Quantum Mechanics: The Relationship Between Holes and Parts

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I do want to mention one little thing that I did, which is probably a paper you haven't read. It's not really in your list of things to do. But when you were talking about individuals and how, you know, they persist in some way, passing on information from generation to generation. So I wrote the quantum mechanics version of that, not about individuals, but just asking, how can you carve up the world into subsystems? And guess what? They're like exactly like you said for your information theory of individuality. There is a set of criteria it has to do with entropy. And there is a thing you minimize. And that tells you where the subsystems are.

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there are a number of aspects to the phenomenon, and different researchers will naturally focus on their favorites. Today's guest, David Krakauer, is president of the Santa Fe Institute and a longtime researcher in complexity. He points the finger at the concept of agency. A ball rolling down a hill just mindlessly obeys equations of motion, but a complex system gathers information and uses it to adapt. We talk about what that means and how to think about the current state of complexity science.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-david-krakauer-on-complexity-agency-and-information/

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David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University. He is currently President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously he was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation. He was included in Wired magazine's list of "50 People Who Will Change the World."

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