Winter 2019–20

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE

Decarbonizing the energy supply Shifting from carbon-emitting energy sources to renewable ones will be an essential part of addressing climate change, but the path to a renewable power grid is uncharted. A few states have already set specific renewable energy goals; last March, New Mexico passed legislation mandating that, by 2045, the state’s public electric utilities will be 100 percent carbon-free. This February 26-28, an SFI work- ing group will explore how New Mexico might best approach the transition to renewable energy sources, and what lessons could be useful for other regions. The working group will include SFI faculty and other researchers, as well as experts who work in advocacy, government, and New Mexico’s public utilities. “SFI has held lots of workshops on the theory of power grids, but to really work toward decar- bonization, we need to dive into the details — hence the mix of local and global expertise,” says SFI Professor Cris Moore, who is organizing Domestication (Image: Jody Hewgill) the workshop with External Professors Jessika Trancik (MIT), Seth Blumsack (Penn State), and Paul Hines (University of Vermont). Moore Working group chases wild ideas expects the meeting will result in “strategies specific enough to New Mexico to be useful, but at the same time provide insights that we on domestication can export to the rest of the world.” Planning for a low-carbon energy future is We humans love cats and dogs. We raise chick- domestication, which was long mischaracter- complicated because they all start integrating inherently uncertain. We don’t know how ens and collect their eggs. We drink milk from ized as “human mastery of the environment or with each other,” says Larson. demand, prices, or regulations will shift, and cows, eat bread from wheat, and wear sweaters the wild,” she says. As an icebreaker, Larson will ask each researcher renewable energy sources themselves are vari- of wool from alpacas and sheep. What would Bogaard is working with University of Oxford to share “the most radical, crazy idea about the able over different timescales. Planning for life on Earth be were it not for the domestica- evolutionary biologist Greger Larson, director origins of domestication.” It’s intended to be a daily fluctuations in wind speed or sunlight tion of plants and animals? of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology fun but productive conversation that tran- will require different technological and finan- For more than 10,000 years, domestication has Research Network, to bring 16 researchers to scends traditional silos of thought. cial strategies than for rare, severe events that might, say, envelop an entire region in cloud shaped human evolution and the world as we SFI March 9‒11 to debate the most cutting- Understanding our origins is key to under- cover for a week. know it. Yet researchers still have a lot to learn edge research and questions about domestica- standing who we are, Larson says. “The entire about this remarkable phenomenon. “Domestica- tion. “The conversation is necessarily cross- planet and everything that we’re surrounded by A primary question in planning a net-zero energy tion is not just something that happens to other disciplinary,” Bogaard says, with participants in — including our electricity and our clothes and system is how to avoid highly suboptimal lock-in, species; it’s also happening to us — it’s a relation- zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, genetics, our houses and everything that we take for says Trancik. “Once infrastructure and technol- ship,” says SFI External Professor Amy Bogaard, anthropology, and more. granted about the way in which we interact ogy develop, it can be hard to put on the brakes. If we move toward a renewables-heavy system, professor of Neolithic and Bronze Age Archaeol- But a precise definition of domestication is with the planet — is predicated upon a rela- for example, we’ll need ways to address ogy at the University of Oxford. It’s a complex, not on Larson’s agenda. “We are instead tionship that is a domestic one between us and extended shortages even if they pop up only, say, long-term, multi-generational process in which querying the nature of relationships between a bunch of plants and animals. And we still “we’re all affecting each other’s evolution.” a few times every twenty years,” she says. It’s human groups and lots of different plants and really don’t have the foggiest clue of how this important to plan now for future challenges, That marks a dramatic shift in thinking about animals, and then how all of those things get all came about.” > MORE ON PAGE 3 Bill Miller inaugurates namesake campus Poised with a pair of golden shears, SFI Board thinking, and spent the rest of his career on when they were widely perceived as too Chair Bill Miller addressed a crowd gathered philosophical investigations which were just unpredictable. at SFI’s newly renovated Miller Campus in forays, snippets into this or that.” • Based on an insight from an early SFI topical Tesuque, NM during the annual Applied Why we should bother with snippets of isolated meeting on innovation and evolution, Miller Complexity Network & Board of Trustees insights is a recurring question for Miller, and says he bought Google shares on their Initial Symposium. for SFI. A legendary investor, Miller is often Public Offering (IPO), when each share went At the surprise ceremonial debut, Miller thought asked how he chooses his investments, and for $85. The current share price hovers of Ludwig Wittgenstein — the genius philoso- whether his time at SFI has had any practical near $1,500. pher who spent the latter part of his career chas- applications to his work. In response, he gives • He discussed Geoffrey West’s work on scal- ing “snippets” of insight across a range of topics. examples: ing laws and company mortality during a “The early Wittgenstein was all about solving • Citing External Professor Brian Arthur’s recent long-term planning meeting with Jeff problems,” Miller said. “He wanted to ground work on lock-in technologies and path- Bezos and the Amazon.com leadership. language in logic, so he wrote the Tractatus.” dependence, Miller says he was inspired to (Miller is one of Amazon’s early investors.) Following a meeting with critic Frank Ramsey, research and buy technology stocks such • Finally, Miller credits a 2015 SFI symposium on Wittgenstein “completely changed his way of as Dell, AOL, Nokia, and Apple in 1995 > MORE ON PAGE 3 David Krakauer and Bill Miller (Photo: Gabriella Marks)

