Santa Fe Institute

#TBT – SFI’s first president, George Cowan, was one of the leading visionaries behind the Institute. From rallying local donors to hosting the organizing meetings, Cowan helped lay the foundation for a freeform institution fueled by a network of creative scientific minds. In this clip from the 1984 founding meetings, he invites a conversation that would shape a bold new vision for #ComplexityScience. #ThrowbackThursday

🌄 Each summer, students in SFI’s Undergraduate Complexity Research program participate in the unique intellectual culture of SFI and pursue research questions that transcend disciplines. santafe.edu/ucr In this video, former UCRs discuss their favorite aspects of the program. What would be yours?

Conventional approaches to modeling unstable or disturbed complex systems often take either a bottom-up or top-down approach. But these unidirectional models can’t capture the interactions between the small-scale behaviors and the system-level properties. In a new paper in PNAS, External Professor John Harte (University of California, Berkeley) and colleagues present a theory that could resolve this problem and offer deeper insights into systems from disturbed ecosystems to volatile economies. https://lnkd.in/gWuanxRt

#TBT – External Faculty and visiting scholars have long been a cornerstone of SFI’s innovative approach to research. In this audio clip from SFI’s founding meeting in October 1984, Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate and SFI’s co-founder, lays out the importance of visiting faculty. Today, SFI counts some 120 scholars in various disciplines from over 86 institutions across the globe among its roster of visiting researchers, which includes seven External Professors who joined last August. The influx of new perspectives and ideas from visiting faculty helps keep SFI on the cutting edge of #complexity science research.

#TBT – External Faculty and visiting scholars have long been a cornerstone of SFI’s innovative approach to research. In this audio clip from SFI’s founding meeting in October 1984, Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate and SFI’s co-founder, lays out the importance of visiting faculty. Today, SFI counts some 120 scholars in various disciplines from over 86 institutions across the globe among its roster of visiting researchers, which includes seven External Professors who joined last August. The influx of new perspectives and ideas from visiting faculty helps keep SFI on the cutting edge of #complexity science research.

AI’s Changing Seasons 🎙️ Episode 6 of the 'Nature of Intelligence' season is out on #Complexity podcast! In the final episode of the season, Abha sits down with Melanie Mitchell to hear her perspective. They chat about Melanie’s career and research with Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach. They also discuss her opinions on LLMs’ current capabilities, what she thinks of existential questions like the alignment problem, how sustainable the industry is, the difficulty of making claims about concepts like “intelligence” and “understanding,” and what she thinks future technological development should focus on. Listen now complexity.simplecast.com or visit https://lnkd.in/eiE2V7SN #NatureofIntelligence #ComplexityPodcast #AI #Intelligence #Language #Cognition

In a changing environment, organisms that can respond quickly have an advantage — to a point. Reacting too quickly can mean wasting time and energy. A recent paper out of SFI and Complexity Science Hub derives a scaling law to show the optimal learning rate in a changing environment. https://lnkd.in/g8Ur5Wyy

When it comes to the job market — whether approaching an interview or avoiding a layoff — should you stand out or fit in? A recent paper by Katrin Schmelz and co-authors suggests ways to gauge whether or not conformity is a better strategy in various situations when being selected could bring positive, or negative, consequences. https://lnkd.in/grsuc2TD

Stephan Mertens (pictured, R), Professor of Theoretical Physics at Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg in Germany and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, passed away on October 9, 2024 after a seven-year battle with multiple myeloma. His passion for science and his kindness will have a lasting impact on SFI and the wider scientific community. “His love of physics — his childlike curiosity, his brilliance at computing, and most of all the joy he took in teaching and learning — was an inspiration to all who knew him,” says SFI Professor Cris Moore (pictured, L), who co-authored 'The Nature of Computation' and collaborated on many papers with Mertens. https://lnkd.in/epny-kvM

#tbt - In 2003, to control erosion and beautify the Cowan campus, SFI community members gathered to plant trees. Researchers Doyne Farmer, Jennifer Dunne, Doug Erwin, and John Miller (pictured) – along with their colleagues and SFI staff helped conserve the Anne Nitze hiking trails around Cowan, a beloved feature of the campus landscape that allows researchers to create and workshop ideas during walks in the natural beauty of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Today, the saplings they planted are young trees, providing shade, food, and habitat for local fauna.