COMPLEXITY

For centuries, Medieval life in Europe meant a world determined and prescribed by church and royalty. The social sphere was very much a pyramid, and everybody had to answer to and fit within the schemes of those on top. And then, on wings of reason, Modern selves emerged to scrutinize these systems and at great cost swap them for others that more evenly distribute power and authority. Cosmic forces preordained one’s role within a transcendental order...but then, across quick decades of upheaval, philosophy and politics started celebrating self-determination and free will. Art and science blossomed as they wove together. Nothing was ever the same.

Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.

This week we engage with returning guest, New York Times best-selling author of seven books and SFI Miller Scholar Andrea Wulf, about her latest lovingly-detailed long work, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self. In this episode we explore the conditions for an 18th century revolution in philosophy, science, literature, and lifestyle springing from Jena, Germany. Over just a few years, an extraordinary confluence of history-making figures such as Goethe, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Novalis helped rewrite what was possible for human thought and action. Admist a landscape of political revolt, this braid of brilliant friends and enemies and lovers altered what it means to be a self and how the modern self relates to everything it isn’t, inspiring later British and American Romantic movements. Arguing for art and the imagination in the work of science and infusing art with reason, Jena’s rebels of the mind lived bold, iconoclastic lives that seem 200 years ahead in retrospect. We stand to learn a great deal from a careful look at Jena and the first Romantics...maybe even how to replicate their great successes and avoid their self-implosion in the face of social turbulence.

If you value our research and communication efforts, Please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/podcastgive. You can find numerous other ways to engage with us at santafe.edu/engage — in particular, you may wish to celebrate ten years of free online courses at Complexity Explorer with SFI Professor Cris Moore’s Computation in Complex Systems, starting March 28th. Learn more in the show notes...and thank you for listening!

Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.

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Related Reading & Listening:

Episode 60 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's Naturegemälde

Episode 61 - Andrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 2: Humboldt's Dangerous Idea

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World
by Andrea Wulf

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and The Invention of The Self
by Andrea Wulf

Common As Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership
by Lewis Hyde

Episode 37 - The Art & Science of Resilience in the Wake of Trauma with Laurence Gonzales...

Guests:

• Erica Cartmill, Professor, Anthropology and Cognitive Science, Indiana University Bloomington
• Ellie Pavlick, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Linguistics, Brown University

Hosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie Mitchell

Producer: Katherine Moncure

Podcast theme music by: Mitch Mignano

Follow us on:
Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn • Bluesky

More info:

• Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine Learning
• Lecture: Artificial Intelligence
• SFI programs: Education
• Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Books:

• Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

Talks:

• How do we know what an animal understands by Erica Cartmill
• The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell

Papers & Articles:

• “Just kidding: the evolutionary roots of playful teasing,” in Biology Letters (September 23, 2020), doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0370
• “Overcoming bias in the comparison of human language and animal communication,” in PNAS (November 13, 2023), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.22187991
• “Using the senses in animal communication,” by Erica Cartmill, in A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Chapter 20, Wiley Online Library (March 21, 2023)
• “Symbols and grounding in large language models,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (June 5, 2023), doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2022.0041
• “Emergence of abstract state representations in embodied sequence modeling,” in arXiv (November 7, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.02171
• “How do we know how smart AI systems are,” in Science (July 13, 2023), doi: 10.1126/science.adj59

Guests:

• Ricard Solé, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Head of the Complex Systems Lab at Universitat Pompeu Fabra
• Sara Walker, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, Associate Director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems

Hosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris Kempes

Producer: Katherine Moncure

Podcast theme music by: Mitch Mignano

Other music: Matucha, Kijjaz, Klankbeeld, Aesterial-Arts, Dijifishmusic, Greenvwbeetle, Odilon Marcenaro, Jobro, Benboncan, Bone666138, Aiwha, Josh Berry, Rubenvvuuren, and Miksmusic

Follow us on: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn • Bluesky

SFI programs:

• Complexity Explorer: Origins of Life
• Education

Books & Films:

• Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, based on book by Mary Shelley
• The Computer and the Brain, by John von Neumann
• Signs of life: How complexity pervades biology by Ricard V. Solé and Brian C. Goodwin

Talks:

• Liquid and Solid Brains: Mapping the Cognition Space by Ricard Solé
• Evolving Brains: Solid, Liquid and Synthetic by Ricard Solé
• A Universal Theory of Life: Math, Art & Information by Sara Walker

