Our researchers endeavor to understand and unify the underlying, shared patterns in complex physical, biological, social, cultural, technological, and even possible astrobiological worlds. Our global research network of scholars spans borders, departments, and disciplines, unifying curious minds steeped in rigorous logical, mathematical, and computational reasoning. As we reveal the unseen mechanisms and processes that shape these evolving worlds, we seek to use this understanding to promote the well-being of humankind and of life on earth.
My cat, Smokey, recognizes herself in the mirror. Every night she sleeps in my lap, and there is a mirror in front of the bed at her eye level, so she frequently checks out her own reflection and will groom herself afterwards on her own belly, which the mirror allows her to see better. She can also see my face in the mirror, and she will frequently look into the mirror at the reflection of my eyes when I speak to her, so she not only recognizes her own reflection but mine as well!
Congratulations and thank you for continuing the dialogue about intelligence in its many forms. It is always a pleasure to hear from the Sante Fe Institute and your inspiring guests and scholars.
Thank you to the Santa Fe Institute for inviting us! This discussion was truly enlightening, and we're genuinely thrilled about the future of animal communication. It's amazing how much it can teach us about our place in the web of life.
We need more understanding of swarm intelligence, and what models result in emerging phenomena on network level that is not apparent on local level. In machine learning, I believe this would bring us to a new level of complexity/intelligence - social interactions bring forward a faster / "better in some ways" knowledge, our current models (I mostly hint at Reinforcement Learning, not LLMs, but LLM agents would be the same) do not have common sense which may come from no "common knowledge" if there is no one to share the wisdom with. I think if humans were not social creatures, we would not have much common sense either, that emerges from society and adapting to society. To my understanding, we do not have realistic, general frameworks for having compact agents whose behavior collectively emerge to something great. (Of course, we have particle swarm optimization and models for bird flocks, but none seem to really "emerge without a designed rule".) And because these agent models are still not compact enough to not be computationally expensive, especially when running a large network of agents (hard to paralelize, as agents interact), not much research goes into swarm and social intelligence in computer science...
Excellent presentation. Homeostasis has long interested me and that functions on a similar (albeit more complex) way, simple mechanisms based on simple rules producing an emergent 'system' that addresses a whole series of problems.
The psychology underlying Soviet Socialism and Corporate Socialism is actually very consistent (and not a little worrying), we do have the Soviet experience to learn from and that may help us predict the issues within the corporate world. AI has one great advantage and that is its bandwidth, given the baud rate of the humans by the time you have collected, verified, categorised and digested the information (requiring vast numbers of humans to interact) and then conveyed the summary (all that a single human can handle) to the selected 'decision maker' the matter in question is history. An AI system with access to data has enormous bandwidth and could process the data producing a result in near real time. Only an idiot would put an AI system 'in charge', its role is more akin to the civil service, gathering data analysing the trends and offering a set of potential strategies with both their outcomes and consequences. The humans could then pick which ever one made them feel best about their own nagging insecurities (which is what drives a great deal of human decision making). Issues would arise with the elements you cannot meter and processes which are essentially chaotic. As an example the rewards for compassion occur long after the event and are influenced by the countless interactions that take place in the meantime. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the benefits of compassion to all members of a group are marked and worth seeking but there is no way to directly measure compassion and no way to predict the outcome in such a chaotic system.
