Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Set up a rack of billiard balls and execute a flawless break. Imagine the table has no pockets and is frictionless, so the balls just keep rebounding, never coming to a stop; how accurately can you predict the path of any given ball as it collides against the others? In 1978, the physicist Michael Berry calculated that you could predict only nine
... See moreTed Chiang • Exhalation: Stories
the hedgehog review • Mystery
Forever in motion, these stationary things.
Richard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
While I don’t claim to offer an overarching view of science, I stress the connections of the approaches as well as of the solutions. Temperature is the thread.
Gino Segre • A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals about the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and U niverse
The particle of her private self rejoins everything it has been split off from—the plan of runaway green. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Richard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
The economy is not a closed static equilibrium system; it is a system perpetually open to novel behavior, and complexity economics forces us to keep this in mind.
W. Brian Arthur • Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's 2019 Fall Symposium
The more complex a system is, the more numerous are the types of fluctuations that threaten its stability.
In complex systems, where species and individuals interact in many different ways, diffusion and communication among various parts of the system are likely to be efficient. There is competition between stabilization through communication and
... See moreare you familiar with the concept of “dissipation-driven adaptation”?’