Papers & Articles:

• “Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution” in Nature (October 4, 2023) doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06600-9
• “Time is an object” in Aeon, May 19, 2023
• “The Algorithmic Origins of Life” in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (February 6, 2013) doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2012.0869
• “Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken” in Entropy (May 9, 2022), doi.org/10.3390/e24050665
• “Unicellular–multicellular evolutionary branching driven by resource limitations” (June 2, 2022) doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0018

Guests:

• Heather Graham, Research Associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Hosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Chris Kempes

Producer: Katherine Moncure

Podcast theme music by: Mitch Mignano

Additional sound credits: Digifish music; “Determination of Azimuth,” written by Heather Graham, staged at the Baltimore Rock Opera Society

Follow us on:
Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn • Bluesky

More info:

Apply for the 2024 Complexity Global School at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia

SFI programs: Education

• Complexity Explorer: Origins of Life: Introduction| Chris Kempes (Link to full playlist)
• Enroll for the course: Origins of Life

Videos:

• Asteroids, Agnostic Biosignatures, & Experimental Rock Opera with Dr. Heather Graham
• Heather Graham on Katherine Johnson

Papers & Articles:

• “Investigating the impact of x‐ray computed tomography imaging on soluble organic matter in the Murchison meteorite: Implications for Bennu sample analyses” in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (December 2023), doi.org/10.1111/maps.14111
• “The Vacant Niche Revisited: Using Negative Results to Refine the Limits of Habitability,” in bioRxiv (Nov 8, 2023), doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.06.565904
• “Observations of Elemental Composition of Enceladus Consistent with Generalized Models of Theoretical Ecosystems,” in bioRxiv (Oct 29, 2023), doi.org/10.1101/2023.10.29.564608
• “Planetary Subsurface Science and Exploration: An Integrated Consortium to Understand Subsurface Sources of Energy and the Unique Energetics of Subsurface Life,” in Mars Extant Life: What’s Next? (Nov 2019), hou.usra.edu/meetings/lifeonmars2019/pdf/5047.pdf
• “Detecting life on Earth and the limits of analogy,” in Planetary Astrobiology (June 16, 2020)
• “Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry,” in chemRxiv (Nov 16, 202), chemrxiv.org/engage/api-gateway/chemrxiv/assets/orp/resource/item/60c751e59abda27c1af8dce4/original/identifying-molecules-as-biosignatures-with-assembly-theory-and-mass-spectrometry.pdf
• “The Grayness of the Origin of Life,” in Life (May 29, 2021) doi.org/10.3390/life11060498
• “Generalized stoichiometry and biogeochemistry for astrobiological applications,” in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (July 2021), link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11538-021-00877-5

Guests:

• Tomer Ullman, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard University
• Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Department of Computing, Imperial College London; Principal Research Scientist, Google DeepMind

Hosts: Abha Eli Phoboo & Melanie Mitchell

Producer: Katherine Moncure

Podcast theme music by: Mitch Mignano

Follow us on:
Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn • Bluesky

More info:

• Tutorial: Fundamentals of Machine Learning
• Lecture: Artificial Intelligence
• SFI programs: Education

Books:

• Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell
• The Technological Singularity by Murray Shanahan
• Embodiment and the inner life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds by Murray Shanahan
• Solving the Frame Problem by Murray Shanahan
• Search, Inference and Dependencies in Artificial Intelligence by Murray Shanahan and Richard Southwick

Talks:

• The Future of Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell
• Artificial intelligence: A brief introduction to AI by Murray Shanahan

Papers & Articles:

• “A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled,” in New York Times (Feb 16, 2023)
• “Bayesian Models of Conceptual Development: Learning as Building Models of the World,” in Annual Review of Developmental Psychology Volume 2 (Oct 26, 2020), doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-121318-084833
• “Comparing the Evaluation and Production of Loophole Behavior in Humans and Large Language Models,” in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (December 2023), doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.264
• “Role play with large language models,” in Nature (Nov 8, 2023), doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06647-8
• “Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Tasks,” arXiv (v5, March 14, 2023), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.08399
• “Talking about Large Language Models,” in Communications of the ACM (Feb 12, 2024),
• “Simulacra as Conscious Exotica,” in arXiv (v2, July 11, 2024), doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.12422