INSIDE . . . Unraveling time . . . Questions that matter . . . Alien transmissions . . . more BEYOND SFI IN THE NEWS Since its release in September, External Profes- much time as it is allotted, originally intended to Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially BORDERS sor Allison Stanger’s new book, Whistleblow- point out inefficiencies in bureaucracies — citing Aware Algorithm Design. CANTOR’S INVISIBLE CHEMISTRY ers: Honesty in America from Washington to External Professor Stephan’s Thurner’s mathe- On October 16, HowStuffWorks published Trump, has been featured in nearly two dozen matical models testing Parkinson’s Law. an article on quarks, featuring work by SFI No matter how carefully and ingeniously you rifle outlets, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and forage through the mathematical archives you SFI Davis Professor of Complexity Melanie Co-Founder Murray Gell-Mann and quoting NPR’s “Morning Edition,” the Washington Post, will not find a trace of psychoanalysis or a single Mitchell’s new book, Artificial Intelligence: Past President and Distinguished Shannan and The New York Times. mention of the periodic table in Georg Cantor’s A Guide for Thinking Humans, received reviews Professor Geoffrey West. diagonal proof of infinite sets. And this is true TheCBC featured External Professor Jessika and mentions in outlets including The New SFI President David Krakauer published an despite the universality of Cantor’s findings and Trancik in a November 9 story about second- Yorker, the Chicago Tribune, The New York op-ed on October 11 in Scientific American on the the fact that the idea of infinity pervades all of life solutions for aging batteries from electric Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Mitch- intellectual value of movement through space. science, , logic, and even mythology. vehicles. ell also appeared on External Professor Sean Arizona Public Media featured research by As it is written in the Upanishads, “there is no joy SFI External Professor Dan Rockmore published Carroll’s podcast, “Mindscape,” on October 14. External Professor Brian J. Enquist in an Octo- in the finite, there is joy only in the infinite.” For an essay on November 7 in The New Yorker On October 29, the Christian Science Monitor ber 11 audio story on how forests will respond complicated reasons that have nothing to do with about where new ideas come from, and how to quoted External Professor Michael Kearns in to climate change. the nucleus accumbens or dopamine receptors — keep the brain moving and “get unstuck.” the putative anatomical and neurochemical basis an article about surviving the first “deep fake” Bloomberg profiled External ProfessorDoyne of pleasure — we understand perfectly what these A November 8 BBC article explores Parkinson’s Law election. Kearns also spoke with NPR’s “Market- Farmer in an October 3 feature on his work Sanskrit inscriptions are getting at without invok- — the concept that any given task will take up as place” on November 1 about his new book, The uncovering financial risks that regulators miss. ing their cognitive infrastructure. Just like Cantor’s proof, the Upanishads are understood within their own system of rules. We do not require for deeper understanding that the insights of logic and mythology be presented through any reductive potpourri of biological Why Congress cares about Regional Transmission mechanisms. These might expand our under- standing of cognition but not the correctness Organizations (and you should too) of a proof or acumen of a metaphor. may include power companies, utilities, and The mysteries of the universe that complexity financial players like hedge funds and banks. science seeks to explain are how widespread “Who is actually at the table making these rules, adaptive regularities emerge at multiple different and how much each vote counts, varies by levels and how each level comes to be best served region,” says Blumsack. The goal of the RTOGov by its own effective theory — from the theory of molecular interactions through to the theory of project, which has been supported by the ecological stability. And furthermore, the way Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Heising many of these theories share striking family Simons Foundation, is to understand how RTOs resemblances by virtue of constraints of energy, make rules and how these rule-making pro- time, and information. This is the fundamentally cesses affect the operation of regional grids. dual nature of complexity theory — recognizing The rules that RTOs set govern things like fee the need for the autonomy of theories at differ- structures, cybersecurity, and how much ent levels while at the same time exploring the energy on the grid can come from which common features of these theories. sources — the ratio of renewable energy to Consider two profound representational frame- fossil fuel-based power, for instance. RTOs can works — mathematics and natural language — also develop incentives for certain types of that both use their own specific rules to explore power generation. “They basically determine and explain the worlds that they each represent. the economic environment for new technolo- A paradox presented in natural language or gies, and the tools that people operate the mathematics is explained in terms of mathematics power grid have available to keep it going reli- or language. Not in terms of psychology or the ably,” says Blumsack. The details can look covalent bond. At the same time both math and wildly different from one region to the next. natural language share the properties of syntax Now, House and Senate committees are trying and semantics and conform to limitations of length, clarity, and comprehensibility. Thereby to figure out if things have changed so much each serves the functions required by their RTOs are charged with helping ensure a reliable electrical grid. (Photo: Matthew Henry) since the 1990s that we need to rethink the contingent domain of application while possess- mission, goals, and oversight of these organi- ing deep meta-theoretical affinities by virtue of For something as ubiquitous in modern life as recently funded