"I recommend the videos featuring Dr. Hector Zenil posted on RU-vid and his blog, for a more balanced view of the technical criticisms of Assembly Theory:
The question is not can you prevent science from doing harm (in the technical sense) Off course anything that does harm is conditional, and those conditions can be affected. That counts for making lethal compounds less lethal, or using alternative less violent farming methods, allowing for freedom of biodiversity within the human affected environment and beyond it. All these are obvious and in the public forum available. The real question is, can you prevent malicious intent or unintended consequences? Our biases, and the limits of our perceptions prevent us from making sure nothing bad will happen. Moreover scientists can affect public perception (or in the case of people like jordan peterson, misperception and misinformation with a phd to back it up) but in many ways they are powerless. The reason is, that the moment they move in the political sphere they have to compromise against their scientific responsibilities. That is : to not mix science and morality. To not move from what is, to what must be. So when scientists search methods to make sure citizens, politicians and the like follow their advice, they move out of the realm of science into politics, that is : affecting public opinion. Scientists have the responsibility to make clear this distinction. Science within it has not the imperative that one has to care about other beings, humans, animals, ecosystems... Nonetheless to have moral sensibilities (which often leaders lack, or loose in the game of cards and bluff and secretive violence) is essential to our humanity. To care for one another is part of who we are. Though it has s not a scientific imperative. It is no law of nature. Social science and moral sciences have their unique perspectives, but one cannot deduce from them how man must live, without sacrificing the art of being a scientist. In essence science has no relation to authority. It is fundamentally anarchist. And though great scientists existed in the past, we define not our reality based on their perceptions, but on how they help us questioning our current perceptions. Question the reality as it is, not as it was. In a sense all systems are systems of misinformation, as they imply that memory, that collecting patterns, repeated events is the path to knowing what is real. Yet what repetition is there but that of memory? Is the sun we see today the sun we see tomorrow? Is it even the same a moment from now? It is a matter of convenience, As without a little self deception, no knowledge can be gathered. There has to be some trust in repeatability. While being aware, that the deeper one goes into it, the less fundamental it appears, the more the contradictions between perception and experiment. So we dont really know what we say when we talk about protecting humans, climate, ecosystems. It is a matter of convenience we use such terms, and as human, as sentient being, i can say, it is valuable to do so. Because humans do not exist for sake of science, science exists for sake of humans, and one can never take the human element out of science. So i never idealize science. It can be used either way. Irrespective of safeguards. Those safeguards can be removed. People can choose to ignore the well meant advise, and even if scientists come with an army, they might meet a stronger army, led by scientist on the opposition. So first step is not do science, and then solve all problems. First is to nourish within people the sensibilities towards all living beings. Then whether they are educated in science or no t will not matter as much. It is kinda crazy, how sometimes scientists have impossible expectations from less educated people, as if they can replace 4 to 8 years of education with a blog post, a youtube video or a collection of data. Those people are not stupid. They just went a different path, often capable of things scientists can only dream of. And even if they have the education. It is pretty common amongst our greatest heroes, that they had strange beliefs, and convictions, which we would consider misinformation now. Brilliant scientists can make mistakes, yet we expect any dick or joe or amy to understand the intricacies of the scientific method, and the philosophy that questions and develops it even to this day, as we are neither all knowing, nor all capable even in the foundation of our sciences...
Mr. Interviewer, allow me to ask you the following: For what reason or reasons do you surrender to your dearth of self-confidence, manifesting, in veritas, invariably, inviolate toward ostentatious overwhelming onslaught of oratory overload in order to reassure your subject and/or your audience, but (with dauntless sincerity DO glance at your inner-mirror to realize) in reality it is, in fact yourself for whom you wish to recognize with silent cheers to fill the ears below the invisible laurel wreaths auto-bestowed by being big-mouthed, babbling and blathering blithely before bequeathing the electronic recording wand (known colloquially as “microphone”) to the seemingly sequestered subject to respond when, just before, you posed a frustratingly ugly, ceaselessly kicking, yard of useless taxiing over half-insulting masticated and near impenetrable spew you call a “question” - or twelve - to an emotionally indignant, obviously unamused Mr. Tymoczko, leaving him with little time, even less excitement to ANSWER your anti-pulchritudinous inquisitions ostensibly with the aim of eliciting wisdom’s grandchild, INNOVATION, mined from the aforementioned Mr. Tymoczko’s thoughts and theories of geometric musical mathematics.. of embracing new technology.. OF WHICH I AM INTRIGUED, THUS CLICKED ON THIS VIDEO TO HEAR YOUR GUEST SPEAK ON THE VIDEO’S TITLE: “Dmitri Tymoczko on The Shape of Music: Mathematical Order in Western Tonality”, but resulted in hearing instead YOUR audibly odoriferous emanations insufferably ululating for interminable temporal suspension in place of a simple rubric: let the expert in his own field speak to what he knows???
Seriously though, advice from a cranky old man to a young interviewer: Questions = keep them under fifteen seconds, fight mission creep; stay focused. Imagine a chain, you want to ask about rabbits but also want to touch on seaweed. Well, instead of cramming both things into the same question, figure out how to build a tiny, singular link that takes you from bunnies to barnacles. Be prepared to improvise, as guests will be guests. Finally, REMEMBER THIS: you ain’t important and neither am i. Not to academia nor the internet. So, take the pressure off of yourself and stop giving a damn what your colleagues are whispering between sips of artisanal beer or potato vodka martinis. If you pay attention, at least twice during this interview, Mr. Tymoczko subtly tries to tell you to calm the eff down. You are a cowboy upon the bucking beast of other profesional academics who have managed to shine bright enough and slip the knife-tips of their fellows in order to rise, not one scratch upon their throats, to a level upon which other care to hear their opinions. Just ride easy, let THEM do the talking. They are the show the people came to see/hear. I didn’t click this link to hear about a Mr. Garfield and his previous interviews. Double-edged sword: Yes, am grateful this was free for me. Yes, i subscribed. BUT.. Would’ve been better if ya coulda gotten outta yer own way, pal. Learn from this. Best of luck.
