Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)

Perhaps the greatest “phase transition” in our thinking that such an approach could engender is the maturation in our willingness to live with relatively high levels of uncertainty in the domains of complex phenomena—and thus give up on ideas like complete “cures,” the elimination of “risk,” the design of perfect “stability,” and achieving total “s

In the century and a half since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, we still are stymied by the complexity of the biosphere, and, just as with our financial systems, our efforts to intervene have often led to confounding results.

Markets are driven by the actions of countless individuals, each reacting to his or her whims, the weather, and the news of the day. Remarkably, just as with army ants, out of all our individual actions emerges a higher order, a set of prices that allows us to buy and sell whatever we may desire.

Once its goal is reached, an alliance may dissolve. The shared goal is the nucleus of the partnership.

To win a war, it helps to have three things: more troops than the enemy, intelligence about the enemy’s plans, and superior technology. Alliance-building and patron–client relations helped leaders amass more troops and often learn about the enemy’s plans—and this is true whether a society is preindustrial, industrial, or postindustrial.

Both are dynamic systems in which the selfish actions of countless individuals—whether they be cells or investors—lead to unpredictable consequences at the system level. In turn, these collective actions and consequences feed back to influence individual actions in endless cycles of adaptation and evolution.

Any view of financial systems must recognize that they are ecosystems, linking agents, stocks, and flows. Just as an ecosystem ecologist is focused on the cycling of crucial elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, so too might a “financial ecologist” focus on the sustainable cycling of crucial elements like capital, labor, and financial inn

When Donald Trump claimed that he used his own money to finance his primary campaign, he was really declaring, to the chagrin of his party leadership, that he was not to be part of Washington’s massive network of intertwining patron–client relationships.

Redundancy provides insurance against loss. The American chestnut largely disappeared from the forests of the northeastern United States, but other species filled its niche. In 2004, though, when Chiron, one of only two companies providing flu vaccines in the US, announced that its plants in Liverpool were contaminated, our house of cards was at re