project called RTOGov (short zations, he says. shared structures, processes, and shared users electrical power, few of us know much about for RTO Governance). As new technologies are developed, and as (that is, human beings). the rules that govern power production, fees, RTOs were first formed in the late 1990s as part states set goals toward decarbonization, RTOs or transmission. Most people, including aca- play a critical role. “If you care about electricity At a recent meeting hosted in Washington by the of a federal initiative to restructure the electric National Science Foundation and requested by demics and lawmakers, know even less about costs or reliability or sustainability, these utility industry and break up the electrical the director of the NSF, France Cordova, and the Regional Transmission Organizations, or RTOs are incredibly important,” says Blumsack. Kraston Blagoev from the division of physics, RTOs, that develop those rules. But last Sep- monopolies that then provided power to the “They’re the most important sustainability orga- SFI convened a group of complexity researchers tember, committees from both the U.S. House country. RTOs are charged with helping ensure nizations you’ve never heard of. A lot of our to summarize our current understanding of and Senate invited SFI External Professor Seth a reliable electrical grid at the lowest possible ability to facilitate technology transition in universality in complex systems. Blumsack, with colleagues from Boise State cost, but the rules for how they achieve these electricity while keeping it reliable is not just Spanning pattern-formation, neuroscience, University and Duke University, to fill them in goals are determined not by federal regulators technology, but the environment in which rules ecology, evolution, and collective computation, on what the researchers have learned through a but by a group of regional stakeholders that and regulations are made.” researchers reported on amazing regularities that apply across species and across niches and that can be understood by shared principles of scaling, evolution, , and computation. While each area was presented without recourse to reductionism (that is, Working group to study aging in single-celled organisms explanations dominated by interactions among What does it mean to grow old? Many fields One goal is to identify microscopic constituents) common principles have offered answers, but none of them provides fruitful questions for a of entropy production, robust information a universal theory. According to former SFI Post- laboratory setting. encoding, convergent evolution, higher-order doc Jacopo Grilli (International Centre for Theo- Grilli notes the project interactions, the control of networked retical Physics), we understand the when but not has recruited mem- components, and the efficient use of energy the how of aging: when the components of an bers “with the experi- to store adaptive information, emerged as organism fail, but not the causes of these failures mental expertise to foundational principles in all complex systems. or if the process serves an evolutionary purpose. actually test theories > MORE ON PAGE 3 in the real world.” Sri This February, a diverse international working Iyer-Biswas and Lin group will meet at SFI to find a fresh take on Chao (UC San Diego) the problem. Grilli and fellow organizers SFI are two such research- CREDITS Professor Chris Kempes, External Professor ers whose innovative Srividya Iyer-Biswas (Purdue), and Matteo EDITORS: Jenna Marshall and Katherine Mast labs can track individ- Osella (University of Turin) will focus the dis- Candida auris fungi, emerging multidrug resistant fungus (Image: Kateryna Kon) CONTRIBUTORS: Sam Bowles, Karen Coates, Lucy ual bacteria through- Fleming, Michael Garfield, Sienna Latham, Stephen cussion on single-celled organisms like bacte- out their life cycles. tions we’ve had a hard time getting a handle Ornes, Aaron Sidder, Paul Stapleton, Deb Trevino ria and yeast in hopes of finding generalities in “A key challenge in aging studies has been to iden- on previously,” she observed. “The scaling laws DESIGN & PRODUCTION: Laura Egley Taylor simpler settings. Part of the challenge, Grilli tify clean experimental systems in which extrinsic for growth and division of cells as they age VP FOR SCIENCE: Jennifer Dunne says, has been that aging happens across many scales, from DNA and proteins to organs and (e.g., environmental) and intrinsic (e.g., genetic) remain the same, except the cellular unit of Parallax is published quarterly by the Santa Fe Insti- entire organisms. By narrowing the inquiry, factors contributing towards the aging of an time itself gradually slows down.” tute. Please send comments or questions to Jenna Mar- organism can be precisely controlled,” says Iyer- shall at [email protected]. the group intends to prune the complications The implications are far-reaching. This work- Biswas. “Consequently, even basic questions such www.santafe.edu and see aging in its essence. A single yeast cell shop, Grilli hopes, “can unify views on aging, may provide analogies for human beings, and as how ‘aging’ should be defined remain open.” how it’s similar and different across the tree of colonies are in some ways like organs. “Look- In her SFI Community Lecture, Iyer-Biswas life.” As biology itself approaches its 400th ing at things in this way,” says Grilli, “allows us noted that new methods in cell biology reveal year, perhaps the discipline is ripe for more to see multiple levels at the same time.” a cellular unit of time. “One can now ask ques- perspective. New books by SFI authors The Ethical Algorithm (Oxford University Press, 2019) by SFI External Professor Michael Kearns and a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, Aaron Roth, offers a set of principled solutions based on the emerging science of socially aware algorithm design. The algorithms that dominate much of modern life, from advertising and con- sumer lending to college admissions and hiring, Elizabeth Bradley G. Matthew Fricke Mirta Galesic Joshua Garland Alfred Mathewson have also routinely violated basic rights of indi- vidual citizens. Most fixes thus far have focused on legal and regulatory solutions, but Kearns and Roth propose fixing technology from the inside with algorithms embedded with precise definitions of fairness, accuracy, transparency, and ethics.

