A Complex World: Part Two

The Santa Fe Institute’s 29th Annual Ulam Memorial Lecture series will celebrate SFI’s 40th Anniversary by addressing our Complex World in a two part event.

Part Two: A Complex Universe: Diverse Perspectives

For the second event in this series, a panel of renowned experts on complexity will explore important and often neglected connections between new scientific ideas of life, mind, computation, energy, culture and global survival. We shall cover topics including the nature of life and its distribution across the universe, the meaning of intelligence in artificial and natural systems, and the fate of the earth under pressure of population and exponentiating resource requirements.

Featuring:
Melanie Mitchell (SFI), whose research focuses on conceptual abstraction, analogy-making, and visual recognition in AI systems.

Sara Walker (ASU, SFI), a theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life and how to find life on other worlds.

Geoffrey West (SFI), a theoretical physicist who developed quantitative models for the structural and functional design of organisms based on underlying universal principles (Scaling).

Thalia Wheatley (Dartmouth, SFI), Social Psychologist who investigates how ideas are created collectively and how one person can influence another in ways that ripple across the social webs they inhabit.

Moderated by David Krakauer