 4.1 DreamCoder and Dream Decompiling Approach [00:39:00] 4.2 Beta Distribution and Caching in Program Synthesis [00:45:10] 4.3 Performance and Limitations of Dream Decompiling [00:47:45] 4.4 Alessandro's Approach to ARC Challenge [00:51:12] 4.5 Conclusion and Future Discussions Refs: Full reflist on YT VD, Show Notes and MP3 metadata Show Notes: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x50201tgqucj5ba2q4typ/Ale.pdf?rlkey=0ubvk7p5gtyx1gpownpdadim8&st=5pniu3nq&dl=0

******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://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. Paul Smaldino is an Associate Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences and faculty in the Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate program at the University of California Merced, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Analytic Political Engagement and the Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. Extramurally, he is an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He studies how behaviors emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve. He is the author of Modeling Social Behavior: Mathematical and Agent-Based Models of Social Dynamics and Cultural Evolution.   In this episode, we focus on Modeling Social Behavior. We talk about modeling in science, the theoretical foundations of social science, mathematical models and agent-based models, and fine-grained and coarse-grained models. We discuss assumptions about human psychology, and we then explore examples of social dynamics that can be modeled, like contagion and the spread of innovation; opinion dynamics, and consensus and polarization; cooperation; norms; and science as a social phenomenon. Finally, we discuss how to turn ideas into models, and the limitations of models. -- 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, 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!

Today we're joined by Dani S. Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Perry Zurn, Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University and Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. In today's episode, Dani and Perry explore the concept of curiosity.   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 insightful conversation, Maestro Hamilton and Michael Garfield discuss the intersection of technology, consciousness, and the evolution of human society. Michael shares his experiences with AI, the history of technological advancements, and the role psychedelics have played in shaping innovation. The conversation explores themes of hallucination, perception, and how technology both reflects and reshapes our understanding of reality.Join our Newsletter: https://courses.bluemorphoacademy.com/signup__________Paleontologist-Futurist Michael Garfield's work helps people navigate our age of accelerating weirdness and cultivate the curiosity and playfulness we'll need to thrive in it. A boundless generalist and super-connector of people and ideas, he bridges siloed disciplines to deepen public understanding of our complex world and foster pluralistic thinking.As the founder and host of Future Fossils (2016-Present) and The Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast (2019-2023), Michael has recorded almost 500 conversations with artists, scientists, philosophers, and technologists and amassed nearly 2 MM podcast downloads. His work as a "knowledge artist" draws on over twenty years of exploration as a prolific artist, public speaker, author, musician, scientific illustrator, editor, social media manager, research analyst, and teacherIG: https://www.instagram.com/michaelgarfield/?hl=enWebsite: https://linktr.ee/michaelgarfieldPodcast: https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/__________Join our Newsletter: https://courses.bluemorphoacademy.com/signup| Hamilton Souther |Website: hamiltonsouther.com/Instagram: instagram.com/hamiltonsoutherFacebook: | Blue Morpho |Website: bluemorphotours.comWebsite: bluemorphoacademy.comBlue Morpho Instagram: instagram.com/bluemorphoretreatsBlue Morpho Facebook: facebook.com/BlueMorphoAcademy| Listen to all episodes on Audio |Spotify: open.spotify.com/Apple: podcasts.apple.com/blue-morpho-podcast

Simon DeDeo's inquiry takes on the most immense topics: astrophysics, history, epistemology, culture. He brings the precision of a physicist, the capability of a data scientist, and the sensibility of a philosopher to thinking about how we live our lives; and his polymathic life might be the example we need to make sense of the world we are walking into, one requiring an evolution to our way of studying and understanding.Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:David Spergel (08:40)The Santa Fe Institute (14:10)The Village Vanguard in New York City (16:30)The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem by Mark Steiner (24:30)Murray Gell-Mann (25:00)"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner (26:00)"The civilizing process in London's Old Bailey" Klingenstein et al (27:30)Michael Tomasello (31:50)Michael Palmer "Lies of the Poem" (34:50)Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel (37:20)Gregory Bateson "Where is the mind?" (40:20)The CANDOR corpus (42:50)Judith Donath on Origins (48:10)Marshall McLuhan (49:00)Science of Science (49:10)"New and atypical combinations: An assessment of novelty and interdisciplinarity" (49:10)Helen Vendler (51:20)The Anxiety of Influenceby Harold Bloom (53:00)C Thi Nguyen on Origins (57:00)The Scientific Landscape of Human Flourishing (58:00)eudaimonia (58:30)thumos (59:00)Lightning Round (01:04:50)Book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth Passion: exerciseHeart sing: narrativeScrewed up: teaching and mentoringFind Simon online:WebsiteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

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?

Teacher, counselor, and attorney David Bedrick has developed a profound method for helping people unshame their shame. In this third episode of our short non-grad series of four, David and Drew dive deep into a conversation about the true nature of shame and how to heal it through what David calls Unshaming. While David is not a graduate of the Process, his work is very closely aligned with the work of the Process. As David says, "Shame is an internalized vision of oneself. It creates feelings, but they are not feelings." According to David, to heal shame, someone must truly witness us. In telling our story of what happened, we need to be heard, seen, and understood. We need to be humanized, not stigmatized or pathologized. He says we must be "witnessed for being a human being who's been through an experience. That's unshaming. That's humanizing." We hope you enjoy this profound conversation on the nature of healing shame with David and Drew. **This episode mentions physical and sexual violence and may not be suitable for all listeners. Please use your discretion. More about David Bedrick: David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW 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. He's the author of 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. North Atlantic Books will publish David's upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, in November 2024. You can preorder The Unshaming Way here. Discover more about David at DavidBedrick.com. Follow David on Instagram and Facebook. As mentioned in this episode: The Wounded Healer Archetype Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” Dr. Larry Nassar Somatic Brené Brown Allopathic medicine      

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.

Life as No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker tackles the challenging question of defining life, a problem as complex as understanding consciousness or matter's existence. Walker argues that current definitions are inadequate for comprehending life's origins or potential extraterrestrial forms. She proposes that solving this puzzle requires revolutionary thinking and an experimentally verifiable theory. This is crucial for both creating life in laboratories and searching for it on other planets. Walker suggests a new paradigm for understanding physics and life, exploring the work of innovative scientists who are reframing fundamental questions about the universe. The book concludes with a bold theory for identifying and classifying life, applicable beyond Earth. It's a rigorous yet accessible work that celebrates life's mystery while demonstrating physics' explanatory power. Sara Imari Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist focused on the origin and discovery of life. She's a professor at Arizona State University and deputy director of the Beyond Center. Walker is also affiliated with the Berggruen Institute and Santa Fe Institute. Her award-winning research on life's origins has gained international recognition and media attention. Shermer and Walker explore diverse topics including defining life, self, and organisms; philosophical concepts like materialism and idealism; origins of life research; assembly theory; consciousness; free will; symbiogenesis; exoplanet biosignatures; alien civilizations; and the intersection of extraterrestrial search with religion. They discuss paradigm shifts in understanding life's origins, potential alien characteristics, and the Kardashev scale.

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