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Macmillan Publishers, 2019) by SFI Science Board co-chair and Davis Professor of Complexity Melanie Mitchell lays bare the inner workings of the potent tools of AI, exposing their Cristopher Moore Melanie Moses Kathy Powers Sonia M. Gipson Gabriel R. Sanchez realistic limits and patiently detailing our deploy- Rankin ment errors. It presents a plain-speak, human- readable primer on the new technologies that have transformed human culture and society, NM experts fight for transparency and uses that foundation to caution the reader against placing more trust in automated systems than they deserve. It is going to be a while before machines and fairness in housing algorithms can think, and until then we need more people who can think for our machines, and for ourselves. Leading scientists and legal scholars are weighing in on ency, recommending that designers of decision-making a national debate about fair housing laws. On October algorithms allow independent auditors a minimal level 18, a group of ten computer scientists, social scientists, of access where they could test the algorithms for bias and legal scholars from the Santa Fe Institute and The by feeding them various inputs and observing how they University of New Mexico submitted a formal response respond. The authors also demand transparency for to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Develop- individual applicants, allowing them to view their own Asking questions that matter ment’s (HUD) proposal to dramatically revise the Fair data and “contest, update, or refute that data if it is If you could answer any question onslaught of antibiotic-resistant Housing Act. inaccurate.” you put your mind to, what bacteria. Though he himself would you ask? chose to research antibiotic Key amendments in HUD’s new legislation would The letter, lays out four arguments against the proposed resistance for its potential to absolve landlords and lenders from any legal responsibil- legislation: For Ramanan Laxminarayan this is ity for discrimination that results from a third-party not a hypothetical, three-wishes save tens of millions of lives, he computer algorithm. Such algorithms are already 1. To ensure that an algorithm does not have dispa- kind of question— it’s a real says good questions don’t always widespread in our society and are used to automate rate impact, it is not enough to show that individual dilemma that early career have to be utilitarian in nature. decisions about who gets a credit card, a lease, or a input factors are not “substitutes or close proxies” researchers need to confront Theoretical work, such as Ein- stein’s theories of special and mortgage. As the proposal is written, landlords and lend- for protected characteristics. head-on. March 17-20, during the general relativity, unveil secrets ers would be protected from charges of “disparate seventh Postdocs in Complexity 2. It is impossible to audit an algorithm for bias of the universe even though they impact” (unintentional discrimination that nonetheless conference, he’ll be without an adequate level of transparency or access have very little leads to wide disparities) so long as their algorithms coming to Santa Fe to the algorithm. to hash out some immediate appli- don’t overtly factor in protected characteristics like race, Generally I 3. Allowing defendants to deflect responsibility to answers with the cation to peoples’ gender, religion, or disability status, or rely on proxy vari- everyday lives. proprietary third-party algorithms effectively Santa Fe Institute find there are ables for those characteristics. and James S. destroys disparate-impact liability. Whether fellows According to the experts, the HUD amendments related McDonnell Foun- a lot of bright seek universal to algorithms are based on a fundamental “failure to rec- 4. The proposed regulation fails to take into account dation postdoc- principles, real- ognize how modern algorithms can result in disparate the cumulative impact of multiple users of algo- toral fellows in a people out world impact, impact . . . and how subtle the process for auditing algo- rithms that result in disparate impact on protected presentation titled: or both, Laxmina- rithms for bias can be.” Modern machine-learning algo- classes where no individual user has liability under “Asking questions there who rayan advises rithms are poorly understood, and often draw highly the proposed regulation. that matter — them “not to the choice of can answer complex correlations that even their designers may not pursue research Their full response is posted on the Federal Register, where to dig.” be aware of. Any combination of factors, from location based on a skill- along with over 3,500 other public comments. any question data to purchase history to musical preference, could be “Generally I find set or a set of correlated as a proxy for race or another protected char- The co-signatories are members of The Interdisciplinary there are a lot of they want to. methods,” which acteristic, with devastating consequences for protected Working Group for Algorithmic Justice and are available to bright people out is often empha- RAMANAN LAXMINARAYAN groups. provide thoughts and expertise to policymakers around there who can sized in graduate the use of algorithms in society: answer any ques- education pro- These algorithms are often opaque, but without trans- tion they want to,” grams. Rather, parency there is no way to confirm that they are fair. In For more information, visit: santafe.edu/research/projects/ Laxminarayan says, commenting like SFI and the James S. McDon- their letter, the SFI and UNM experts demand transpar- algorithmic-justice.” on his eight years of experience nell Foundation, he advocates for on the fellowship committee for problem-driven approaches that the James S. McDonnell Founda- bring together scientists with tion. After interviewing scores of different disciplinary back- talented researchers for the com- grounds and skillsets. petitive early-career fellowship, he’s DECARBONIZING THE ENERGY SUPPLY (cont. from page 1) noticed that raw talent and skill are As an added bonus, he says once a researcher has found their ques- and that includes keeping available solutions to production, storage, and for New Mexico — where the state is rarely the limiting factors for appli- tion, they’ll have a much easier transmission, Blumsack says this cants. Oftentimes, he