Complexity: Life, Scale, & Civilization

Santa Fe Institute Panel Discussion
Moderated by David Krakauer
Monday, August 6, 2012
On Monday, August 6, SFI hosted a public panel discussion on the nature of complexity. "Complexity: Life, Scale, and Civilization" convened some of the biggest thinkers in science to grapple with some of the biggest questions in science.
"From the Big Bang to the Mayans, from the gene to the global economy, why is there complexity in the universe?" asks SFI External Professor David Krakauer, who moderated the discussion. "This is about the biggest questions you would ever want answered. Why are we here? What is the fate of our species? What is the fate of our planet?"

[@gencofilmco]

Thank you for posting this lecture. Have been eagerly awaiting it.

[@wy2528]

amazing video

[@timblackburn1593]

The one in the light blue shirt points to our "compitance" and says we might not have sufficient. Is it that we have only as much or as little as the universal law allows? Or are we free but constrained by the categorical imperative?

[@MumblingMickey]

Mitchells book on an intro to genetic programming is excellent.... and Gell Manns quark and jaguar equally so but probably more interesting in that its also an autobiography of sorts. Anyway whats missing here is a link from this field to early education and school curricula and I don't see that happening.any day soon.

[@InfiniteUniverse88]

I consider the most complex painting the one David ranked second, due to the presence of discernible concepts. In contrast, the supposedly most complex painting appears to me like mere noise. The perceived complexity of the last painting says more about the human imagination than it does about the painting itself. It's like seeing faces on rocks. Moreover, I would argue that complexity is proportional to memory. That is, assuming recursive thinking. Additionally, complexity can be compounded when the whole is greater than the sums its parts. For example, humans are defined by more than their atoms. Therefore, complexity increases exponentially, especially post-industrial revolution. One of the consequences of increasing complexity is that as time goes on, people find less common ground - their differences increasingly exceed their similarity. Thus, it's a wonder anyone gets married nowadays. Divorce is less surprising. Similarly, the concept of the nation state appears increasingly antiquated.

[@Aluminata]

At least the majestic monstrosity of the dinosaurs have us to acknowledge and appreciate their 160 odd million year reign -incomprehensibly unacceptable as it seems - human being, life on Earth and the very planet will have lived, died and vanished from existence ;unrecorded, unknown and alone in the Universe.

[@TheSchev]

Is the idea of science it´s own limit to understanding and explaining reality? Perhaps true understanding has more to do with appreciation which is in the realm of art and is explained by a different set of mathematics , The irrational numbers are infinitly more complex and abundant than rational numbers - which is the limit of science. The irrational numbers can describe exactly life through art. The rational approach always gets closer, but, never arrives and increases complexity (like digital imagery), whereas reality is essentially simple and analog. I have done many experiments on the bell curve and probability and have found that they are only averages and never describe reality. Does a higher intelligence than humanity exist?

[@balicea]

A complex couple walks into a bar. One orders everything on the menu and the other undergoes a phase transition...... See? I made a complex systems joke......

[@mirmalchik]

A complex couple walks into a bar. Their behavior can be usefully approximated as that of electrically charged massive inelastic particles, but this model only predicts a few of their more interesting behaviors. Why their attraction seemed to bring them together at the lips, why the collision lasted such a long time, and why kinetic energy seemed to be lost without significant deformation in either body with only moderate heating... These things all remain mysteries awaiting further analysis.