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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
... See moreJessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
The science of complex systems is the study of how local interactions can lead to global consequences.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
These data make a strong case that, as human social networks grow, they necessarily lead to systems that require fewer resources per person, and produce more per person. In other words, the benefits of scale for human groups have always been there.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
These are worlds that will be revealed not by better instruments but by new models and frameworks that allow us to see the familiar world in unfamiliar ways—to transform domains described into domains rigorously quantified and observations informally sensed into those formally understood.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
While scientific progress, then, proceeds by curiously exploring adjacent possibilities, preference is given to work closely tied to existing science and conducted by a privileged subset of scientists.
Perry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
as cities grow and their networks evolve, the area or volume of the networks needed to keep them functionally connected tends to become smaller on a per capita basis. For example, in larger cities more people can share the same bus or segment of road or sewer pipe.
Jessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
we cannot assume that everything interesting is at the same scale as ourselves.
John Brockman • This Will Make You Smarter: 150 New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking (Edge Question Series)
We know that life’s remarkable robustness, in large part, is dependent on variation; systems that suppress or lose their diversity are prone to collapse.