says, “they’re several paths to deep decarbonization going to have to make critical deci- time communicating their working group will be more focused pursuing a topic where it’s not that also ensure reliable energy supply. sions and what those critical points on the transition process, using New obvious why they’re pursuing it.” research to outsiders. While many people are already think- Mexico as a test case. “We want to might be — and then offer those The founder and director of the For more information on the ing about specific technologies and think through the transition process lessons to apply in other states.” Center for Disease Dynamics and seventh SFI-JSMF Postdocs in Economic Policy in Washington, Complexity Conference, and an D.C., Laxminarayan has dedicated agenda, visit https://www.santafe. his own career to understanding edu/events/jsmf-sfi-postdocs- BILL MILLER INAUGURATES NAMESAKE CAMPUS (cont. from page 1) how to counter the global complexity-conference-vii. money and currency, which he co- this kind of vision of how you can live organized with SFI President David in the world, and supports a commu- Krakauer, for prompting him to buy nity that’s devoted to ideas is com- Bitcoin when it was trading for $200. pletely special,” Krakauer remarked, BEYOND BORDERS (cont. from page 2) By December of 2018, it had hit a high praising Miller for valuing risk and There was a time not too many over the last few centuries. of $20,000. Its value currently hovers exploration, which are central to the years ago when the idea of general This is a very exciting time in between $7,000 and $8,000. “sensibility and culture” of SFI. theories of complexity seemed complexity science that promises The example of Bitcoin was especially The Thaw home, originally designed absurd. Early efforts that tended not only to discover emergent timely, because in 2018 Miller donated $5 by renowned architect Betty Boyce to over-generalize from toy mod- laws of nature, but to explain million from this SFI-inspired investment Stewart, now boasts streamlined, els without strong empirical sup- why a diversity of approaches to to fund the Institute’s expansion to the modern meeting spaces set amidst his- port engendered skepticism in understanding is required, why a Miller Campus. The estate itself was toric Santa Fe fireplaces and double- both the scientific community grand unified theory is wrong- donated in 2012 by Eugene and Claire thick adobe walls. The new architec- at large as well as among complex- headed, and possibly to discover Thaw, but needed repairs and renovation ity scientists. The recent turn ture, by Thomas Easterson Bond, is Researchers, Applied Complexity principled means of establishing before it could become a workspace. Jok- adorned with prints and sculptures by Network members, and friends of SFI to strong empiricism has led to connections across the full land- ingly, Miller refers to it as “the campus artist Greg Stimac — a special exhibit celebrate the dedication of the newly discoveries of startling regularity scape of complexity theories. Bitcoin built.” renovated Miller Campus. (Photo: not dissimilar to those discoveries that celebrates exploration and the — David Krakauer Gabriella Marks) in the physical sciences made “To find somebody who actually shares American Road. President, Santa Fe Institute 3 72 hours of sci-fi: Transmissions from an alien civilization In November of 2019, 14 SFI postdocs withdrew to an isolated research location to accomplish, in just 72 hours, a monumental task — decod- ing the first complex communication from an alien civilization.* For the benefit of humanity, the aliens managed to divert their spacecraft for enough time to transmit a scientific treatise on a fundamental difference between their complex biology and ours. They were responding to images on the Golden Record, which launched aboard the Voy- ager spacecraft in 1977, engraved with a cosmic introduction to Earth and its inhabitants. Among the record’s 115 encoded images were multiple depictions of the two-parent system of reproductive biology. “The aliens were totally shocked by these images, because in their world children are conceived and raised by three par- ents instead of two,” says Albert Kao, an Omid- yar Fellow and Baird Scholar. “For scientists who study complex, living systems, it brings up all kinds of interesting questions about why three-parent systems would arise and what that might imply for the evolution of everything from molecular mechanisms to social institutions.” With combined expertise in biology, evolution, information theory, mathematics, physics, phi- losophy, archaeology, cognitive science, and The SFI postdoctoral fellows in front of their signal receiving structure. (Photo: Santa Fe Institute) economics, the postdocs were uniquely quali- fied to receive and interpret the wide-ranging coordination costs and social ramifications of Omidyar Fellow Tyler Marghetis says imagining a docs steeled themselves to record the final alien treatise. In three days and with little sleep, searching for multiple mates at once. In their three-parent system “is actually a really great way transmission in the treatise — the core innova- they documented biological consequences of treatise, the authors describe the exponential to gain insight into the origins and implications tions of alien culture, including “hyperdrive tri-parental reproduction at multiple levels — difficulty of finding a “soul triplet”— a perfect of our more familiar two-parent system . . . in the technology, the unified theory of physics, and the braid-like combining of the aliens’ chromo- romantic combination in a sea of possibilities. same way that experiencing other cultures can the meaning of life.” Unfortunately, this final somes, the size differentiation between their Other social consequences of the three-parent help travelers better understand themselves.” portion of the transmission did not arrive intact. gametes, the coordination of “mating events” system include a heightened risk of disease “There are a lot of interesting questions that can The full treatise on three-parent reproduction, among three sexes, and the cultural implica- transmission and a societal trend towards a be pursued in this model,” says archaeologist replete with figures and references to terrestrial tions of their family structures. uniform culture. According to Omidyar Fellow Stefani Crabtree, an ASU–SFI Center