Simplifying Complexity

Latest Episodes:

Cities as social reactors Sep 18, 2023

Show notes

Today we're joined by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Luis is going to pull apart how cities work, why they work the way they do, what's good about them, and what's bad about them. He's also going to talk specifically about slums, and the challenges that exist in raising people out of poverty.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you map a volcanic plume? Sep 04, 2023

Show notes

Today, we're going to return to the idea of taking concepts from complexity science and applying them to situations in the real world.

In this episode, we're joined again by Melanie Moses, Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She's going to share with us about her recent trip to Iceland to study active volcanoes. More specifically, Melanie is going to explain how you can program a swarm of drones to fly in formation and map the CO2 plume of a volcano.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do fireflies synchronise? Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

Orit Peleg is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Orit has been on the show before, to discuss how bees work as a complex system. In this episode, we're staying within the animal kingdom, as Orit talks to us about fireflies.

In this episode, Orit is going to explain how thousands of fireflies over very significant areas can synchronise their flashing in the night sky. She'll break down the work she has been doing to study this complex system of individual agents and share the lessons we can learn from these fireflies and use them in other applications. For example, what can we learn from these synchronised fireflies that could help us to program a swarm of small robots to work together to lift something?

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How does a poor kid get ahead? Part 2 Aug 07, 2023

Show notes

In our last episode, you heard all about economic mobility. In this episode (which is part 2 of our conversation), you're going to hear again from Matthew Jackson, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

We finished the last episode by saying that if you want to increase a child's economic mobility, the factor that has the greatest impact is economic connectedness. In this episode, Matthew is going to talk about economic connectedness in our workplaces, our religious gatherings, and our schools.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How does a poor kid get ahead? Part 1 Jul 24, 2023

Show notes

If you're a child born into a poor family in the United States, what are the most important factors in your life that will influence whether or not you're able to rise out of poverty?

To answer that question, we're joined again by Matthew Jackson, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

This is part one of a two-part series, and in this episode, Matthew is going to introduce us to a study he was involved in that looked at the data of 21 billion friendships in the US that asked the question: what is it really that allows a child to get ahead?

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The sand pile model Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

When a system fails, how do you think about cause and effect? One way to consider this in complex systems is to imagine a pile of sand, and dropping one grain of sand at a time in random positions onto the pile. As time passes, you'll start to form little hills. Eventually, a grain of sand will hit one of these hills, and you get an avalanche.

Do you believe that the avalanche was caused by the last grain of sand falling onto it, or do you believe that the avalanche happened due to the shape of the hill itself? To explore this sand pile model, we are joined today by Neil Johnson, Professor of Physics and Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab at George Washington University.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big Ideas: Information Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

When most of us think about information, we think of it as something we can possess or ‘know’. But what if it’s so much more than that?

In this episode, we’re joined by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Exploration and Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Sara is going to examine information and the critical role it plays in complex systems.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The El Farol problem Jun 12, 2023

Show notes

Imagine you have a bar that comfortably seats 60 people, but every week, 100 people have to decide whether or not they're going to go to the bar on any given night. If too many people go, then the bar is too crowded, and everyone has a miserable night. But if not enough people go, then that's a missed opportunity to go out. This is the basis of the El Farol problem, which asks us to consider how people make this decision. It's a beautifully simple problem that not only makes you think but also has profound implications.

To help us through this problem, we're joined again by its inventor, W. Brian Arthur, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Researcher at Palo Alto Research Center. Brian's going to help us understand how this problem is more than just the story of a bar, but a problem that gives us an incredible insight into how the economy works.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 10 features of complex systems: Part 2 May 29, 2023

Show notes

In our last episode, we talked about the four conditions of complex systems: numerosity, disorder and diversity, feedback, and non-equilibrium — and we also talked about the concept of emergence. In this episode, which is part two of our two-part series on the features of complex systems, we're joined again by Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

In this episode, Karoline explains the six emergent features of complex systems:

Spontaneous order and self-organisation
Non-linearity
Robustness
Nested structure and modularity
History and memory
Adaptive behaviour

By the time you've finished this episode, you'll understand the underlying principles of complex systems that hold together the wide variety of topics we talk about in this series.

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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 10 features of complex systems: Part 1 May 15, 2023

Show notes

In most of our episodes so far, we've taken a single concept and looked at it through the context of a single example. But in this episode and the next, we're going to pull back the camera to get a bird's-eye view of complexity science, by exploring the features common to all complex systems.

We're joined again by Karoline Wiesner, Professor of Complexity Science in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In this episode, Karoline is going to explain four conditions that we see in complexity science: numerosity, disorder and diversity, feedback, and non-equilibrium. At the end of the episode, she's going to bring them all together to explain a central concept of complex systems: emergence.

Resources and links:

Karoline’s book ‘What Is a Complex System?’

Connect:

This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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