Simplifying Complexity

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.

Resources and links:

• Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 1: Why do we live longer than mice?
• Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 2: You and I are fractals
• Simplifying Complexity - Scaling 3: Why companies die, but cities don't

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

Resources and links:

• Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility | Nature
• Social capital II: determinants of economic connectedness | Nature
• Vast New Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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: 

1. Spontaneous order and self-organisation
2. Non-linearity
3. Robustness
4. Nested structure and modularity
5. History and memory
6. 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.

Resources and links:

• Karoline’s book ‘What Is a Complex System?’
• Simplifying Complexity - What makes ant colonies robust? 
• Simplifying Complexity - The Economy and Complexity Science: Part 2 

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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:

• 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.