Postdoc- scientific literature, will be published in the According to the postdocs, the aliens’ David Kinney, such a uniform culture is needed toral Fellow. “One of the great things about summer of 2020 in conjunction with the Inter- three-parent system confers a distinct evolu- to avoid the cognitive overload caused by try- being a postdoc at SFI is that you have exper- Planetary Festival. tionary advantage over a two-parent one. Just ing to juggle the cultures and languages of tise in one area, but you also get exposure to *The alien transmission is a fictional premise. Any as sexual reproduction protects organisms three parents, nine grandparents, and poten- other fields that connect to it.” resemblance to actual species, civilizations, or from the harmful mutations that proliferate in tially dozens of partial siblings. After 72 hours of intense transcription, the post- planets is purely coincidental. asexual species, like dandelions, the three-par- “There are so many social angles to explore ent reproductive system adds another layer of in this system,” says sociologist Tamara van protection and genetic diversity, especially on der Does, a Program Postdoctoral Fellow. planets bombarded with high radiation, which “The number of biological sexes would have can cause a high mutation rate. ramifications across all aspects of an alien Unraveling in time Exactly why the aliens’ three-parent system culture, from gender inequality to institutions The average skin cell lives for 28 days. A white others have explored ecological evolution, came to dominate, as opposed to a four-, five-, like marriage and religion. After 72 hours, we blood cell, four months. Yet a human being might infectious diseases, or cognitive regime shift. or n-parent system, might be explained by the were just starting to scratch the surface.” live 90 years or more, unaware of the millions of However, an upcoming meeting, held April 2–4, lifetimes unfolding at their own paces inside. 2020, will mark an exciting development. “We tend to think of time in terms of a constant “We have all these topical areas that have been rate, but in a there are multiple ‘To make rigor accessible to everyone’ clocks that are all ticking at different rates,” says meeting in isolation, and it’s time to bring them David Krakauer, SFI President and William H. together,” says Amy P. Chen, Program Manager SFI welcomes Director for Education Miller Professor of Complex Systems. for Adaptation, Aging, and the Arrow of Time. It’s this cacophony of clocks that has produced The upcoming gathering combines the pro- In the few short months since Carrie Cowan one of the most persistent of urban legends: that gram’s annual General Meeting with its Core arrived at SFI, she’s been immersed in the cul- all the cells in our bodies get “replaced” every Theory meeting, as well as inviting contribu- ture and in uncovering new ways to advance tions from the advisory board. The aim: to the Institute’s educational mission. But the seven years. That’s not true — not even close! — begin working towards a unified theoretical moments that most stand out to SFI’s new but it points the way towards profound ques- Director for Education are all about the people. tions about the way time operates in the body approach to time. and beyond. “Some of the most remarkable experiences have To that end, rather than being presentation- been lunchtimes and teatimes, when you just It’s not just a matter of scale. That same human focused, “there will be a lot of time for group sit down with random people,” Cowan explains. body also observes a circadian time, a rhythm discussions, so [participants] have a chance to “You end up having these amazing conversa- dictating sleep and waking. Invading pathogens hear from each other,” says Chen. “There will be tions about science and about life — always might wreak havoc within, following their own a lot of time to ask questions.” with a lot of intellectual curiosity.” timescales of life, reproduc- tion, and death. The brain “In each of the “The big picture is: what is time?” Cowan joined SFI in September from Jackson and body age and break says Krakauer. “In each of the Laboratory, a biomedical research institution down. In the world outside, application areas, application areas, we want to in Maine, where she oversaw Ph.D. and post- ecosystems grow and know how time organizes phe- doctoral training. She led similar efforts at we want to know change on myriad simulta- nomena,” but “the deeper set of New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory neous schedules. So do cit- how time organizes issues has to do with how things following a research career at the Research ies, economies, philosophies, unravel in time . . . and that’s the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Director for Education Carrie Cowan (Photo: Scott phenomena ,” but species. Meanwhile, human common theme in all of these. Austria. Her journey to SFI — and to complexity Wagner for the Santa Fe Institute) bodies participate in all the “the deeper set of The time to make something, and science —started early on. of training. To look at things from multiple per- trappings of economic and issues has to do with the time to break something.” “I’m a scientist by training and was very interested spectives, not just the one discipline I took a political time, from 9-to-5 Also integral to the meeting will in how cells create spatial patterns and make bunch of courses in, gives me a much more days to bull markets to the how things unravel be new participants, including decisions based on that information,” she says. liberal view of the world, and that’s essential in rise and fall of entire sys- in time . . . and that’s Simon Grondin (Université Laval, “My work wasn’t necessarily complex systems, but how we structure education.” tems of government, all the Québec), who can offer insight it was adjacent, and I always had SFI in my mind.” while perceiving psychologi- the common theme Cowan’s perspective on education aligns with from areas not currently in the Once Cowan started her own research group cal time: romances that are SFI’s mission, especially when it comes to in all of these.” Complex Time portfolio, such as and was training postdocs, she gravitated over in a flash, commutes expanding the reach of complexity science. toward education. She was particularly inter- that seem to last forever. psychology and philosophy. These are subjects well-equipped