@47:00 "... in physics time does not exist... it's an emergent property..." That's such rubbish. What physicists are these folks? My guess is they're appealing to cosmological holography or gauge/gravity duality etc.? But none of the older or modern theories say "time is emergent". Some non-standard theories claim "space is emergent" (from entanglement structure) but *_none_* of them say time is emergent. Maybe Lee Smolin has infected their thinking with some sort of weird philosophy? Bottom line is: If you have lightcones and light rays, then you have a time dimension. What these weirdos might refer to is "no *_flow_* of time." But that's a totally different story. And mostly semantics: what do you _mean_ by a "flow" of time? You obviously do not know what you mean. Time does not flow. Perception of time seems like a flow, but that's perception, not fundamental physics. The perception is because we all learn to view and describe actual flows (of mass, energy, etc.) by clock measurements, which record time. The clock hands "move" or "flow" but time does not, time is just the coordinate. Coordinates never "flow" they just act as records.
A conman who falsified their data. This pseudo scientist got 350K per year to conduct "research" in Canada. McMaster put him in paid leave while the investigation lasted 2 years until finally he resigned. Way to go McMaster, 400K in salary down the drain. White privilege at its finest. I bet McMaster would not do that to a BIPOC.
I'm so glad I found this video! I witnessed the synchronous firefly phenomenon while I was walking my little beagle, Link of blessed memory, late at night, maybe 6 or 7 years ago. A huge old oak tree around the corner from my house looked like it was covered in the flashing lights of a Christmas tree, which of course it wasn't (it was nowhere near Christmas and, anyway, the tree was far too enormous for anyone to decorate it in such a way). Link didn't seem to be all that impressed, but I stood transfixed. This was in Wilmington, Delaware. At last, I have an explanation. Thank you!
A very good and informative video. A few issues though with over simplification; plant cells, just like animals cells have cognition, they solve problems in anatomical, and chemical space. This cognition is scalable and larger groups of cells have a higher computational and problem solving ability and are goal driven. This scales all the way up to the macroscopic level, with root systems, and plant morphology being agential and solving basic problems, such as reproduction via external agents, and seeking resources, etc. There is an awful lot of fact based peer reviewed data on this.
As an electronics engineer, I am wandering what synchronization does with objects getting synchronized regarding the amplitude? We see the phase is getting sync, but does it do something with the amplitude? From electronics amplifier design, a positive feedback is an unwanted effect, and most amplifiers have a negative feedback to get them very stable at fixed gain. If we want to make a oscillator we apply a positive feedback.
I need to digest this again. As a 13-year educator who has embraced complexity theories and methods his entire career, I am having trouble finding utility in the information shared. This is not a critique. Rather, it is a testament to the complexity of the endeavor. (I’m clearly using these comments as a workspace. Sometimes, you don’t have a pad and pen!)
At ~18:00, for about a minute, I’m understanding again. But diving back into the (perceived) minutiae of gesturing threw me immensely. I understand this is an exploration of pedagogies and methods, but gesturing itself isn’t culturally universal.
Okay. Upon 2nd viewing…. The Wright Brothers part DID distract and detract from what I thought was the point. My mind kept trying to square that part with the title, the expressed intention of the talk, and my own experience in the classroom. It distracted/and detracted from the “scale down” concept, which I wanted to hear much more about.
I have a questions: Does light/protons move faster as it approaches a black hole? And as it passes a black hole, does the gravity of the black hole, slow it down?
You are skewing the meaning of "intelligence". Is there any subjective awareness in any of those cellular or inset colony systems? Probably not. More to the point, how would you even know? If nothing else, an intelligence should be defined (imho) as capable of communicating to you that it has subjective awareness, and then reciprocate to acknowledge you have too, two-way. I appreciate this is semantics, but why would scientists use the word in such a non-standard sense? Because they want their discipline to be _the one and only one_ that understands "intelligence? Well then, you will be biased to define it so your discipline has the rights to claim scientific understanding! It is grand standing.
