How Networks Learn an Interview with Cesar Hidalgo
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Episode 085 – How Networks Learn An Interview with Cesar Hidalgo Aired on May 10, 2018 [00:00] Commercial about The Ninth International Conference on Complex Systems hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute. [Intro Music] [02:30] Haley: Today on the Human Current we have with us Cesar Hidalgo, he’s a physicist, complexity scientist and the director of the Collective Learning Group at MIT. Hi Cesar, thank you for being on the Human Current. [02:42] Cesar: Hi, it’s my pleasure to be here [02:44] Cesar: Would you start us off by introducing yourself to our listeners along with telling us about the work you’re currently doing and what makes you passionate? [02:50] Cesar: Of course, I run the Collective Learning Group at MIT and what we do here is to study how teams, cities and nations learn. We study how they learn to develop new activities for instance; how countries started exporting new products but also we create data democratization and facilitation tools can that can help facilitate learning within organizations. [03:11] Haley: Some very exciting and much needed work that you’re doing there and in our introduction, we said that you are a complexity scientist so we’d like to talk a little bit about how you became interested into complex systems. [03:23] Cesar: Well, I remember being an undergrad in Chile and at that time we had to do this huge weekly problem test, I was studying physics and there were problem test on Quantum Mechanics, Electro-dynamics and other tough courses. So, when my friends would spend a huge amount of time in the library, when I would take a break, I would walk around and try to think about how to solve the problems that were being assigned. I would look at books on chaos and fractures I started to become interested in this other physics which I thought it was quite interested, it was quite new, and it was not what I was being taught in the classroom and this was the physics of complex systems; it was the physics of things that were deterministic but yet not predictable or things that would have geometry that would be extremely interesting and complex. Eventually I got from there to the physics of networks which at that time was growing very fast and at that time I was sold, I knew that was the path I needed to follow. [04:17] Haley: When I looked you up it said that Laszlo Barabasi was your PhD advisor? [04:21] Cesar: Yes, that’s correct I did my PhD with Laszlo. [04:23] Haley: That’s got to be an amazing experience to work with him as well? © The HumanCurrent 2018 [04:27] Cesar: Oh yes, it was amazing because he’s actually someone that has been extremely successful in this area; so you not only learn about ideas you learn very well how to interact with editors, with other people, how to identify certain problems, learn how to shape them or communicate them and I think all of those are skills that are vital to survive as a scholar. [04:49] Haley: Yeah definitely and I think that it’s one thing to talk about network theory another to put it into practice in your own life as well, right? [04:56] Cesar: Yep. [04:47] Haley: If you would give us your definition of complexity. [05:00] Cesar: So, I usually use a couple of definition of complexity; one of them is functional and we can talk about complex systems as those systems that have the ability to adapt and evolve. So, you can think of life forms, you can think of society, you can think of a economies of complex systems. So, think of a car, a car is very complicated but it’s not complex because it doesn’t have the ability to adapt or evolve but a car company does have that ability; so they can change the type of cars that they do over time or the way that they organize, so that’s adapting and evolving. Another definition of complexity which we owe to Warren Weaver is that complex systems are those in which the identity of the parts involve, and the interactions cannot be ignored. Think about gas, a gas is not a complex system because if you swap one of them with oxygen with another atom nobody cares, nothing changes. But think now of a company, a company is a complex system because if you were to change one person for another it does matter the identity of the elements involved and their patterns of interaction it’s important. So, complex systems are systems that are intricate in the sense that they do have a large diversity of parts whose identities matter and cannot be ignored and also, they have this ability to adapt and evolve and when you find these systems that have these properties you can think that you are in the presence of a complex system. [06:20] Haley: Great thank you for sharing your definition. We definitely see complex systems all around us every day and Angie and I definitely see the importance of them and we like talking about them especially in our human systems and we’re just wondering why do you think complexity thinking is so important? [06:37] Cesar: Thinking about complexity is important because people have the tendency to jump into micro explanations for macro-phenomenon, so when we start some changes in the world we tend to attribute those to certain individual actors that have perform certain actions and we have a large tendency to go into those explanations but sometimes in reality the world is a little bit different; sometimes the behavior off people is constrained by large system variables so it could be the other way around, it could be that the constraints of the systems could be the ones that are imposing and restricting the behaviors that kind of emerge within the individuals. Sometimes the outcomes that individuals generate are the macro scales from the micro-actions are outcomes that are unintended or even not understood by the individuals that perform them. So, complexity thinking is very open at trying to understand how these different scales affect each other, how micro behaviors can have emerging property than large scales and also how constraints of the macro-scales can shape and even rule what happens on the micro-scale because their force can be larger than that of the individual agency of the agent. So, then it’s © The HumanCurrent 2018 important to think about complexity, to conceal all of these options and not to jump to conclusions that the outcomes that will serve are always a result of the actions of the individuals. [07:54] Haley: That’s well said and we definitely agree with that. Our mission here at the Human Current is to get the word out about complexity science and explain and share stories of how it is valuable to our lives. We recently spoken to Jean Bolton on a show and she talked about complexity really being our reality and that we are constantly trying to control a machine that doesn’t exist and if we just embrace complexity that we would have a better way of navigating the world and being innovative and creative and working within the systems that we are a part of. [08:29] Cesar: I completely agree. In reality is like we are always so myopic at understanding what’s going to happen or how our actions affect certain outcomes especially when we’re working in large organizations or with many people that you do need to have some sort of taste and acceptance of that uncertainty. I think complex systems give you not only some practical tools to think about world but also some sort of humbleness because you have to understand that your knowledge and your understanding of how the systems work is always very limited and that humbleness I think gives a different attitude and perspective and gives you some peace. [09:06] Haley: Yeah absolutely that’s definitely a word that we would use to describe a lot of the guests that we’ve had on the show and it plays out in their work and how they approach problem solving and it’s definitely something that we think you need self-awareness and a humble nature to approach these complex systems and to work within them, so yeah well said. I would love to dive a little bit deeper into this topic of complexity and get your take on entropy because this is something that you talk about in your book which we’ll get to here in a minute. I was hoping you could give your definition of entropy and explain how it shows up in your work? [09:42] Cesar: Yes, so entropy is a tough one because it’s a word it is used a lot and it has been introduced by multiple communities so there is a lot of confusion around it. The concept of entropy emerge originally in physics in the 1850s and it was in the context of understanding thermodynamics which was the big technological breakthrough of that time, it was in the middle of the industrial revolution when the idea of entropy came about but then that concept was also developed a century layer by Cloud Shannon in the context of information theory. So, I think to get a definition of entropy it’s important to look at both of these communities.