to tackle what ested in the process of preparing our next gen- “We want SFI’s rigorous approach to be available Given the seemingly endless layers of time in may be complex time’s most mind-bending eration of scientists — not just with intellectual to everybody,” she says, “so Complexity complex systems, it makes sense that, until now, hurdle: the fact that, as Krakauer notes, “we skills, but in the practice of science. Explorer, our online platform, includes great working groups in SFI’s research theme on build the clock.” Does absolute time exist, and if “My interest in patterning and decision-making courses on how the math works and what it Adaptation, Aging, and the Arrow of Time have across systems connects me to SFI research,” means. That’s the goal: to make the rigor acces- studied them separately. For instance, one so, how could we theorize it? Cowan explains. “But I also have a holistic view sible to everyone.” group has focused on the nature of sleep, while Only time will tell. 4 History’s arc bends toward quantification This January, SFI researchers will take a quanti- bloom of new archaeological datasets, it may tative look at an age-old question: to what be possible to actually quantify how much extent is human history shaped by impersonal each of these factors impacted the Mediterra- trends, big ideas, and great leaders? nean and Europe. “Historians have qualitatively debated the rela- As an example of the type of research the tive roles of these phenomena, and it’s clear group is pursuing, Price cites a recent paper on all three have had some effect throughout the Justinian Plague, published in PNAS. By history,” says SFI Professor David Wolpert, amassing and analyzing archaeological evidence who is co-organizing the working group drawn from papyri, coins, inscriptions, and pol- with External Professor Manfred Laubichler len, the paper’s authors were able to test popu- (Image: Lanju Fotografie) (Arizona State University), Applied Complexity lar claims that the pandemic, estimated to have Fellow Michael Price, and Program Postdoc- spread between 540 and 750 CE, played a key toral Fellow Hajime Shimao. role in the decline of the Roman Empire and Workshop to explore diversity, the subsequent transition from antiquity to the “We’re now at a point in time where we can middle ages. (Spoiler alert: it did not.) begin to explore, quantitatively, which of The working group builds on previous SFI inequality through “science of science” these has been most important, and when,” research into “Computational History,” “Big His- In his 2008 Einstein Lecture to the American Laubichler says. models, methods, and data to craft a new vision tory,” and “Cliodynamics,” which seek to uncover Mathematical Society, the physicist Freeman for the science of science. Take the fall of Rome, for example — a com- mathematical patterns in human history to bet- Dyson noted, “When I look at the history of The workshop will also focus on the individual plex collision of new ideas, such as Christian- ter understand its underlying dynamics. To that mathematics, I see a succession of illogical and structural inequalities within science that ity; the cult of personality around Roman end, the group will be honing analytical tools jumps, improbable coincidences, jokes of slow the pace and limit the diversity of discov- emperors; and impersonal plagues and popu- from complexity science, such as time-series nature.” As an example, Dyson cited Erwin ery. Specifically, participants will explore the lation movements. Scholars have long argued analysis, to crack open the “torrent” of historical Schrödinger’s discovery that his wave optics mechanisms that produce epistemic and social about which of these many factors might have and archaeological data that has been growing equation happens to describe the behavior of inequality. For example, why do a handful of broken the empire’s back. Now, thanks to a over the past two decades. atoms. The revelation that nature functions graduate programs produce 50 percent of all with complex numbers and not real numbers tenure-track faculty across different fields? Or shocked both Schrödinger and the greater why do women produce fewer papers through- RESEARCH NEWS BRIEFS scientific community. out their careers than their male peers? The “science of science” is a growing interdisci- “Scientific investigations of complex problems plinary field with a broad goal of understanding benefit from diverse perspectives,” says Galesic. the structure and dynamics of science itself. “This research can help us to see how some The discipline evaluates the relationship deeper changes in the system can alleviate between scientists and their scholarly products structural barriers and inequalities.” to try to determine the drivers of scientific By using the scientific method to study the discovery. scientific ecosystem, the organizers hope to set In March, SFI will host a workshop, “A New an agenda for the future growth of the science Synthesis for the Science of Science.” The work- of science. shop is being organized by SFI External “The past 20 years have been really exciting Professor Aaron Clauset (University of Colo- because now we have the data and computa- rado Boulder), SFI Professor and Cowan Chair A regular map of the showing results of the 2016 presidential election by county, with red, blue, tional tools to understand the creation of new and purple to indicate voting percentages (right). A cartogram (left) illustrates the same data, but skewed in Human Social Dynamics Mirta Galesic, and knowledge,” says Clauset. “This workshop aims to represent population. (Images: SFI External Professor Mark Newman) former Omidyar Fellow Daniel B. Larremore to articulate the organizing questions that (University of Colorado Boulder). The meeting should guide the next five to ten years of work will bring together a diverse collection of and help us address the underlying causes of RESEARCH FOR AN ELECTION YEAR researchers to formulate a synthesis of concepts, pervasive inequalities in science.” Media in the U.S. have already been covering the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election for months, and in the years since the 2016 election, researchers at SFI have been taking a com- plex systems approach to understanding the political landscapes in the U.S. and around the world. As we enter this election season in earnest, here are some of the highlights of our elec- tion-related