"It's not like I have to choose between modularity and heterogeneity, but they all start adding up. So it seems that criticality is much easier to find than we first thought in our homogeneous models..."
"Sometimes the phase transition will move by itself."
"Psychology was doing complex systems BEFORE complex systems [science]."
- @cgershen
"I think the things that #complexity is doing will be absorbed by other fields in a few decades and just become '#science.'"
- @cgershen
(Actual end of thread accidentally appended upstream:
Today's SFI Seminar by Ext Prof @ricard_sole, streaming now — follow this 🧵 for highlights:
"Why #brains? Brains are very costly...it seems like they are not a very good idea to bring complex cognition to a #biosphere that just needs simple replicators."
"I also want to explore the problem of #consciousness, which is around all the time..."
"We build the geometry directly by thinking about the PATH that our 3D printer takes. There's no intermediate slicing software [to render CAD as "2D" layers]."
"You can start to think about surface textures - like spikes that you can't do with a traditional slicer. Or...here's a path that's a sine wave, but every other layer is rotated. Or...one creature is following THIS path, and the other is chasing it around."
We start with a talk by SFI President David Krakauer:
"Would anyone care to guess why we're so GOOD at building transistors and so CRAP at designing drugs?"
"This thing [points to transistor] lives in a centralized system. This thing [points to cancer drug] lives in US."
"I'm going to pick on economics, because we like to do that at SFI. 'Ooh, look at that cover! So techy. Global, heat maps...' But here's 'Networks' [in the textbook]. THAT'S IT. Here's '#ComplexityEconomics.' NOTHING."
🧵 In today's SFI Seminar, Visiting Scholar @cgershen presents the second in his series of talks on core concepts in #ComplexSystems science, streaming now:
"In high school #physics class you are taught that with the initial conditions of a system, you can predict its future states. In #complexity, this is not so...it means #reductionism is not appropriate, #Platonism is not appropriate..."
- @cgershen
"You can see a layer of circuits computing something. What is it computing? Itself. In a 248x248 array, you can program the #GameOfLife inside the game of life. Computers allow us to explore #Complexity, and it's no surprise complexity became a science in the 1980s."
- @cgershen
Cormac McCarthy spent the last quarter century writing his novels at SFI. In this documentary from December 2017, Cormac in conversation with SFI President David Krakauer, reflects on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious:
In anticipation of Cormac McCarthy’s newest books, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris” (@AAKnopf, 2022), former SFI Miller Scholar @deepsurvivalsm0 recollects McCarthy’s long and ongoing friendship with SFI:
"Until recently the writer could be heard at SFI, clattering away on his portable typewriter from behind his office door. An affable member of this community, he would regularly emerge for afternoon tea or attend talks by SFI scholars."
🚀 We are live! Here is the correct streaming link for all of today's discussions and performances, starting with a panel on complex time with David Krakauer, James Gleick, Ted Chiang, and David Wolpert in a few moments (measured linearly...):
"One of the ideas we had with #InterPlanetary was, 'What would it take to make science hedonistic? And instead of telling people to do it, you'd have to tell people to STOP doing it?"
- SFI President David Krakauer sets the tone for this weekend's celebrations #IPFest
David Krakauer: "Do you have a favorite model or metaphor for #time?"
@JamesGleick: "You've already mentioned a river; that's everybody's favorite. Borges said time is a tiger. People talk about it as a thread. We ONLY talk about time in metaphors."