science, from new ways to illustrate political maps to different polling questions for Wealth inequality and social better predictions. WHAT MATTERS IN AN ELECTION? network structure In 2016, SFI External Professor Mark Newman (University of Michigan) developed a variety of The historic wealth of Istanbul election cartograms that play with scale, representing counties and states proportionally based and Singapore owed much to on their populations or representation in the electoral college. These graphical representations their positions on the Bosporus offer a fresh perspective on the political landscape in the U.S. by combating the “apparent par- and the Malacca Strait, adox” of the traditional, geographically proportional red-and-blue map. This paradox, Newman respectively. Situated on an notes on his website, “fails to allow for the fact that the population of the red states is on aver- essential link in the flow of wealth, age significantly lower than that of the blue ones. The blue may be small in area, but they repre- the elites of these cities profited sent a large number of voters, which is what matters in an election.” from their hold-up power. An ongoing project of the IT’S WHO YOU KNOW, NOT WHAT YOU KNOW Behavioral Sciences Program at We usually rely on polling to predict election outcomes, but those polls are not always reliable; SFI is exploring this basic idea, but in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Hillary Clinton lost in five states where polls had antici- applied to wealth differences pated her victory. In a February 2018 paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, SFI Profes- within societies: Social networks sor Mirta Galesic and co-authors examined an alternative approach. Whereas most election with bottlenecks like the Bosporus Singapore’s lavish vertical gardens (Photo: Duy Nguyen on Unsplash) polls ask people about their own voting habits, Galesic and her colleagues found that questions or the Malacca Strait may support about the views of a voter’s social circle actually provide more insight, improving the accuracy high levels of wealth disparity. “A key research objective,” says SFI External of voting predictions. The researchers studied the usefulness of social-circle questions in both Similarly, the company store stands between the Professor Matthew Jackson, a project leader the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the 2017 French presidential election by means of miner and the suppliers of the necessities of life from Stanford University, “is to determine which national pre-election surveys and aggregate polls. The results indicate the efficacy of social-cir- on which his family depends. The elevated prices types of networks, inequality, and other cle questions in tapping into ‘local’ wisdom rather than asking potential voters to make assump- that the miner pays results from the hold-up institutions can exist together — are consistent tions about the behavior of the general population. power that stems from what network theorists with each other — and which are not.” call the ‘centrality’ of the company store. REALISTIC IF NOT (YET) REAL SFI Professor Samuel Bowles, another project In the May/June 2019 Comptes Rendus Physique, SFI Professor Sidney Redner offered a mini- An NSF-funded research project is exploring the leader, explains, “based on our theoretical review of the voter model that has played a central role in both probability theory and statisti- effects of network structure on wealth inequality. work with former SFI Omidyar Fellow cal physics. The classic voter model, which randomly selects a voter who then adopts the state In February over 40 anthropologists, economists, Willemien Kets and SFI External Professor (voting habits) of a neighbor, lacks nuance, resulting in consensus that is not always achieved in and others will review their research so far and Rajiv Sethi, there are good grounds to think reality. In his review, Redner presented a variety of extensions to this model that endeavor to chart new directions. that economies with star-like networks will be incorporate socially motivated aspects of decision making. A lack of corresponding empirical more unequal than those with more densely “The amazing thing about this project,” says data means we should avoid mistaking these extensions for social reality, but they provide use- connected networks. But we’ll see what we Eleanor Power, former SFI Omidyar Fellow ful descriptions of how opinions can change over time in large-scale populations. now at the London School of Economics and learn from the data.” co-Primary Investigator on the project, “is that Jeremy Koster of the University of Cincinnati FORENSIC ANALYSIS FOR VOTER FRAUD we have the data being collected in almost 50 is among the project organizers: The U.S. isn’t the only country concerned with voter fraud. The results of Turkey’s 2017 con- communities around the world and for two “Coordinating a quantitative project in stitutional referendum indicated majority support of the country’s shift to autocracy, but different periods of time, all using the same collaborative cross-cultural research of this allegations of electoral irregularities and misconduct suggest otherwise. In a 2018 PLOS One measurement protocols.” The scope of the magnitude requires a lot of interdisciplinary paper, SFI External Professor Stefan Thurner (Complexity Hub Vienna) and his collaborators data will allow systematic comparisons across brainstorming, trust-building, and skill applied statistical forensics tests to identify and verify cases of malfeasance. They utilized vast differences in technology, culture, and sharing; this is why we are coming back to SFI > MORE ON PAGE 6 institutions. in February.” 5 MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

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“From Ethical Challenges of Intelligent Systems 7:30 p.m., The Lensic Performing Arts Center Arts Lensic Performing The p.m., 7:30 • • Tuesday, 28 April Arts Center. Lectures are open to the public; Center. to public; are the open Arts Lectures BARBARA GROSZ BARBARA to Embedding Ethics in ” Our 2020 series kicks off February runs25 and February off kicks 2020Our series visit santafe.edu/community visit tickets, To isseating limited. your free reserve through November at The Lensic Performing throughLensic November at Performing The

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